OW can higher education faculty, staff, and administrators create campus environments that guide students in their development within chosen disciplines and careers as well as in ways that contribute to a common good? How can we help students find a sense of calling in life? What does it mean to cultivate a sense of purpose in students? Are there ways to simultaneously prepare students for disciplinary excellence, a successful career, and a meaningful life? As we report in our recent book Putting Students First: How Colleges Develop Students Purposefully, many campuses are exploring these questions in order to look critically at the educational process and take direct steps toward preparing students for a life that encompasses a sense of purpose and meaning. By examining how the campuses in our study organize and situate themselves to meet this goal, we discovered that the answers to such questions call for a holistic approach to student development. Such an approach, in turn, calls for a whole campus of whole persons to develop whole students. In this article, we offer our 4C framework (culture, curriculum, cocurriculum, community) and examples from some campuses in our study to help all educatorsfaculty, staff, and administrators alike-consider how to create campus environments that help students develop lives of meaning and purpose.
MEANING, PURPOSE, AND HOLISTIC STUDENT DEVELOPMENTAS A GUIDEPOST toward thinking about the desired ends of a college education, we borrow the term "good life" from Peter Gomes, a faculty member in the Divinity School and the College of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University and minister at Harvard's Memorial Church. In its most general sense,"living the good life" means living a life of purpose and meaning.To many, the good life includes a consideration of religious and secular humanistic perspectives. It also focuses on how each of us can reflect on and make commitments about the big questions of life that encompass such issues as contributing to the common good, maintaining life as a participating citizen, and developing a sense of individual and social responsibility. In Education and Identity, ArthurInstitutions that successfully educate students to lead "the good life" attend to their campus 's culture, curriculum, cocurriculum, and community