What Makes University Education So Challenging (and So Invigorating) at LeTourneau University

In 2018, approximately 20 million students attended a university or college in
the United States. Research suggests that this batch of college students is as
diverse as has ever been in this country. And yet, even though these 20 million
students bring with them as many different perspectives, backgrounds, and
experiences, they nevertheless all share one thing in common: they all come
to college to find their place in this world.

This quest to find one’s place in the world comes in the form of a number of different questions (sometimes subconscious) that students ask as they step onto the campus: Who am I? Why am I here? What is the point of life? Is there a point to life? What am I going to do for a living? Who will I marry? (Will I ever marry?) Who will my friends be? (Will I make any friends?). What is a good life, a life well-lived?

This is part of what makes being a university professor so exciting. We get to intersect with students at this foundational stage of their journey as they seek to discover meaning and as their desire for belonging intensifies. We get to invest in people who are just beginning to discover their intellectual, social, and spiritual potential. But it is also what makes being a university professor so challenging.

What can be frustrating for a university educator is that by the time most college students get to us they have already learned (in a number of different ways, sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit) that what they are studying is fragmented, disconnected, and ultimately unrelated to everyday life. They are conditioned to think that English has nothing to do with social studies, which has nothing to do with economics or biology; that biology has nothing to do with personhood; that social studies is irrelevant to their social life Most have already been formed to assume that the true value of an academic subject or a particular major is determined by whether it can contribute to getting a well-paying job; a university education is necessary hoop to jump through in order to join the right circles of people.

And these students come to us bearing a burden unlike any other generation before them: they come not only searching for meaning in life (as all generations have), but they come being told (in a variety of ways) that they have to make that meaning for themselves. Frankly, this makes the quest nearly impossible for most students, because they have been conditioned to believe that there is no coherence in our world, that our intellectual, social, and spiritual lives are unrelated and in fact compete against each other. In short, they have learned that we as a society don’t really know what the point of life is, or what we should be doing with our lives, or why we are doing what we are doing with our lives.

And yet, what makes teaching at a university so challenging these days, is also what makes working as a professor at LeTourneau University so exciting. The core of our mission is to help students put the pieces together again, to make connections between English, science, history, and civics; to make connections between their academics and their faith; to re-integrate their faith with their social lives; to let their studies inform their faith, and their faith inform their studies. We are teaching them to discern their vocation, their calling; to recognize and understand that they have been invited to participate with God in His reconciliation project (Colossians 1.20). And so over the course of their studies at LeTourneau University, we walk alongside every student at the university, helping them as they wrestle with four questions: Who is God? What has God called you to be and do? What are the ways in which your academic discipline or profession contribute to the brokenness, fragmentation, and rebellion of this world? And what are the ways in which your academic discipline or profession can participate in God’s mission of redemption and love for this world?

It is a challenging task, and one that takes an entire university village. But the reward of teaching at a place like LeTourneau University is accompanying students on their journey and seeing them light up as they discover that they have a place in God’s world, that things do fit indeed together and find their meaning when joined to the life-giving creator and sustainer of all things.