Talk to Wooster
Fall 2005
Space to Comtemplate
Wooster’s Lilly Project enables the campus community
to ponder questions of vocation and mission.
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On the north end of campus, not far from the frenzy of all-night study sessions and noisy residence halls, sits a retreat offering quiet, reassurance, and encouragement. At Lilly House, a restored, ninety-five-year-old Beall Avenue residence, students and staff know they can consider some of life’s most basic questions: Who am I? What am I here to do? What vocation should I pursue?
Wooster established the Lilly Project for the Exploration of Vocation in 2003 with a five-year, $1.78 million grant from the Lilly Endowment. “The goal has been to create a campus climate of engagement that focuses on questions of meaning and value, such as what is worth doing, and how can our lives contribute to that which has ultimate significance,” says Dianna Rhyan, director of the Lilly Project. “Our mission is to challenge individuals and communities to transform their personal and collective spiritual lives while envisioning what is possible beyond what currently exists.”
To support that mission, Rhyan and her colleagues, Susan Hawkins-Wilding and Joyce Howard, have developed a range of programs, internships, events, and activities. They hold Friday teas, where members of the campus community can gather for a respite after a hectic week, and creative journaling sessions, when students, faculty, and staff can share their experiences with one another. The Lilly Project has sponsored a number of retreats and conferences as well as a reintegration program, which helps students reacquaint themselves with college life after spending a semester or more studying off campus. In addition, the project provides funding for major speakers and offers mini-grants to help students, faculty, and staff promote a better understanding of vocation, ethics, and service through creative group programs.
Lilly’s summer field experiences have attracted students interested in exploring vocation. Medical humanitarian internships, for example, place students in Central America to do volunteer medical work. Legal humanitarian internships send students to work with nonprofit organizations. The Azimuth experience offers students grants to explore how to integrate a deep personal interest with a significant community need, anywhere in the United States, for a summer. Seminary Semester offers an off-campus study program open to students of any major or religious background who are considering religious vocation, advocacy work for peace and justice, or any sort of religious study.
The Lilly Project partners with other groups on campus to provide funding for such things as Worthy Questions, a program developed by Interfaith Campus Ministries. Lilly funding also allows the College to explore the expansion of its service-learning course offerings, which combine classroom and field work with a local social service agency.
“Our efforts are directed at helping students and others on campus to answer what vocation means to them,” says Rhyan. “We help them explore what they want to do with their lives and what they want to accomplish.”
Rhyan insists that such issues cannot be addressed without adequate spiritual reflection. “We have to consider who God has called us to be,” she says. “This is not about choosing a career, finding a major, or getting a job, but something much deeper.”
Midway through the five-year grant, Rhyan is encouraged by the project’s impact and direction.“We are in an adaptive mode, constantly changing to meet the needs and address the questions of those who participate,” she says. “None of our programs are exactly as they were in the original proposal. We’re learning as we go.”
She’s still concerned about questions that have yet to be asked, and more aware of what this post-September 11 generation of students ponder.
“I often wonder if students are out to save the world,” she says, “and are searching for the meaning of life now more than ever.”
