Students and faculty discuss spirituality's place in the classroom
By Autum Dierking
Maybe you pass by the Chapel of Christ the Teacher on your way to class everyday. Maybe your professor is a priest. Just maybe, instead of paying attention to lecture, you spend the majority of your time examining the crucifix on the wall.
In any case, it's hard not to notice you're on a Catholic campus. The signs are everywhere.
But what about actual class content? Can you find spirituality and religion within class curriculum as well? Absolutely. Do students and faculty want it there? That answer isn't so straightforward.
"Young people today have a desire for spiritual growth," said Matthew Galligan-Stierle of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities.
Galligan-Stierle believes spirituality definitely has a place in the classroom, and as evidence he points toward two recent publications by UCLA's Spirituality in Higher Education project.
The first study, entitled "The Spiritual Life of College Students," found that out of a sample of more than 112, 000 students, 80 percent have an interest in spirituality with 47 percent seeking opportunities to help them grow spiritually.
"When you go to college, you go to find yourself," senior Alyssa Williams said. "And, for a lot of people, that means getting in touch with your spirituality."
Does UP help to foster this search for spirituality?
"I wouldn't say UP is any more spiritual than anywhere else," junior Andrew Danies said. "I don't feel any differently (going to school) than I would going to the grocery store."
Danies said, though, that he thinks religion can play a role in the search for spirituality while at the university.
"I think it is what you make of it," he said. "A devout Catholic will leave with a much different experience than someone like me. In terms of a spiritual process, you get out of it what you put in."
Theology professor Russell Butkus said that there is an innate spirituality in the education process. By his definition, spirituality is a combination of work and prayer, which includes contemplative reflection and study, a basic part of many religious traditions.
In this way, Butkus sees the university's mission, "Teaching, Faith and Service," as an expression of spirituality.
This raises the question, however, as to how the terms religion and spirituality differ.
"I'm concerned about reducing spirituality to some warm, fuzzy feeling," Butkus said. "I do see it as a function of religious practice."
For many like Danies, an atheist who is willing to consider "mind" and spirituality as one and the same, this linking of the terms "religion" and "spirituality" might not jive.
Neither study by UCLA differentiated between the two terms, though the faculty study did indicate that of faculty members who consider themselves "highly spiritual," 70 percent also view themselves as "religious to a great extent."
"Spirituality is defined as seeking out opportunities to grow spiritually, considering oneself a spiritual person, and having an interest in integrating spirituality into one's life," according to the study entitled "Spirituality and the Professoriate," which examined faculty beliefs, attitudes and behaviors.
When asked for his own definition of "spirituality," Galligan-Stierle said it is "a person's desire to be authentic, combined with the knowledge of a higher power and the use of love as a guiding force."
In conjunction with the many different definitions, each department seems to have a differing opinion about whether or not spirituality has a place in the classroom.
To some, it might seem difficult to integrate spirituality in, for example, a mathematics course, which, on its face, might not appear to be an appropriate venue for a topic so typically religious in nature.
To this, Galligan-Stierle recommends several workshops offered year-round that teach faculty members how to incorporate "spiritual" aspects like reflection into their curriculum.
"Many people's experience (with spirituality) has probably been that thing that happens on the weekend, or in times of pain and suffering or on Thanksgiving. They don't see the hand of God weaving through everything," he said.
In regard to people who may consider spirituality as having to do with a different God than Catholic's believe in or no God at all, Galligan-Stierle thinks it is the role of a Catholic college to be a "welcoming and diverse place."
