North Park Creating New Discussion Emphasis

Some institutions talk about making education more relevant to culture. North Park University (NPU) is preparing to challenge its students to relate in a whole new way.

Planning is under way for a new concept called the North Park Dialogue, a program that will provide students opportunities to ask questions and consider how their education will help them in all areas of life. The program will seek to integrate academics, extracurricular activities, athletics, student development and university ministries into the university's overall educational scheme, according to new provost Margaret Haefner. Once approved on campus, NPU hopes to put concept into practice in 2002.

Haefner, who previously served as the assistant vice president for academic services at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois, says the proposed North Park Dialogue is a program that will address life's biggest questions, both through the curriculum and through extracurricular efforts. Ten questions will be posed in the North Park Dialogue, including:

• Who am I?
• Is my life my own?
• Who is Jesus?
• Who is my neighbor and how do I relate to them?
• What is a life of significance?
• What does it mean to be a community?
• What is a life of faith?
• What is truth?
• What is justice?
• Why should I be ethical?

"The North Park Dialogue will address the intellectual, spiritual, emotional and physical development of students," Haefner said. "It is not only holistic across academic, co-curricular and extracurricular lines. It also is intended to be holistic in terms of the person - we're concerned about students' preparation for all aspects of their future lives," she continued.

"The premise is that everyone in the community can help students explore and address these questions," she said. "It doesn't matter if the student is a freshman or a junior or a nursing program graduate student - they will be confronted with these questions."

The academic aspect is the core - "that's what people come here for," Haefner said. "But, the students know that education occurs all the time. It occurs in the residence hall, it occurs on the athletic field, it occurs in university ministries, it occurs in chapel, it occurs in internships. It's taking the experience that already occurs and being more strategic about how it all works together," she continued.

"Rather than hoping that a student has a late night chat session with friends in the residence hall, we want to become purposeful about that," she said. "And we would like to make sure that in every possible venue - the classroom, the dining hall or after a game - they have the opportunity to have those kinds of thoughtful, sometimes transformative educational experiences."

Besides the North Park Dialogue, the school will promote a campus theme that will address specific questions of life through symposiums and other extracurricular campus events. At Illinois State, a different theme was addressed annually and Haefner discovered that faculty and students appreciated the way issues were integrated into a variety of settings during the school year.

In the spring of 2000, the university hosted a symposium and asked how North Park fits within the larger framework of Christian liberal arts colleges. North Park differs from some institutions in the Christian Coalition of Colleges and Universities that espouse closed enrollment (accepting only those professing Christianity) and mandatory chapel. North Park continues to affirm open enrollment and optional chapels, says Haefner, because the student interaction with faculty and staff will allow for the tough questions of faith to be asked. She assumes that one's Christian faith will be challenged in the current culture and wants the university and the North Park Dialogue to be a safe environment and one that stretches students' comfort zones as they prepare for the challenge.

"Our goal is not indoctrination," Haefner said. "In fact, our goal is to have students coming to North Park University and have an environment in which they can explore questions they may have never asked. What I believe is that Christian education, as opposed to indoctrination, opens windows. And at a Christian school, you can open those windows and have faculty and staff members that are Christians helping you explore those windows," she continued.

"What I can say is that every student that comes here, regardless of faith or church denomination, will be confronted with Christianity," Haefner said. "As Dean of University Ministries Mark Olson says, you cannot be a well-educated person without an understanding of one of the most, if not the most important person who ever lived."

For more information on the North Park Dialogue, contact Haefner at 773-244-5565 or visit the North Park University web site at www.northpark.edu under the Academics link.

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