This first-year program focuses on formative education, including cura personalis鈥攃are for the whole person鈥攁nd cura apostolica, or care of the community, while helping students adjust to life at Boston College.
ERA introduces students to elements foundational to their time at BC and over the rest of their lives鈥攈ow to be complete people, cultivate community, design solutions to help solve complex issues, and discover purpose in their vocations and beyond.
Meeting weekly, the program features internationally renowned speakers, presentations, activities, projects, and discussions that facilitate students鈥� personal and formative development, discernment of who they are and who they want to be in the world, acquisition of design-thinking tools and new knowledge, and ability to make a positive impact.
Students emerge as authentic leaders who use sound ethical reasoning to improve society and are primed to both lead and support lives of meaning.
What do you need to thrive, from your first steps on campus through graduation and across the rest of your life? How can you plant seeds of imagining and designing purposeful work and innovations during the first year? Where can first-year students have the most salient and meaningful positive impact?
The Lynch School of Education and Human Development鈥檚 reimagined Experience, Reflection, Action (ERA) program seeks to explore these questions while helping first-year students seamlessly transition to life as a college student in general and at Boston College specifically.
The program focuses on establishing a solid foundation of formative education for students, helping them develop as well-rounded people based on the Jesuit, Catholic value of cura personalis, or care for the whole person, and cura apostolica, or care of the community. At its core, ERA helps students discern who they want to be鈥攊ncluding potential purposeful vocations and avocations鈥攁nd how they can help others flourish.
For many students, ERA is an introduction to the Lynch School鈥檚 approach to formative education. As such, it motivates them to grow intellectually, emotionally, socially, and spiritually.
The course meets weekly and features internationally renowned speakers, presentations, activities, projects, and discussions that facilitate students鈥� development. Throughout the year, students conduct an applied social impact design-thinking project that culminates in presentations and real-world action steps. The goal? To prepare students to be authentic leaders who use sound ethical reasoning to improve and make a difference in communities.
In the summer of 2017, the Lynch School redesigned ERA to offer a more academically robust and substantive program than previous iterations of the course.
鈥淭he new ERA program offers genuine educational excellence alongside design-thinking embedded innovations,鈥� said Julia DeVoy, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Students and Programs, and Faculty Director for the ERA First-Year Program. 鈥淓RA builds a formative foundation for the next generation that puts meaning, purpose, wholeness, and community at the center of addressing and working together to solve complex individual, local, and global challenges. It helps to transform the way students build bridges to the local and global community and provides support while students begin to engage in real action, as well as scholarship of deep importance.鈥�
A multi-level cohort model that includes instructors, graduate students, and upper-level undergraduates helps provide support and creates a network and tapestry of mentorship on which ERA students can always rely across their four years at the Lynch School and at Boston College.
The combination of this support, educational excellence, introduction of design-thinking tools and innovations, and formative education themes creates something unprecedented among first-year programs. In doing so, ERA lays the robust foundation of the Lynch School鈥檚 mission from the moment students first set foot on campus.
This March, the Lynch School of Education and Human Development is partnering with to offer undergraduate students an unforgettable journey to Iceland.
For this service learning trip, students will do whatever is needed. Whether it's sorting clothing donations, running a children鈥檚 camp, serving meals, or providing free workshops in arts and sports鈥擟ompass is in constant communication with our Icelandic counterparts.
Compass is more than just a service trip鈥攊t鈥檚 an opportunity to explore, serve, and contribute to creating a more just and sustainable world. This cross-cultural service-learning trip is designed to help students examine themselves and the world, grow talents, skills, and imagination, and act for justice in community with others.听
“On Compass, I felt like I could truly bring my entire self. It reminded me that there is something so much bigger bringing us all together. I鈥檝e never connected with a group so quickly and deeply in such a short amount of time. I don鈥檛 feel the same as I did at the beginning of the trip; my spirit feels renewed by laughter, service, and love.”
“Freshman year was definitely the most formative experience I've had here at BC. I learned so much not only in the classroom, but also through out-of-classroom experiences. Being away from my parents for the first time I learned how to become independent, the importance of time management, and prioritizing activities that were most important. Thanks to the course Experience, Reflection, and Action offered by Lynch for freshmen, I learned the value of self-care.”
This seminar addresses academic decisions, social relationships, spiritual growth, issues of autonomy, vocational choices, mental and physical health, and general fulfillment of each first-year student in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development.
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