The College Student Perspective: From Sacred to Secular

What is the real purpose of college? Recent graduate Sarah Soltis, who was raised in the Christian faith, shares the reasons she decided to attend a liberal arts university, William & Mary University, and later to transfer to a Christian liberal arts college, Grove City College. She talks with host Dan Hummel, whose educational journey followed a far different trajectory.

Learn about Sarah Soltis & Grove City College

Read Sarah's Article in Plough: Do Universities Educate

With Faith in Mind is produced at Upper House in Madison, Wisconsin and hosted by Director of University Engagement Dan Hummel and Executive Director John Terrill. Jesse Koopman is the Executive Producer. Upper House is an initiative of the Stephen & Laurel Brown Foundation.

Please reach out to us with comments or questions at podcast@slbrownfoundation.org. We'd love to hear from you. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hello and welcome to With Faith in Mind. I'm Dan Hummel, today's host, and the Director of University Engagement at Upper House. This episode is part of our series on Christian education at the crossroads, and we're welcoming Sarah Soltis to the show. Today we're exploring the student experience in Christian higher education. I came across Sarah when she wrote an essay in Plough Quarterly late last year titled Do Universities Educate? It was a fascinating piece. It's a mix of first-person storytelling and more philosophical suggestions about education as formation, and we'll get into what that phrase might even mean. And we'll get into the article and bigger topic here in just a minute, but I do want to introduce Sarah a little more. Sarah is currently a senior studying English at Grove City College. She is editor-in-chief of Grove City's Kogatari magazine and managing editor of the Front Porch Republic. And she's published her work in Plow, the American Conservative, Estasis magazine, and many other places. So, Sarah, before jumping into the particular topic of your article and the journey you went on to uh arrive at Grove City College, just wanted to get a uh give our audience a just a little sense of who you are, um, where you come from. So, uh, what's one part of your upbringing that uh is really notable maybe for this conversation, or just some part of your um your early life that you'd want to share with the audience?

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Yeah. Um, well, I think I well, I'm sure we'll get to this later, but I grew up in a in a strong Christian home, and I went to a classical Christian school. Um, and I have memories like very early on of you know, praying in class with my kindergarten class and my kindergarten teacher praying with us. Um so that's one one kind of thing that maybe clues clues you into some of who I am, that that's how I was shaped and raised. Um, I remember actually when my kindergartner, my kindergarten teacher prayed one maybe Thursday, just some random day, um, she prayed that we would all come to know Jesus with a personal relationship. Um, and I remember walking away from school that day, just very kind of curious about what that might mean. Um and that kind of started my own my own journey towards those questions. But yeah, so that's a little bit of a background glance, I guess, at um at my upbringing.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

And you went to um Christian school basically from kindergarten up through uh high school, is that right?

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Yeah, I did, yeah. K through 12, classical Christian school. And yeah, I realized that I'm I'm very blessed to be able to do that because that's a rare thing for people to be able to do and to afford to do. Um, but I I've been really blessed.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

Yeah, and uh this will be the first time I'll um I'm gonna insert myself into this conversation a little more than than usual um because I want to draw a contrast, Sarah, between your story and my own. So I also grew up in a very strong Christian home. We were a missionary family, and so I actually spent a number of years in Germany as a as a kid. I actually went to kindergarten in Germany, you know, a real kindergarten. Um and I was homeschooled until uh we came back, and then I had one year in Christian school, second grade. We were at the sort of church that had sent us on mission. But from third grade on, I was in public schools, um, mostly in Colorado Springs, uh, Colorado, where I spent a lot of my uh middle school and all my middle school and high school years. So um in some ways we have the the sort of the same shared uh Christian home. Um in other ways I had a much different, I think, uh educational experience than you. Uh certainly the the you know, the high school I was in was massive. It was about 2,500 students, um, which I believe is as big as Grove City College uh around there. Um as as um you talk about uh fellowship being so key to to education. Um you know, scale is one of those things that sort of works against fellowship, right? When it when you have big box, uh big class uh high school or college, uh fellowship looks differently. So um uh yeah, thanks for sharing about uh where you where you came from. I wanted to jump into the to the article itself, which uh I commend people to read, called Do Universities Educate? Um Sarah, I wanted to just start with asking why did you decide to write your story in such a sort of public forum as an article?

SPEAKER_01 4:46

Right. Yeah, so I guess the kind of the immediate answer is um that I was an intern at Plow this past summer. So I was I wrote the essay for Plow because I was working at Plow and kind of thinking in this plow environment. There was a cohort of us interns who were all Christian college-age kids, and we all had just very different experiences with education, and we had happened to be talking a lot about education um during our internship there. So that kind of got me thinking about Plow specifically for sharing my story. But in a in a broader sense, kind of beyond that, I I wrote it because I had been thinking for a while about um how I had been shaped growing up and how my formation, how my upbringing affected my educational um aims and my goals in in going first to a secular college and then transferring to Grove City. So I guess all that to say I I just been wrestling with those questions of of shaping and uh desires of for education for a while. Um and I knew that these are questions that people are asking on a broader scale as well. And I think just in in sharing my own story with friends and um people at various like at Grove City and around where I live, uh, people have been touched by it. So I I felt that I mean maybe sharing this would kind of contribute to that broader conversation about what is education for and how should Christians think about education in such a um tense climate often.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Yeah, and I think um, you know, you mentioned this in the article a few times, but uh, you know, you went to call college right when COVID hit. Uh, and so there's so many people asking questions uh in the last few years in particular about what is the maybe worth of education in a financial sense, but also uh what are people getting out of it? What's the value of education uh for uh you know people's lives, people's careers? Um so I think you're also hitting on a question that uh has a particular resonance for your story, but I think a lot of people are asking. I know people here at UW uh are also trying to think about that. I know the university itself is trying to articulate the value of what they offer um in in ways that resonate with a post-COVID, you know, uh 18-year-olds uh and and going forward. Um I I wonder if we could uh if you could just give give us sort of a sense of as you were thinking of college uh as a high schooler, um, what were you looking for? And and I know that changed over time, but sort of how were you anticipating uh college and and sort of evaluating what the best option was when you were you know in high school, later in high school?

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Right. So when I was in high school, like I said, I had K through 12 at a classical Christian school. Um I was pretty set as a senior on getting out of the Christian bubble. Um, I was probably the last person in my class who would have wanted to go to a Christian college. Um so I was I was very set on well-known um colleges, prestigious colleges that could give me uh some sort of liberal arts education because I still wanted the liberal arts training. I wanted to study English. Um so I looked at nearby colleges um near where I am from in Maryland that could uh give me some sort of liberal arts training and also would look good um down the line on a resume and also had um opportunities for things like study abroad and different special programs. Um and William and Mary, I toured there as a senior and I was just very delighted with the um the campus and what it seemed like their focuses were. I loved their their focus on history or their apparent focus on history uh right there in Williamsburg. Um and they definitely kind of checked the boxes in my mind at least for somewhat prestigious, um also nearby and accessible for me. Uh and so I I was really thinking, I wouldn't have put it in these terms, maybe, but I was thinking about prestige and what would look good and also what would give me good tools for uh doing whatever it might be that I wanted to do in the world of of literature and literary studies.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Was there uh you mentioned English as sort of what you wanted to study? Is that just something you were interested in going all the way back, or or was that something you um came to sort of later in in your high school?

SPEAKER_01 9:53

Yeah, I think I I've always been interested in literature. I really knew that I wanted to study literature sometime in the middle of high school when we were actually reading um Virgil's Aeneid in Latin in my Latin class and talking about somewhat similar things in my literature class. And that's just a, I mean, that that sort of integration is a testament to the school that I grew up at. Um but seeing those kind of overlaps and thinking about the canon and the the great books um in that way when I was 15, 16, um, that kind of highlighted to me that I wanted to study literature.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Um I won't draw this contrast too often, but that that is not what my high school English experience was like. So that sounds uh quite ideal. So particularly the integration of the language training with um with the literature that um that opens up uh imagination in students, I think, that often isn't even awakened in a lot of students that don't have that opportunity. Um I wonder as you were talking about uh your your thought process of why you wanted to go with William and Mary, were there other people speaking into the process? Did you I mean I assume your parents were uh somewhat involved, but uh was there anyone else you were seeking advice from, or was it really sort of on you to figure out where you wanted to go?

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Yeah, my parents were definitely involved. Um, I had a family friend who had done college admissions counseling who was helping me out with with various parts of my applications. Um, and she was a fan of William Mary as well. I yeah, had some teachers and parents that I knew in my school community uh who were supportive in that direction of looking for these sorts of well-known, uh well-respected liberal arts-esque colleges that were outside of the Christian Christian thought sphere, I guess. So I I I it was a lot of my own initiative. It wasn't that someone told me like you need to go out to a secular school. That was kind of my own desire, but I think all those people were supportive of that desire in me. And there definitely is uh a drive, I think, for excellence in um in a lot of Christian parents who send their kids to to Christian col Christian school growing up. So it kind of the idea of a prestigious university kind of fit with that because my parents wanted me to succeed and um yeah, and we all kind of thought that doing this might be one way to do that.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

Yeah, and and maybe we can uh just talk a little more about that. So um I remember feeling this too. Like why you you talked about like getting out of the Christian bubble or like sort of getting away from I mean, there's part of that's just like a probably a universal 18-year-old feeling that you just want to get away from the culture you grew up in. But I think a lot of uh Christian students go through that. Um and I think you identified one reason right there, which is there's a sense of excellence, particularly if you're set up for that. And sort of excellence in uh a lot of American contexts are these like really elite, often non-Christian schools. And so that's like the highest achievement you can make in terms of getting into a college. Um, so that that might be one uh one reason why that's appealing. Was there, I don't know, I'm just asking you to sort of reflect it. Was there any other reason why sort of getting out of the a Christian bubble, so to speak, was appealing at that time?

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Yeah, at that time I was probably mostly motivated by the potential future uh success and the whole excellence factor. But I think earlier on in high school, I had, you know, that rebellious stage that every Christian teen probably has, where I was questioning um some of the just general philosophies and ideas related to the the Christian bubble, questioning some political things that a lot of Christians in school shared. Um so maybe that's that was a seed perhaps for the desire to get out of the Christian bubble. But I was somewhat naturally just pushing back against these things that I had like been fed my whole life, and and I think that makes sense because I didn't yet understand like why it is so important to be in Christian community and um how vital and life-giving that can be. Uh, because I was you know, 14. Um, I I just didn't totally get all the all the things that I had been given and the blessing that they that they all kind of comprised. So maybe that played in as well. And I think for a lot of Christian high schoolers, that does the idea that maybe maybe I need to figure out for myself what's true and I can't just accept what's been fed to me this whole time. That idea plays in for people. And I think that there's a a natural aspect of that.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. I think there's sort of a fish and water situation where you don't really realize all the support systems um that you have in your in your youth um until you don't have them, and then you suddenly realize, oh, there's a lot I really appreciate about that um that context, and particularly the Christian uh community part, that it's really hard to recreate at a lot of college uh experiences. Um okay, well, I one of the quotes in your article, which I love, I always love a Chesterton quote. Um I think we all do. Um but he has I'll just read part of it. He says, uh there is no education apart from some particular kind of education. There is no education that is not sectarian education. Um and uh I want to apply that to your time at first at William and Mary, and then we'll go to Grove City. But um uh yeah, when you went to William and Mary, what was the um now that you're looking back on it, what was the formation, the educational formation you were entering into? And particularly just what were the benefits of it and then the downsides of it as you sort of experienced it that first year on campus?

SPEAKER_02 16:22

Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

I think um I definitely did when I came there, I had a a sense that I was entering into an excellent educational sphere. Um and that was one of the kind of my first responses. After a little while though, that did wear off. I think the benefit was that it was still a good name and it still um it still was promised to be a successful name for me. But when I yeah, when I was at William and Mary, I I found that a lot of the classes I was in were just not very deep. Um some of that had to do with the fact that a lot of them were, you know, freshman classes and it was COVID and so so much was limited. But a lot of our discussions were very kind of horizontal sphere discussions. And what I mean by that is um we're in an entry-level English class, uh freshman English class, and we're reading The Tempest, and we talk about we're not really talking about um, you know, justice or truth or any of these kind of maybe vertical ideas that I had grown up thinking about. We were just talking about what does this tell us about uh colonialism and what does this tell us about gender theory and uh what does this say about Shakespeare's um ideas about women and the other? Um, and those are those are interesting questions. Those are in some some ways in some conversations important. It's important that we live on a horizontal sphere as well as a vertical one. But I think I was just struck from my first couple of classes at how shallow and how yeah, horizontal a lot of a lot of those conversations were. Um at the same at the same time, one of the benefits was that it was a a rigorous in a sense school in that I was you know reading a lot and everyone there was pretty committed um to learning, but it wasn't rigorous in the sense of depth. And that was that was the main downside. It was it was one-dimensional. And I think the depth that I eventually realized that I was longing for was the depth specifically given by Christian education, um, and given by learning in a community where everyone accepts that there is um there is a underlying like unity to to our lives, and there's a um there's a real real quality uh to goodness and truth and these things that we talk about. There's there's something there. Um instead of just uh like our own kind of wishes or desires, there's there's something actually to be said for that vertical plane of our existence.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

When when you um you know came to these texts with that vertical, those questions about the virtues or or sort of these vertical uh questions as you call them, did you find that uh maybe not in the class proper, but maybe were other students interested in those and it just wasn't being talked about in class? Were professors interested in that and they just didn't bring it up in class? Or were there or was it sort of a lack of interest in those things across the board?

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Yeah, I've from my I mean, I was only there for one year. So from my limited classes, I think it might have interested some of the professors in some way, but their primary uh interest was you know, more of the horizontal, one-dimensional stuff, societal um questions. I think other students probably were interested in that. Not a lot of people necessarily voiced that. I did find, and I'm sure we'll talk about this later more, but I found in some of the Christian fellowships that I was or Christian communities that I was engaged in, like a um Bible study in the church, and um I was involved in Reformed University Fellowship. And so some of those Christians that I met had encountered similar quandary quandaries, I guess, in their in their own um majors where they wanted to be talking about you know, justice, maybe, or other other things, and they weren't they weren't really talking about them in the full way that they desired to.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, you you mentioned um uh sort of some ministries you were part of or churches. Um yeah, talk about it. Sounds like there might have been uh more uh stimulation there, I guess, uh in terms of intellectual stimulation. But um yeah, how did you uh think about your spiritual life and your your spiritual maturity and growth um during that year that you were on campus?

SPEAKER_01 21:32

Right. Well, I was yeah, very blessed to be able to join, or not join, but attend a local church and to get involved with uh college ministry. From from the get go, though, it was very difficult with COVID because even just a lot of my engagements with the the college ministry that I was a part of were very um virtual, like there was not a lot of in person. engagement allowed by the school. But it I think especially being able to go to church in person every week was was something that really sustained me through the first year because so much of so much of the rest of my life was virtual. And those people kind of understood the difficulty and isolation that I was experiencing. But of course I didn't really know them all that well. And so I think outside of my engagement with Christians at at church and in limited ways with RUF, I personally just felt very um starved for spiritual nourishment and very isolated in my faith even though I was still you know praying and trying to uh connect with the Lord I I just I felt like in a pretty kind of despairing isolated place. And a lot of that I think was from the whole uh just the whole emotional kind of state that most people my age had in COVID. It was very depressing for a lot of us um I don't I don't know all the factors that went into that but I yeah I definitely felt spiritually spiritually starved.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

Yeah that makes a lot of sense uh I've been referencing my own experience at like I'm I'm not even that young so I don't know why I keep uh I'm not that old either but uh it was it was uh 15 years ago that I was in college um but totally different than anyone who went through college in 2020 2021 um really hard to uh I mean I obviously observed it from the outside I work on a campus but um uh uh particularly the the isolation I guess of of being mostly a virtual uh it seems very difficult uh to to grasp unless you uh experienced that yourself. Um I I want to um uh get to your thinking around why uh uh Grow City was a good alternative. Um but uh I did want to just ask uh as you were in your article um you make the distinction between you're thinking about wanting to move on from Willie Mary to something more Christian between uh is this just like a COVID reaction or is there something deeper that is not uh sitting well um so how did you think through that uh how did you sort of try to discern uh what was wrong and if actually moving would fix it or if um or if that really wasn't uh the solution that that was needed yeah so I think there are a couple things at play there but one of them was that I knew that Christian colleges had a less intense response to to the COVID um thing.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

So I I I knew particularly about Grove City because I had friends who went there that they um they didn't have they most of the time didn't have online classes and that you know they didn't have to wear masks outside maybe just in the building but it was just definitely a diminished response to COVID than than my own experience at a Virginia state school. And some of that is size some of that is naturally like Christian colleges are more conservative and so there's more of a um there was just less of a a need for the big heavy response. And I had heard also from from my friend who was at I was beginning at Grove City the same time that I was beginning at William Mary that she was very much enjoying it even though COVID kind of dampened some of her experience she was she still loved it. And of course that that was striking because most of my friends and myself included really did not like much at all about our about our freshman years at at school um but I also I knew that it was more than COVID that that was kind of moving me in a different direction because my main frustration wasn't really COVID it was that lack of depth that I was talking about earlier. And I think COVID played into that because COVID revealed some of the weaknesses I think in the modern university in that there's just not there wasn't so many there wasn't really anything for the modern university to give or do for all the people who were frankly suffering I think under just all the jumps and changes that COVID brought um there there's no it it can't hold the kind of personal communal um healing or conversations needed I think to um speak to and restore some of the frustrations that people were feeling. So I so I guess what I'm trying to say is I I knew that it was partly COVID but I also knew that COVID was a sign of of underlying things and underlying uh other underlying issues that I didn't like in the in the modern university. And a large part of it was the the lack of room for for depth and lack of room for um fellowship. And I think some of that some of that has to do with the fact that it it was a secular school some of it also has to do with like I said this kind of modern um university mindset where school isn't really about fellowship and it's not about like becoming a person. It's about gaining certain skills and preparing yourself for success. So there's a lot at play there but hopefully that kind of answers some of my thinking about it.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

Yeah that makes that makes a lot of sense and that resonates with um some of the COVID response I saw here at UW Madison, which is a massive public university there's about 35,000 undergrads that go here. And so so much of the response to COVID in particular was very uh and I don't want to I mean it was a very difficult situation so I'm I'm not um even trying to cast blame but you know very a lot of bureaucratic uh response a lot of it's so much just a tension on sort of how are we gonna keep the classes going, how are people gonna get credit for their classes that uh a lot of the more uh uh human interactions and a lot of the more humanistic concerns uh were secondary at least in 2020 and you know I think there's a there's been a massive fallout from that there's been a massive response one was a push as quickly as possible here at UW to get back to in person uh as as soon because there was a clear sense that the students didn't like it and and the fact maybe the faculty didn't like it either though some faculty uh wanted to stay uh remote as as long as possible and then there's this this massive um mental health crisis that uh we talk a lot about here on campus the university has expanded its student uh life initiatives and its you know counselors and all that kind of stuff as much as it can and it still can't meet all the demand that's been its response uh from a you know public uh secular university has been to you know try to offer as much counseling as much support but we know just because of where we are the work that we do that there's been interest by the university as well in thinking about spirituality as they call it as a dimension to student life and the resilience that students can build at at university. But that's been a really new insight by the university in the last like year or so that maybe there's something more that we need to be doing than um than what we have been doing. So I think you see all different types of responses and I think you've identified a couple of the key ones from your your perspective. I wonder when when you got to Grove City um what did you notice and this is you know just drawing from your article what did you notice was different?

SPEAKER_01 30:25

Like what what was so alluring about going there and then when you got there uh what was so much better I guess than than your first year yeah I think the short answer is community and that's definitely an overused word especially in college and college admissions everyone wants to tell you that they have a great community um but I I got there and I was immediately welcomed um I, you know transferring is never never easy and transfers often have a difficult time and I knew that but when I came there were other transfers who had similar experiences um and even beyond the transfers like the English department had this wonderful welcome tea that they had for all the new English majors um and yeah people people were just so so ready to welcome me and to hear about my story and my experience um and I think a lot of that goes back to the Christian aspect um also the fact that it is as a smaller school it's a lot easier to have some of that community I I knew before going that the community would be strong and fellowship there was was a strong uh feature because uh as I wrote about in my article I had a literature teacher actually from high school who had gone there and she met with me one day when I was thinking about the the switch and we just had this this great conversation partly about education but also just catching up from high school um and I think that conversation really kind of imaged me the possibilities of Christian fellowship that I had maybe forgotten in my year um at William Mary uh and maybe I didn't realize when I was growing up in high school um but yeah I think because it changes when you're a kid to when you're a young adult in college like the richness of Christian community is it's I think it's an equal richness but when you're older it's just it's different and you're a lot more cognizant maybe of uh how being surrounded by Christian people um and people who have similar ideas about you know truth beauty and goodness and similar understandings that truth beauty and goodness exist um how being surrounded by those people can affect your life and specifically studying and school and education and this whole project of literature especially you um you talk in the article um about as you just mentioned the importance of fellowship and community to formation uh and and particularly educational formation can you just walk us through sort of conceptually um and I'm thinking here of where you talk about soul formation and this sort of tradition of thinking about this um uh yeah what were the insights you gleaned from just thinking about that connection between community and uh education right so I as I wrote about I grew up in this classical sphere where I understood um just kind of by the atmosphere that education is not about particular skills so much as it is about like shaping a person and forming um a human being in in a proper way. And so I just kind of had that in the back of my mind as I approached college and my life and it wasn't a super conscious idea but making the switch did make me think about it a lot more. Right, but I I think you know education as as formation just comes from this idea that um like people are not computers people are people and they're they're shaped in a variety of ways and learning um especially learning the liberal arts like learning about history and philosophy and theology and the classical understanding of um like what what an education was was kind of those liberal arts um those things make a person more not more complete in a way like they wouldn't be complete otherwise but they they could make a human and shape a human into who um they are meant to be or into who they can be.

SPEAKER_02 35:25

So yeah just this kind of notion that education is not for specific things but for the person and for shaping the person.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

And the idea that then taking that with community um the idea that you can't really do that devoid you can't make a person devoid of other people like if education is about making a person and making a person especially who can uh serve the community and serve others um you you can't do that just kind of with mechanistic um computerized like forms of learning which is I think where where COVID comes in a little bit but yeah so I don't know if that that makes sense that was kind of a long-winded answer but I think yeah just that idea of what education is for um plays in and of course the like traditional sense of of education as a liberal arts formation especially in the Christian tradition where like universities began with people wanting to integrate and understand um the world through a Christian perspective and like be formed by that not necessarily go out and invent something because of that but to be formed as as humans and as Christians by their understanding of you know history, philosophy, theology literature those sorts of things.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

Right and in service um in service of God uh that that's sort of the ultimate end of of the education. Yeah I think just to get uh somewhat philosophical for a second I think um you know a lot of the Western uh philosophical tradition particularly since the Enlightenment has seen the individual as the if you think of like Rousseau and like the state of nature like it's an it's an individual person who has all this freedom. And so if that's your idea of of sort of what education you know education sort of meet the ideal state of nature type person, it's gonna be a very individualized uh activity. And it's about sort of you mastering as you and your brain and your faculties mastering this area of knowledge. And I think the Christian tradition offers something a little different that um either starts with um the Trinity which is uh you know three persons in uh one in in God and so there's a relational component right there at the beginning or it starts with Adam who immediately um uh needs a partner and and has eve and so there's and then God is sort of the third uh a third person in that uh triangle as well and so either either way you started on the christian in the Christian tradition you're talking about uh uh living in community and learning in community I think you you mentioned this a few times in the article about how important relationships are to to learning that um you talk about mechanistic but depersonalized um ways of education I think of a lot of my I went to two large state schools for my education um most of the classes were at least uh 50 people um and many of them were like over a hundred and so there's not even the ability for a professor to get to know everybody uh or to field all the questions and in fact you're just not really encouraged to ask that many questions because there's just too much to get through and there's too many people in the room to sort of accommodate all that. So um I think what you sort of um are are landing on here at at Grove City is is that truth that the the relationship part of education it we we often take it for granted but it's so crucial um to how we learn and and and not just learn in like a knowledge way but like learn in a it actually forms us type way.

SPEAKER_01 39:19

Yeah I think yeah definitely um yeah I've I've found that it's a lot easier to to form those relationships and to ask questions uh of of professors of other students even um at at a smaller school where that kind of thing is is encouraged um yeah also on the relationship front like I talk about this in my article but just the fact that this surprised me so much when I first came to Grove City but the fact that I could like be invited to speak to a professor outside of class about things that weren't really class like the fact that my professors wanted to get to know me and wanted me to get to know their kids and wanted me to uh come over to their house um or meet their dog things like that were just so surprising to me and I I am really blessed um because that's like even at some Christian schools that's not the case where you have professors who really care about about the students um and care about getting to know the students. But I yeah because of God's grace I guess I've I've been able to um do that with a handful of professors at Grove City.

SPEAKER_00 40:39

Yeah um yeah and I I I think for uh for my experience the the place where that happened was actually grad school because grad school gets you in a much smaller even in a big school gets you in a much smaller cohort where and you have a much more intense relationship with faculty with professors because they're sort of mentoring you and and other things. But um but that you have to go to grad school for that at a public university. You're not going to get that nearly as often um in the undergrad experience.

SPEAKER_01 41:05

You mentioned it here just briefly about sort of the way that the professors welcomed you into um other parts of their life and wanted to know about uh your life if you could just summarize it in the classroom what does a good professor at a Christian college do that isn't happening at a in a non-Christian classroom I think the main difference between a Christian professor in a Christian classroom and a non-Christian professor uh in a secular classroom is what I was talking about earlier with the um horizontal and the vertical planes I guess and that I think those are I mean that has they're kind of horizont horizontal and vertical planes of being I suppose but also of like every endeavor and study and literature especially I think those kinds of two cross sections are there and the Christian professor is a lot more likely in my experience to speak to those vertical questions um about the you know the transcendental virtues truth beauty and goodness and also specifically about Christ um and I've found yeah in my literature classes there's almost always a way to integrate discussion about the word when we're talking about you know the words of a particular text and it's it's not often forced in my experience with Christian professors. It doesn't it's not like this kind of thing that's hewn onto our discussions about literature but so much of literature especially in uh like the canon the the uh tradition tradition of the great books um really does address some of these themes and questions of our faith and also addresses Christ uh specifically so I think yeah the specific integration of faith is an obvious one but also just generally those vertical questions it is a difference um also kind of integration with that that canon or the great books tradition is I found more common at a Christian school because while that kind of terminology is still present in lots of secular colleges I think it's it's becoming more rare in your run of the mill like major secular state college to talk about the great books or to talk about the Western canon or really like the canon at all. So alluding to some of those yeah books That have shaped the Western civilization specifically is not as of interest for secular professors in a lot of schools unless they have a specific liberal arts focus.

SPEAKER_00 44:15

Yeah, and there's a few different reasons you could attribute to that. I mean, one is sort of a um a move away from even talking about a particular canon, right? And saying that that that was a that's not the right way to even frame how to how to engage literature. Um and that's happening, uh, and that that that's definitely present. But I think another one, I just think of a place like UW, or I went, I did my undergrad at Colorado State University. Um, both of them, they're they truly are a university in the literal sense, which is they have like hundreds of majors that you can major in. They they try to encapsulate like the universe of of knowledge. And so many of those, so many of the ones that students pick now, I think of here at UW, the the largest major is computer science, and it's grown significantly in the last decade. There's just so much emphasis on training toward particular career paths that mean that the curriculum, um, what's going to get dropped from the curriculum? Well, it's going to be seemingly less technical uh classes in the liber in the liberal arts or the humanities, where it's not there's not a clear sense of why a computer science major should ever be contemplating the nature of justice. That that's I mean, I think we should, and I'm sure you think the same thing. But in terms of if you have limited time and uh and and you need to sort of usher through hundreds of people through this major in any given year, that's what's gonna drop by the wayside. And so um there's this larger sort of uh question of what is the point of higher education and how much of it is to train uh in particular fields, and how much of it is to give this holistic, even even this space, this four-year space to to explore some of these big questions. I think that's something that even in the gap between when I went to school, when you went to school, um, or you're going to school, uh, that's changed a bit. I definitely came in and I majored in philosophy and history, so I was uh one of those annoying people who want to just take four years to explore everything. But uh I still felt licensed to do that in a way that I think um both the university and a lot of students who are paying a lot of money to go to these schools also feel like I really need to make these four years count in terms of career development. And uh what's going to be lost is reading the ANID um for a semester. You know, I I need to get another computer science course under my belt or something like that. I don't know, maybe I'm being uh a little uh a little too simplistic, but I think that's a big, a big uh part of it that is harder to actually address than that cultural argument about like what's in the canon or um because it it's it's sort of structural within our broader society about what the purpose of college is for.

SPEAKER_01 46:54

Right. Yeah, I think I think that's definitely on something there was actually this this interesting article recently in the New Yorker called The End of the English Major. I don't know if you guys read that, but basically it's it's talking about how the English major is dying at a lot of colleges. And it was specifically looking at Harvard, where I think it said there's like maybe 60 undergrad English majors, which is is crazy because Harvard is two or three times the size of Grove City, and there's more than 60 English majors in at Grove City. Um, I think that attests to what you're saying, that there's just a shift away from the desire to or the idea of being able to study these kind of more liberal arts fields because of because of the drive towards things like computer science and all the STEM fields. Um and that's true, like that's not only true at secular colleges, that's also true at Christian colleges. But for whatever reason, there are there is still an invitation to the liberal arts at some Christian colleges and some sectors of of Christ those Christian colleges. And I've been yeah, blessed to be a part of that.

SPEAKER_00 48:08

Yeah, that's that's interesting. I I I remember seeing that article uh in New Yorker. I as a someone who got a PhD in history, I often track the sort of the it's the same trends in history, in philosophy. It's this just like um pretty depressing trend in in who's majoring and um and then the types of jobs you can get. I mean, that there's mixed data on um if you major in English history or philosophy, will you earn more over your life? I mean, I don't even like the frame these questions are hard hard way to sort of even quantify the value of these things because I think there's more than just earning potential. Um, but often that's how these things are discussed. And even there, it's it's hard to make the case. If those are the terms we're gonna make cases for what should be in the university curriculum, it's hard to make the case for more history in and English. Um uh but but such so it is. Um uh I have two more questions for you, Sarah, and they're more uh uh I guess personal. One is just curious, um uh if you've now that you're a senior and you're thinking about, I'm sure you're thinking about next next stages, how do you how do you think uh has your change has your thinking, I don't need to know uh we don't need to know exactly what you're gonna do next. I know that's probably what you're asked like, but has your thinking changed about around that uh because of your experience at Grove City?

SPEAKER_01 49:24

I think so. I think I've shifted away from some of the prestige-oriented thinking that I ended high school with. Um and I'm yeah, a lot more interested in like how can I form people, whether that's as a teacher or in in various other ways, how can I contribute to um this project of formation that isn't really just education, but is is so much of our lives is is formation in a broader sense, especially as as Christians, like I mean, the Great Commission is uh impendent on on all of us. And yeah, so how can I thinking about that in a career lens or in a vocation lens more than about like what what will make me look good and what will get me money from the world or success from the world? Um yeah, and yeah, Growth City has allowed that kind of question, those kinds of questions about about formation to blossom, I guess, in my mind. Um and I've also yeah, gotten to know people who are not really interested in uh making a lot of money or even yeah, doing well respected things, but more interested in you know, forming a family and um contributing to the local community and serving the local church. Those those things as like honorable endeavors, I knew that growing up, but being at a school at Grove City, that's a lot more emphasized and pronounced.

SPEAKER_03 51:12

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 51:13

Very interesting. Um, one last observation I'll make about um my experience at uh here at UW in particular. Um, I was just doing a project where I was looking through some of the commercials that UW makes about itself. So this is how it sort of tries to portray itself to the broader public in Wisconsin. And the the sort of, I mean, there's all different types, and they emphasize the economic benefits of the university and everything else. But the one that um the the sort of theme that repeats over and over again is this metaphor of breaking boundaries. And and UW's, you know, we we are where we empower you so you can break boundaries. And they mean that in all different ways. Uh a lot of it's around knowledge, but a lot of it's around identity and other things. And it made me just think that that's really the type of education that UW's trying to offer is this sort of um, there's an assumed sort of uh Whiggish or progressive view of history that we're always just going to be advancing and advancing. We need to break more and more boundaries. We need to get to that next frontier on in the scientific field or or in this political debate or whatever. And as you describe sort of how some of your uh your uh peers at Grove City think about um you know, uh settling down, serving in a local context. That just seems so uh underwhelming, I think, to like a UW audience. It's like, no, no, no, we got to go break boundaries. This isn't about sort of producing good citizens in a like a quietist way. It's about like producing the next inventor and the next genius and stuff like that. So even there, just think about the ideals of like what is this education for? Like, what do we hope people do with it? Um, there's a significant difference uh between uh your school and UW as well, I think.

SPEAKER_02 52:54

Yeah.

unknown 52:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:56

Um last question for you, um, and I'm putting you on the spot, but is there, uh as an English major, um, if you could just uh will everyone to read one book, um, it that would sort of benefit them um in countless ways. Uh what would be that book? Maybe from the Great Tradition, maybe something else, but what would be the book that you'd sort of um if you could just make everyone have a copy right now uh and read it together, what would it be?

SPEAKER_02 53:25

Oh man.

SPEAKER_01 53:26

Um there are definitely a couple, but I think the first two that come to mind are I'm gonna say two. Um the first two that come to mind are the Neid, because we were talking about that earlier, and I think that is such a such a big a big part of our cultural heritage. Um yeah, and I think Virgil's really interesting because a lot of his ideas about piety um and about like forming a home are somewhat parallel to ideas that would later be picked up by the Christian tradition and by like medieval writers and medieval philosophers. Um so and I I love Virgil, I think he's great. So I think that's definitely something that everyone should read. I but also perhaps in a more Christian um lens. I think Augustine's Confessions is a book that everyone would profit from reading. And I think it's especially of interest to some of these questions about formation and about um our faith in mind. Uh because yeah, because Augustine encounters pagan education and he I mean he talks about how he's searching for God and he's finding God in the beautiful things of the world, but he's not actually finding God until um until he he really is hit with his need for God. Um I think it's just a beautiful account of of how God draws us to himself. So those two are our two recommendations.

SPEAKER_00 55:14

Great. Well, thank you for those. That's about uh a thousand pages for everyone to read now. Um and and take it slow too. Hate to sort of speed read the confessions or something like that. Um well, thank you, Sarah. Thank you for sharing your story and some of your reflections on education. It's been a pleasure to have you on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 55:33

Yeah, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 55:36

Thanks for joining us. If you've enjoyed today's podcast, be sure to subscribe and give us a rating on your favorite podcast app. Also, be sure to check out our upcoming events on upperhouse.org and our other podcast, Upwards, where we dig deeper into the topics our in-house guests are passionate about. With Faith in Mind is supported by the Stephen and Laurel Brown Foundation. It is produced at Upper House in Madison, Wisconsin, hosted by Dan Hummel and John Terrell. Our executive producer and editor is Jesse Koopman. Please follow us on social media with the handle at Upperhouse UW.