Frequently Asked Questions

What are the goals of the Lives of Commitment Program?

Many students come to Macalester with strong commitments to service and social justice issues. The Community Engagement Center works with students to continue developing their own visions of a socially just society, and encourages them to live out their values as commitments applied in community contexts.

Many Macalester students also question how to integrate their deepest values into their lives as students, and worry how they’ll apply these values to their lives after college. Each student (and, in fact, each person on this planet!) develops their values in a unique and singular context, whether rooted in a personal ethic, a religious tradition, ethnic or cultural heritage, lived experience, social movements, or any other foundational frame. Writ large, the Community Engagement Center offers a safe place to explore one’s values and creates opportunities to connect with others — on campus, and in the community — who ask these same questions.

Immigrant and refugee issues have become very important in the Twin Cities. We have chosen this theme as a primary focus for the program because students can make a significant contribution to immigrants and the refugee community by teaching English classes, tutoring for the citizenship test, or mentoring children. It also raises important issues of diversity, multiculturalism, and the question of how people make transitions – whether to a new country or the transition from high school to a college.

Many Macalester students do not want to stay in the “Mac bubble” but want to understand the Twin Cities better and to engage questions of diversity, both in the larger Twin Cities community as well as on campus. We hope to get students out in the community right away, help them understand neighborhoods, nonprofits and other community organizations. In the process we will meet activists, workers in both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, and some amazing people within immigrant and refugee communities.

One need for many first-year students is to find a group of students that can support them, share their commitment to community, and that can grow and change with them. The Lives of Commitment program is NOT all work. We play together, see the Twin Cities together, and engage in service and social justice activities together. Some of the students make their closest friends through the program.

We also find that students yearn to find mentors: people both on campus and in the community who can challenge them, connect them with resources, offer encouragement, and just be a friendly and supportive presence. We try to find supportive and engaging faculty, staff, and student leaders who will help guide the program.

What is the time commitment?

Lives of Commitment frames your first year of college first and foremost with a pre-orientation retreat. You arrive 4 days before your fellow students and have the unique opportunity to tour the Twin Cities, and get to know your LOC community! Once the semester starts, students go in groups of 4-8 to an off-campus site for one 2-hour shift (usually between 5pm and 8pm, including travel) each week. On one Wednesday each month, we gather as a full group for dinner and meet with guest speakers, review shared readings or videos, and discuss on a topic. These meetings usually last about two hours. On another Wednesday each month, we gather in small reflection groups to apply what was discussed in large group more directly to our own experiences. On two Saturdays each semester, we try to schedule optional experiential learning trips in the Twin Cities. Additional reflection opportunities and community events are typically made available as optional enrichment activities throughout the year.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that the nonprofits and the clients of the nonprofits really count on Macalester students to be consistent in their weekly community work. Macalester students are teaching classes, mentoring children, and performing other vital activities at the nonprofit. Please only apply for this program if you are willing to commit to the weekly volunteering and to the twice-monthly large & small group gatherings.

Most of our students are involved with other activities, from student groups to musical ensembles to sports. We try to have multiple time options for service. You can select the service work that will fit into your schedule. But you should be aware that you need to have time to go to your volunteer site one afternoon or evening each week and you need to have two Wednesdays each month free during the dinner window. Please consider participation in the Lives of Commitment program to take the same time commitment as would participation in any other co-curricular activity. Sometimes this can be problematic for people who are involved in sports that have long practices each day. If you have concerns about time commitments or scheduling conflicts, please email Sam Wegner at [email protected] or mention your concerns in your application. We will work with you to try to fit Lives of Commitment into your schedule!

Can international students apply?

YES! International students can definitely apply for Lives of Commitment. If you need to make travel arrangements before the application deadline, email Sam Wegner at [email protected] for early consideration.

The pre-orientation programming for international students does overlap with the LOC retreat, though we have made arrangements so that international students can attend the first evening and full day of the LOC retreat and return for the majority of programming for international students.

How does religion factor into Lives of Commitment?

We anticipate that students in the program will encompass a wide variety of religious traditions as well as students who are not religious or not religious in a conventional way. Past participants have included students who were Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, Unitarian-Universalist, Jewish, Baha’i, Buddhist, Quaker, Humanist, Hindu, spiritual but not religious, agnostic, and many who gained their identities from other sources, such as politics, social movements, ethics, or their own personal background.

The ultimate purpose of LOC is to engage you and your peers around themes of integrity, values, commitment, and social justice. For some students, this will have a religious component; for others, it will not. The program is meant to be an open place to discuss, support, and even challenge one another. Our hope is that each person will feel comfortable enriching our discussions with their own personal perspectives.

What this might mean for a student is that in any small group there could be people who come from different religious traditions or have different spiritual commitments; people who have different political viewpoints; some who have well thought-out ethical commitments and others who are still exploring; people who have different sexual orientations and multicultural identities. Regardless of your own commitments, we would hope that you would be comfortable sharing your own perspectives and also supportive of others even if their opinion differs vastly from your own.

What are some of the themes discussed in Lives of Commitment?

In past years, the program has been based in large part on the book Common Fire: Leading Lives of Commitment Complex World. In the book, author Sharon Daloz Parks and her colleagues interviewed numerous individuals whom they viewed as leading lives of commitment in a diverse array of fields. When asked about what inspired them to go into their particular work and what motivated them to continue despite the challenges they sometimes faced, subjects touched on a number of themes, including

• the importance of belonging
• the nature of compassion
• the development of conviction
• the power of failure as a means of developing both self-awareness and a renewed sense of purpose

We encourage students to reflect on these diverse topics by applying them to their own context as college students and volunteers who are seeking to discover their place in a broader community (both local and global). We regularly engage in discussion interrogating our motivations for “serving” in the world, and value the power of learning through deep and active listening. In many ways we use a model of cooperative inquiry into large questions about how we can live our lives well.  Instead of looking to authority for answers, we approach each large group curious and open to the experiences, ideas and wisdom within our LOC community.

During various retreats and large group meetings, we have invited guests and panels to discuss their interpretation of the different topics with which we engage. For example, a panel of professors working in human rights recently came to large group and discussed their relationship with failure and the moments they discovered their vocation. Singer-songwriter Meg Hutchinson discussed the relationship between her activism and the music she produces. Each year we continue to discover new people who are willing to share with us their experiences with and understanding of living a life of commitment, contributing to the diversity of our community. We also encourage students to share their own stories related to these themes.

How selective is Lives of Commitment?

We anticipate that there will be about 40-50 applicants and we will accept 30 students into the program.

If you have other questions, please email Sam Wegner, Student Engagement Program Associate, at [email protected], or call 651-696-6738!