Concordia College: Impacting Fargo-Moorhead
“Liberal arts” is a claim that many colleges try to boast, but only few can truly offer. In order to understand the distinction above, I think we first need to examine what is considered a liberal arts college. According to Wikipedia (a source that is reputable 100% of the time) the definition of a liberal arts education is as follows: “[A] college or university curriculum aimed at imparting general knowledge and developing intellectual capacities, in contrast to a professional, vocational, or technical curriculum.”
A Concordia liberal arts education takes that a step further. Instead of stopping after dumping general knowledge and intellectual capacities on you, Concordia also offers a distinctly different (and maybe even unique) emphasis on helping the world outside of our campus boundaries. This is shown in many ways here at Concordia, none more blatant than in the college’s mission statement: “The purpose of Concordia College is to influence the affairs of the world by sending into society thoughtful and informed men and women dedicated to the Christian life.” From the outside, that mission statement might seem a little lofty. Are a bunch of kids from Moorhead, MN really going to influence anything? Even as a first semester freshman I thought that the mission statement that upperclassmen swore by was kind of a joke. I was getting informed, but becoming more thoughtful about the affairs of the world? Not exactly.
At the beginning of this semester I didn’t exactly think that I was going to become any more thoughtful about the world. I was taking the normal workload, two political science classes, a history class, health, and I also decided to take a required course called Oral Communications. According to the course catalog, I was going to be taking an introductory level public speaking course. Although it might not be conveyed in my grammatically atrocious blogs, I know a thing or two about public speaking. So, I was less than excited to take a class about information I already knew. But this class has become so much more than that.
On the first day of classes I went to Oral Comm. with a very pessimistic mindset. We got our syllabus and went over the class. One aspect that stuck out to me was a “service learning” aspect of the course where we hook up with campus service commission (CSC) and do service work around the community. What stuck out to me most was that we had to do 22 hours of it! That was exactly what I needed on top of my already hectic schedule.
CSC hooked me up with a program called the Arc of Cass County. What the Arc does is find friends for people with developmental disabilities, and I was going to be one of those friends. I met my buddy at a pot-luck hosted by the Arc at a Cobber basketball game. I was utterly amazed by how fast we hit it off. My buddy’s name was Paul and he might have been the most talkative person I have ever met. Right off the bat we were talking about all the things that a normal high school boy would talk about: movies, video games, work, and of course girls.
The topic of girls led to what made me realize that this service learning might be one of the most valuable of my life. We were talking about girls for a while and then in between bites of his chili Paul asked me if I had ever kissed a girl. I swallowed my mouthful grinned a bit and said, “Yeah I have.” His facial reaction at first was one of amazement, quickly followed by a cool and collected “Oh….umm… me too, millions of girls.” Right then I knew that I was doing the right thing with my time because I knew I was going to have a positive impact on this kid’s life.
I guess to try and tie that story back into Concordia’s amazing liberal arts education it is not at many schools that you will be able to effect others in the community as a part of the curriculum. That instance alone made me a believer in the mission statement of the school, and I know it is an education I would not be able to get anywhere else.