The Co-Curricular Component

As the Planning Grant Committee considered the contributions the co-curricular component should make to this project, two questions surfaced time and again. First, which avenues provide the greatest potential for changing and influencing student culture? And second, through which areas of the co-curriculum do students have the greatest opportunity to experience vocational calling while at Pepperdine? With those questions in mind, we focused the co-curricular contribution around three areas: service learning, student leadership, and student ministries.

Service-Learning Component Solicited Student Proposals

Most students come to Pepperdine with a strong record of participation in volunteer efforts while in high school. Still, they may not make the connection between their various acts of service and a response to the call of God for their lives. The Pepperdine Voyage hoped to move these students from their point of entry—whatever that point may be—to a full realization that a life of service is their Christian vocation.

Back 2 School Iraq project, 2004

No existing Pepperdine structure was more crucial to the realization of this objective than the Pepperdine Service-Learning/Volunteer Center (PVC), which already sponsoed multiple points of entry into the Pepperdine culture of service and volunteer work.

Often students became acquainted with volunteer opportunities during the first week of their freshman year as they participated in the PVC-sponsored Step Forward Day, a program through which faculty, students, and staff "step forward" to give a day of service to the community. Service-learning courses offered another point of entry for many students. These courses involved students in community service on multiple occasions throughout the semester and required a significant reflection component. As a third point of entry, the PVC provided the opportunity for gifted leaders to apply for positions as program coordinators, service-learning advocates, and members of American Humanics—an academic minor that prepared students for work in non-profit organizations. In these positions, students learned about the needs of the organizations with which they were working, coordinated and recruited student volunteers for a given organization, and participated as volunteers themselves.

Through the Pepperdine Voyage, the University offered direction and financial support for a variety of student-led initiatives throughout the initial grant period. Examples include:

• projects that address and/or seek to alleviate poverty and hunger
• projects that address and or seek to promote peace and justice
• projects that serve the community in a variety of ways

We started this project in the first grant because our students developed several vital programs for which they found no university budgetary support. Events such as the national Week of Peace and Justice, National Week of Hunger and Homelessness, and Project Serve offered many opportunities for students to participate in the theological exploration of vocation. The university steadily assumed financial responsibility for many of these programs. The Voyage project, however, continued to help students seek funding for service learning and social action projects and conferences whenever possible. 

Work with the homeless in Belfast

Student Leadership Component Calls for Servanthood

Through the Pepperdine Voyage, we hoped to communicate to our students that one does not find productive models of leadership in contemporary understandings of success, status, and power. Instead, we wanted our students to discover the model for leadership offered by the cross and by Jesus as he washes the disciples' feet or as he comes as a servant, not as one who is served. We wanted them to understand the biblical paradox that one must lose one's life to find it, and we wanted them to discern the implications that paradox holds for effective leadership. In this way, we hoped that our students would discern their call to leadership as a call to be God's person both in the world and at Pepperdine University.

In keeping with this vision, the Division of Student Affairs created a comprehensive leadership development program. Through this program, we sought to transform our students' understanding of leadership-through-power into an understanding of leadership-through-service.

In creating this program, we especially targeted those students who have the ability to influence and change the prevailing campus culture and who, by virtue of their leadership roles, model servant leadership for their fellow students. We worked especially, therefore, with New Student Orientation (NSO) counselors, Residential Advisors (RAs) and Student Assistants (SAs), Student Government Association (SGA) officers, leaders of various minority organizations such as the Black Student Union (BSU), the Asian student organization, and the Hispanic student organization, Campus Ministry interns, and Volunteer Center (PVC) student coordinators.

The common, campus-wide leadership training day or "Student Leadership Conference" took place in August before the academic year began and brought leaders from all departments together to share in a leadership training experience, specifically focused on vocation and calling as it related to their upcoming leadership experience. 

Another facet of the Leadership program brought leaders together again for a common experience in the form of a monthly Leadership Lunch Colloquium.  The lunch series engaged student leaders in the exploration of leadership as vocation through leadership themes found in the Social Change Theory of Leadership Development. Our student leaders, in turn, helped shape the campus climate and created conversation among peers.

Student Ministries Dimension Brings SLAs/SLCs to Residence Halls

The Pepperdine Voyage provided funding and support for the Spiritual Life Advisor (SLA) program, established in 2000. This program annually places students in undergraduate residence halls to provide pastoral care in their capacity as Spiritual Life Advisors.

2004-05 SLAs

This program allowed our students to witness examples of faith, courage, and vocation among their peers as SLAs reached out to residential students in need of prayer, consolation, or a consistent witness of faith. In addition, it allowed the SLAs to gain an understanding of their gifts and to experience Christian service at the crossroads of life where crises—sometimes involving life and death decisions—can occur. This program, therefore, served as an excellent vocational proving ground for students interested in ministry.

The SLA program began with 14 students, allowing Seaver College to place one student in each freshman hall and in some of the residence halls for upperclassmen. When the University received applications for the 2001-2002 academic year, however, the number of students interested in this ministry had more than doubled. Accordingly, the Student Ministries Office selected twenty-six SLAs for that year. 

In addition, six students served as Spiritual Life Coordinators (SLCs) and, in that capacity, helped coordinate both resources and the SLA volunteers. These students were either graduate students in religion and/or students with experience as SLAs.

In order to provide adequate levels of training, the Office of Student Ministries held a two-day retreat for both SLAs and SLCs at the beginning of each academic year. Travis Weber served as the first coordinator of the SLA/SLC program.