The Purpose Project: A Culture of Encounter
The Purpose Project represents our commitment to keep purpose as a central consideration as we work to enrich student experiences and strengthen student outcomes at St. Thomas.
We will work to develop a signature course on Purpose that will help students explore meaning and purpose in career. The Purpose Project will help to pilot and launch this course with the eventual goal of reaching all undergraduate students.
We will also introduce sophomores to the concepts of vocation and purpose. Second-year students from under-represented groups are more likely to feel disconnected and therefore have a high risk of not retaining. The project will explore ways to reach first-generation sophomores and help them develop skills in reflection, listening and vocational exploration.
The project will also enhance existing campus efforts to connect students to storytelling as a way to help students develop their own sense of identity and purpose. Storytelling encourages the type of reflection that compels students to integrate their own core values into their life narratives and future plans, a process that lies at the heart of purpose.
While the effort will focus primarily on reaching students with opportunities to find purpose, we will also engage with faculty and staff – an essential component to the long-term success of this project.
The Vocation Faculty and Staff Cohort, led by the Office of Mission, will foster a 1-2 semester-long conversation as faculty and staff explore their own vocational stories. The cohort will also help build skills in incorporating these explorations in their work with students. Activities of this community include hosting faculty and staff retreats, book groups, and committee events. Two new learning communities on vocation will develop champions for courses and future faculty development workshops. A faculty community in the College of Arts and Sciences is currently exploring the power of storytelling to change minds, build relationships, promote equity, and foster a sense of joy.
Skills that faculty gain in this community will help expand the ability to teach students skills of relationships and dialogue, essential elements to the path of discovering purpose.
As we launch The Purpose Project, we will pay special attention to how our Catholic identity can inform this work and how we can reach students across all faiths and across differences.
We know from surveys that young people today are suffering from a lack of purpose and meaning in their lives, and that void contributes to the mental health, loneliness, and hopelessness crises pervading our campuses and boding ill for our country’s future. At every St. Thomas new student orientation, we share our aspiration for each of them: that they emerge from their time with us with the unshakeable knowledge that they are loved, that their lives have purpose, that their work has meaning, and that they have been gifted by God to make irreplaceable contributions to our world. We reject the notion that higher education institutions must become transactional, focused only on providing job skills as efficiently as possible. While preparing students for professional success is important, instilling a sense of purpose alongside employment readiness is imperative.
But what does that look like in practical terms? How do we equip and empower our students to develop a sense of purpose during their time with us? And how should our Catholic identity inform this work during an era when most of our students are not practicing Catholics, and many do not belong to any faith tradition? We believe that the Coalition for Transformational Education can support and strengthen our efforts while the Coalition members, in turn, could benefit from our experiences and insights.
There is an emerging consensus in psychology literature that a meaningful life requires “cognitive coherence, affective significance, and motivational direction.” (Hanson & VanderWeele) Purpose is a subset of meaning, defined as “a stable and generalized intention to accomplish something that is at once meaningful to the self and of consequence to the world beyond the self.” (Damon)
With the Coalition’s help, we can elevate our existing work and embed it into the ecosystem of St. Thomas. University of St. Thomas President Robert K. Vischer
