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Boston College Is Awarded $2 Million Grant From Lilly Endowment for Project Integrating Students' Faith, Careers

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass., Oct. 24 — Boston College has been awarded a $2 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to help implement programming that encourages students to integrate their faith commitments and career choices.

Boston College 's project will provide students "with resources and opportunities to help them integrate their academic and spiritual development, deepen their present lives as students, and make life and career choices within a faith perspective, conscious that they are called to use their gifts in the service of others," according to Boston College Vice President for University Mission and Ministry Rev. Joseph A. Appleyard, SJ, who will direct the project.

The Boston College project will have four focal points: a third-year re-orientation program for students; undergraduate internships in church ministry; faculty and staff seminars on the role of vocation in undergraduate formation, and an interactive web site for students to explore issues related to vocational formation.

Boston College is one of 20 colleges and universities in the US —and the only school in New England —to receive an Endowment grant for vocation program implementation.

"Our goal is to produce graduates of Boston College who have a clear sense of how their talents match the world's needs," said Fr. Appleyard. Vocation isn't necessarily a calling to the priesthood or to a religious order, explained Fr. Appleyard. "Every person has a vocation. The challenge is to find answers to the questions: what am I going to do with my life and what values do I want my life and career to represent — whether that career is in business, scientific research, the arts, teaching, church ministry or any other field?"

In 1999, BC was awarded a $50,000 planning grant from the Endowment to create a detailed implementation proposal for programming that would support the University's mission to integrate students' intellectual and social formation under the central principle of vocation. The process involved a wide range of members of the University community and included seminars, focus groups and retreats.

"We realized Boston College has some wonderful formative experiences through academic courses, service programs, retreats and internships, but perhaps we can do a better job of helping students to integrate these experiences and see what kind of professional lives they lead to," said Fr. Appleyard.

The Endowment's $2 million grant will underwrite in part the programming outlined in the University's vocation project proposal. Boston College has committed to financing the project beyond the coverage provided by the grant. "Lilly Endowment's grants have significantly influenced the discussion about religion and higher education," added Fr. Appleyard, "and this new emphasis on vocational discernment could have a major impact on how religious colleges and universities think about undergraduate formation."

Some highlights of BC's project include: The third-year orientation program reaches out to undergraduates in the summer between sophomore and junior years. During that developmentally critical time, students will be asked to think about what talents and gifts they have discovered or others have recognized during their first two years at BC and what resources they can identify at the University to help them develop these talents into career choices.

The church ministry summer and academic year internships fill a gap in the internship opportunities made available to BC undergraduates. There are business and communication internships and field placements in nursing and education, said Fr. Appleyard, but there is a void in the area of ministry. These ministry internships would include opportunities to work in parishes, dioceses, national church organizations, religious philanthropic foundations and religious education organizations.

Boston College , a Jesuit, Catholic university founded in 1863, has an enrollment of 14,500 undergraduate and graduate students drawn from all 50 states and more than 90 countries. One of the nation's most selective universities, Boston College was recently ranked 38th overall among national universities by US News & World Report.

Founded in 1937, Lilly Endowment is an Indianapolis-based private family foundation that supports its founders' wishes by supporting the causes of religion, community development and education.