The College of Wooster Lilly Project provides opportunities for the entire College community to engage in serious vocational discussion and reflection. We intend to create a campus climate of engagement that focuses on questions of meaning and value: What is worth doing, and how can our lives contribute to that which has ultimate significance?

With a generous grant of $1.78 million from the Lilly Endowment, the Project is designed to raise issues of vocation in order to challenge us to see a vision of who we were created to be. The Project provides our students, faculty, and staff with vision, vocabulary, physical space, leadership, and communities of reflection that support spiritual and vocational transformation and commitment. Upon the Lilly Project’s successful completion, individuals and communities involved will have been challenged to transform their personal and collective spiritual lives and envision what is possible for them beyond what currently exists.

Vocare is a Latin verb meaning to call. Who has God called us to be? This is not about choosing a career, finding a major, or getting a job, but something deeper than that. Vocation is the fertile “ground of our being” from which these pursuits arise.

Why the Theological Exploration of Vocation?
To read an answer to this question from the Lilly Endowment’s Vice President for Religion, click here.

Read a two-page abstract of our grant proposal here.

Read our Values Statement here

Lilly House: Ribbon Cutting