Asking Worthy Questions

Worthy Questions is a unique program designed to help College of Wooster students investigate their life passions and explore the questions that confront them on their journey. Developed in 2001 by Linda Morgan-Clement, campus minister at Wooster, Worthy Questions matches adult mentors, many of whom come from the local community, with Wooster student questers to provide companionship and guidance. K.P. Hong, associate campus minister, helps to coordinate the program, and he discusses its purpose as well as its effectiveness.

Q. What is the mission of Worthy Questions?

A. Worthy Questions is designed for students seeking to find integration of their personal, professional, and spiritual values in a congruent path of life. The program offers tools, models, and a community for reflection that helps students to "ask questions worthy of the person they can become." In encouraging students to formulate and explore these questions, students meet in a large group to interact with adult presenters and narrators. Presenters provide specific skill training, theories, or information to assist with the quest, while narrators share personal experience relating to the topic presented. Worthy Questions also provides opportunities for significant encounters with mentors who have greater life experience and who have asked their own worthy questions.

Q. How does Worthy Questions differ from other mentoring programs?

A. As one component of the Worthy Questions program, the mentor-quester relationship is situated in the context of a larger community. Different from other programs where the mentoring relationship might exist unto itself, mentors and questers are encouraged to practice their relationship informed by themes, perspectives, and goals embraced by the larger community. The mentoring relationship, then, serves as another layer to deepen and broaden an ever-evolving conversation around defining themes for the individual and the community. The Worthy Questions mentor is also distinct from other types of mentors in not being a didactic instructor, academic advisor, counselor, "how to" guide, parent, or professional authority. If anything, Worthy Questions mentors serve as co-questers who may bring as many questions as questers do.

Q. How and why was Worthy Questions created?

A. In the fall of 2001, the Worthy Questions program emerged as a focused program that sought to structure opportunities for students to investigate the contours of their values, perspectives, and commitments, and assist students in making life decisions. An advisory board for Worthy Questions was formed, and the group developed an application process as well as the structure for the pilot program. Students were nominated, mentors were recruited, and the program began with a retreat in January of 2002. In November of 2002, The College of Wooster was awarded a grant from the Lilly Foundation, which allowed for an expansion of the Worthy Questions program.

Q. What attracts students to the program?

A. Worthy Questions offers students a context in which they can practice integrating personal, professional, and spiritual values toward vocational discernment. They find in Worthy Questions a place where the classroom, residence hall, community activist group, and home can come together in new and meaningful ways. Students seem to intuitively recognize the value of asking life-questions at a time when questions of identity, meaning, and purpose are increasingly complex and fiercely contested. They are searching for contexts in which they can question how they are to mature within their horizon of values, beliefs, and character; question how they are to synthesize the disparate and fragmented aspects of their identity; and, ultimately, question what is truly worth living for and dying for in this all-too-fragile world.

Q. How is the program structured?

A. Students are introduced to Worthy Questions through a selection process involving nomination by faculty, staff, and students currently participating in the program. Members of the Worthy Questions Advisory Board subsequently review applications, and selections for the new class are made by the end of the fall semester. The program year begins with a January retreat, focusing on the theme for the year. There are also two large group meetings each month, during which the community gathers for theme presentations accompanied by narrations, discussion, and dinner. Questers also meet on alternate weeks in small groups for personal reflection, community discussion, and interaction based on large group themes. In addition, students participate in a service-learning retreat and meet with their mentors at a minimum of twice per semester. The structure is premised on the understanding that each quester's journey is both individual and communal.

Q. What sorts of questions and issues are addressed?

A. The questions raised most often focus on values, goals, identity, spirituality, purpose, and the integration of these in some meaningful path of life. While questions differ from student to student and will evolve as students continue their quest, inquiries may include:

* Am I who I want to be?

* How do I create balance among my personal, professional, and spiritual goals?

* Am I living someone else's version of my life?

* How do I decide what to do with my major, my life?

* What is a worthy question, a worthy life?

* How do our religious, academic, cultural, and historical contexts affect our knowing?

* What are some concrete practices that inform our knowing, from spiritual disciplines to being in community with others?

Q. What type of feedback have you received from questers and mentors?

A. Student participation and excitement about the program remain high, with many questers committed to the program throughout their college years. For mentors and questers alike, Worthy Questions seems to be a place that "centers" the human journey, where learning makes room not only for information but wisdom, reverence, vulnerability, and intimacy. Equally so, both mentors and questers express their struggle to live up to the commitments necessary to sustain such a quality of relationships and goals. But perhaps the clearest feedback of the program's effect is seen in the manner participants choose to live out their "worthy questions." Students are choosing majors, exploring possible vocations, taking risks, and following questions in directions they may not have considered before. And each year, students are taking greater roles in leadership and direction of the program.