Steve Charles

"What you hope for in life is a sense of a calling, a vocation, which simply means that one goes to one's work gratefully, not out of fear or habit but with a whole heart. It's the whole-heartedness that makes for well-being. Everyone has to live with a degree of doubt and restlessness, but there's nothing like enthusiasm, especially when you're 67."

Take a look at the comments, too—a lot of folks had their own take on our question.

And if you’ve got a second, let us know how you would answer that question: How do you define well-being, and what do you do to achieve it?

Just post a comment or send your thoughts directly to me at charless@wabash.edu

And that’s the news from Wabash, where all the students are above average.

Back in early September I wrote about Wabash's efforts in social media and included a video we've played for a lot of people. You can see that original post and video  here.

If you go to YouTube you can find a number of these videos about the communications revolution. There are videos tailored to a number of different audiences. There are videos making fun of the videos.

But there is no question the message is powerful. I found an updated version Friday and thought I'd share it for those interested in communications. Check it out:

Steve Charles

“I can’t believe that was 25 years ago,” Steve said recalling his own experience, noting that Professor Polley had been one of the three professors on his comps board.

“I was nervous, I don’t remember who was in it besides Professor Polley, and it was difficult while I was there,” Steve said. “But I wouldn’t change it for anything. From today’s seniors to alumni from the classes of the 40s and 50s, it’s a common thread. A common bond.”

Senior Daniel King, who just finished his oral comps wrote about the experience on his blog. Here’s a quote: “I had a great experience. My oral comps board were friendly, and we had a great conversation for an hour. We talked about everything from my favorite psychology class to studying in Italy to C&T. It was honestly fun.”

Daniel said being finished was an “odd” feeling: “I'm relieved. But what do I now? I don’t have any papers to write. I dont have any tests to study for. I can just relax.... I guess I'm just not used to that.”

Steve is a major gifts officer for the College now and visits with a lot of alumni. He said that even if they don’t remember all the professors who were in the room, they always remember one question.

For Steve, who majored in biology but had also taken theater classes, that question was: “How do biology and theater complement one another?”

Apparently, comps questions jog professors’ memories, too, for as soon as Steve recalled that question, Dave Polley practically shouted out, “I remember that one!”

The exchange made me want to test Steve’s theory.

So, for all Wabash alumni out there: What’s that one question you remember from your oral comps? Any other memorable moments from the experience?

We’d love to hear them, either as a Comment below, or as an email to me at charless@wabash.edu

In photo: Steve Hoffman ’85 (center) with fellow Sphinx Club members Nate Powell ’09 and Mike Raters ’85 judge another Wabash tradition that brings together the generations: Alumni Chapel Sing.


 

A record number of Wabash faculty and staff (numbering over 30 strong) gathered to join the crew from the Bon Appétit food service group on campus to serve the traditional Midnight Munch. A total of 230 students braved the cold and gathered in the Sparks Center around 11 p.m. to enjoy plates full of eggs, sausage, bacon, pancakes, biscuits and gravy, and even some fruits and pastries. 

View photos from the Midnight Munch here.

For many --- both students and servers --- the night is not about the food. It's about the fellowship. Discussions of classes, winter break plans over the holidays, and the successes and struggles of the fall semester took place in the serving line and at each table. For some it was their final meal on campus before heading home for a well-deserved break and some final holiday shopping. For others, it was a quick repast before heading back to the library to go back to work on those last few pages of a paper due in few short hours.

Steve Charles

You’ll get the stories about the tough work the students completed (and a pretty cool photo of Victor Nava ’10 surrounded by his Ecuadorian students) in the upcoming issue of Wabash Magazine. From what I heard interviewing students and faculty, this “teaching module” may have been the most effective and meaningful iteration of the program thus far. Both for learning a second language, and for learning how to live wisely and humanely in a difficult world.

Today Ryan Bowerman ’11 said, “I learned more Spanish in the classroom teaching English [to Spanish speakers] than I did in the Spanish classroom.” Program Co-Director Jane Hardy believes this service component forces our students to speak the language they’re trying to learn at a much deeper level. She now recommends service work or an internship that gets students working alongside native speakers for those serious about learning a second language.

But what stays with me from the colloquium I just attended was something I couldn’t see in the one-on-one interviews of students and professors I conducted for the magazine story. This noontime presentation was the first time I had seen them all together—these students and faculty who comprised a mobile learning laboratory in Ecuador last summer. (See photos from the session here.) Professor of Spanish and the Program Director Dan Rogers noticed it before I did, of course, and he put it best:

“The subtext here is the learning that happens for both students and faculty when they study abroad together,” Dan said after the question and answer session, during which students and their professors shared some of the funnier and less publicized moments from the trip. They were laughing together, the way fellow travelers do when they’ve been on a journey of many unexpected, sometimes difficult, sometimes wonder-causing twists and turns. The way you laugh when the journey has changed you in good and fundamental ways, sometimes in ways only your fellow travelers understand.

Of course, they told stories on each other, on themselves. I’ll post a couple of photos here that begin to capture the fun of that.

But the good humor was an indicator of something deeper.

“It’s wonderful to watch the way you are all interacting here,” Dan told the group “It’s interesting the ways this shared experience between faculty and students creates this community that persists way beyond the experience itself. It’s cool to see that community reunited here today.”

One of the Powerpoint slides’ for the presentation read “Learning Through Play, the Wabash Way.” The reference was to the two afternoons Wabash students played soccer with the Ecuadorians (they were going to play basketball, but the Ecuadorian students took one look at the tall Americans and said, “Futbol.”)

But this "Wabash Way of Learning" Dan described is something I’ve seen in the laboratory here, as when Professor of Chemistry Scott Feller says, "The best part of the undergraduate experience is when students realize I don't know the answer to the problem they're working on."

I just saw it a month ago in Colloquium, as Professor of Psychology Preston Bost and Dan spent an hour and a half “exploring” Augustine’s Confessions one late weekday night alongside 16 seniors.

I read about it on the Wabash Web site last summer, when Professor of Political Science David Hadley and Professor of Biology joined their freshmen in a plunge from a bridge into the Yellowstone River to celebrate a week spent together learning side-by-side.

In the upcoming issue of Wabash Magazine, President Pat White describes a Wabash faculty “willing to stick their hands in the lives of these young men up to their elbows.” That “close engagement” his Strategic Plan proclaims rewards the professor just as it enriches the student. Students become teachers, professors become students, all fellow learners on a formative journey.

This does happen in the Wabash classroom, to be sure. But in these mobile learning communities moving through a world where the environment is so often out of your control, you’re more likely to encounter that leveling, role-reversal,  or co-learning that teaches students they’re not only responsible for their own education, but may be responsible for others, too.

Pat Garrett ’12 described his experience teaching in Ecuador (the first time he’d ever taught) this way: “To me it was an example of what it means to be a Wabash man. Until now, I couldn’t quite grasp the College’s mission statement. But now I get it. It’s something that has to be lived and experienced, and that is what I am doing!”

That's learning, the Wabash way.

In photos: Ryan Bowerman ’11 enjoys Professor Pittard's story; Assistant Professor of Teacher Education Michele Pittard; Bowerman tells a story of his own; Josh Johnson ’11

Howard W. Hewitt - Every now and then photographers will be shooting an event - say a Monon Bell game - and find something with a photographer's eye others might miss.

The shot above taken Saturday morning in Greencastle, captured beautifully by junior Bachelor photo editor Alex Moseman, makes  you wonder if Wabash might had even a little more going for them during Saturday's game?

Without suggestion of any divine intervention, what a cool photo on Bell Game day!