Cente Spark aims to help students find their calling

Centre College alumni have countless stories of how their college experience helped them learn about the larger world around them. Classmates introduced new cultures, internships opened up new career paths, and clubs and extracurricular activities taught them about leadership and service.

None of this is accidental. Centre’s liberal arts and sciences curriculum and carefully curated experiential learning methods are designed to help students pair self-discovery with classroom lessons in a way that lives up to the promise of a transformational education experience.

Through a new initiative launching this year, dubbed Centre Spark, campus leaders aim to equip students with a proven skill set that will help bring these parallel paths of discovery into complete alignment.

Grounded in the College’s mission to prepare students for lives of learning, leadership, and service, Centre Spark introduces a structured framework that enables students to reflect on their values, clarify their goals, and chart purposeful pathways throughout their college journey and into the workforce.

"We developed the Life Crafting framework drawing on evidence-based theories and practices known to support students’ academic and career success, with a crucial addition: the intentional integration of personal meaning and values,” said Aaron Godlaski, Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience & Psychology and Director of Life Crafting. “By embedding these practices within a model that encourages reflective and purposeful development, we create space not just for success, but for significance.

“Life Crafting helps students cultivate a sense of clarity and direction that extend beyond material achievement toward living a fuller, more meaningful life. To craft anything is to shape raw material into something that matters. Life Crafting is the process of shaping a life that matters."

Centre faculty and staff have been hard at work learning more about the principles on which Centre Spark is based. A recent workshop, funded by a grant from the Council on Independent Colleges through the NetVUE Professional Development Program, featured Bonnie Miller-McLemore, emeritus professor of religion at Vanderbilt University and author of "Follow Your Bliss and Other Lies about Finding Your Calling." Additionally, Centre Student Success Coaches received certification from the International Coaching Federation and training in the practice of Life Crafting.

“I appreciate that Centre Spark is creating opportunities for students to think about how what they are learning and experiencing is being integrated into their understanding of the world and who they want to be in the world,” said Ann Goodwin, Associate Dean for Student Well-Being and Centre Spark Director of Campus Engagement. “Students are learning so much during their time at Centre, and creating an intentional pause to reflect will hopefully be a skill that they will carry forward as they prepare for the world that awaits them after college.”

Centre Spark employs the evidence-based practice of Life Crafting to create a four-year developmental journey that enables students to reflect on the core principles most important to their identity, and develop an understanding of how to curate their experiences in a way that supports and bolsters those central values.

Four key steps comprise the scaffolding for students:

•    Reflect on who you are and what gives life meaning. 
•    Align your values and goals with a vision for growth. 
•    Engage boldly in experiences that ignite passion and possibility. 
•    Integrate your learning into a story of purpose, resilience and contribution.

The process will start as students begin their Centre in the first-year seminar with guided reflection on values and aspirations. In the second year, they align goals with advising, coaching and co-curricular opportunities. The third year emphasizes engagement through experiential learning, including internships and mentored research. In the fourth year, integration occurs through capstones and sustained contributions beyond the classroom.

Centre Spark’s comprehensive, five-year action plan was developed by leaders throughout the College community to encourage reflection, self-discovery and growth-based decision making.