{"id":12613,"date":"2026-11-02T20:34:13","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T20:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/?p=12613"},"modified":"2026-11-05T21:07:22","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T21:07:22","slug":"changing-our-minds-community-engagement-and-lifelong-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/changing-our-minds-community-engagement-and-lifelong-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"Changing Our Minds: Community Engagement and Lifelong Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Here we are, post-Fall Break, at an institution of higher education. How does it feel? If your days are anything like mine, you might say full<\/em>\u2014meaningful<\/em>, plentiful<\/em>\u2026stressful<\/em>, anyone? Today I caught myself saying, “I’m multitasking hard right now.” And then I remembered that I had the good fortune to be assigned the reflection for this edition of the newsletter. A command to pause. A chance to push aside the keyboard, sit with my thoughts, and wonder how all of these meaningful and plentiful tasks and projects connect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a research methods course in my doctoral program, I recently read the introduction to Leigh Patel’s (2015) book on decolonizing educational research<\/a>. In her beautiful and personal prose, Patel reflects on the necessity and power of pausing. She writes, “…I will certainly continue to pause and change my mind, particularly as I stay in conversation with others…”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pausing. Changing my mind. Conversation with others. This sounds like learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the many ways we learn through conversation and engagement with others at Valpo. In ILAS, we’re working with colleagues to plan a symposium for students participating in spring break service trips (the application is now open for these trips!<\/a>). We’re creating opportunities for students to prepare for, reflect on, and learn from their engagement with communities around the country and the world. Through the CAPS Fellows Program (the application opened this week!<\/a>), students spend time alongside community organizations, learning about the challenges, possibilities, and people that shape our local communities. These experiences are opportunities not simply to serve, but to listen, question, reflect, and perhaps change our minds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This learning happens in other ways, too. We’ve partnered with students and colleagues across campus to prepare ofrendas for D\u00eda de los Muertos, asking how the stories we and our loved ones tell shape our daily actions. At our Cultivating Community lunch conversations, we have explored the idea of “mattering”: How do we know that we matter? Is it through assessments, accolades, or perceived impact? Can we accept that we matter, regardless of what we do or don’t do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I pause to consider these experiences, I’m struck by how much of what we do at an institution of higher education is, in fact, learning (how about that!?). Learning isn’t just for students, nor is it confined to classrooms. Every time we meet as a committee, work alongside a student, share lunch with colleagues, or step off campus to engage with a community, we have an opportunity to learn and grow. This is what I find compelling about Valpo’s emerging vision of a lifelong learning ecosystem: we are all learners, and our learning continues throughout our lives and across our relationships.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

James Old captures this relational aspect of community engagement and learning in his recent essay in the Intersections publication<\/a> of the Network of ELCA Colleges and Universities (NECU): \u201c…actions that contribute to genuine communities [are] built on enduring and reciprocal relationships.\u201d He describes how sustained collaboration, patience, communication, accountability over time form a process of discerning and responding to community needs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patel’s reflection on pausing and changing her mind draws on Zadie Smith’s 2009 book Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays<\/em>. One review<\/a> describes Smith’s central idea this way: “As the author matures, becomes more educated and experienced, she reads with a mind that is different than it was.” I love this idea. Learning means that we encounter the world differently than we did before. And sometimes, the most important learning happens when someone else’s experience unsettles something we thought we already understood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve experienced this through years of community engagement. On our spring break service trips the last two years, I learned from Shirley Heinze Land Trust staff that removing invasive species is a 100\u2013200-year process. I wondered why the American Red Cross focuses so much attention on house fires in its disaster response work, until I learned how housing insecurity and the conditions of low-income housing can make fires a recurring experience for some families. Through my work with CAPS Fellows, I’ve learned about literacy education in Chicago, public policy efforts to protect the Indiana Dunes, and how inclusive programming for children of all abilities can benefit an entire community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These experiences have changed how I understand the world. They’ve also changed how I understand home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I studied abroad in Central America as a Valpo student (back more than 20 years ago now!), conversations in the town square in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, opened my eyes to the different experiences Indigenous Guatemalans and Ladino (mestizo) residents have with the police. It was the first time I really considered that people standing on the same block, at the same time, could experience the same uniformed person so differently. It changed my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It took longer than I care to admit to connect that insight to my own home state of South Dakota, where Indigenous people and white settlers have profoundly different relationships with the same land. And just last week, I learned that the shelterbelt on my grandparents’ farm\u2014the line of trees I grew up calling the “trees of home”\u2014was connected to the 1873 Timber Culture Act, which encouraged European settlement on land taken from Indigenous peoples by offering land to settlers who planted trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s another example: as I would lead reflections on cultural norms while working in study abroad in Central America, I would sometimes ask students to think about how the Costa Rican culture they were experiencing compared to U.S. culture. It was the students that pointed out to me that U.S. culture is not a monolith, and that their U.S. hometowns and neighborhoods do not see the world the same way that my home town and neighborhood does. Listening to my students changed my mind then, and students continue to teach me today.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wonder what else I might see differently if I continue to pause, listen, and learn from the experiences of others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our engagement with each other and communities as participants in an institution of higher education does not simply impact the world around us; it changes us, too. Through so many programs taking place through the hard work of so many people at Valpo, students, faculty, staff, and community partners have the opportunity to learn alongside one another. We don’t always know what we will learn, or which conversations will challenge our assumptions. But if we are willing to pause and remain in conversation, we might find ourselves with a mind that is different than it was.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How is your mind different than it was a year ago? What conversations have helped change it? And how might you make room for the kind of learning that happens when we step beyond the familiar and learn alongside others? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Deaconess Kat Peters
Associate Director, Institute for Leadership and Service<\/em>
Calling & Spiritual Life<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Institute for Leadership and Service staff takes turns with the Pastoral Staff to write bi-weekly reflections and devotions for the University community.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here we are, post-Fall Break, at an institution of higher education. How does it feel? If your days are anything like mine, you might say full\u2014meaningful, plentiful\u2026stressful, anyone? Today I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":12615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14,18,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-csl-newsletter-devotionals","category-deaconess-kat-peters","category-ilas-devotionals-and-reflections"],"acf":[],"author_meta":{"display_name":"Elizabeth Searle","author_link":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/author\/esearle1\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2026\/11\/Kat-300x169.webp","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["CSL Newsletter Devotionals<\/a>","Deaconess Kat Peters<\/a>","ILAS Devotionals and Reflections<\/a>"],"unlinked":["CSL Newsletter Devotionals<\/span>","Deaconess Kat Peters<\/span>","ILAS Devotionals and Reflections<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 4 days ago","modified":"Updated 23 hours ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on November 2, 2026","modified":"Updated on November 5, 2026"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on November 2, 2026 8:34 pm","modified":"Updated on November 5, 2026 9:07 pm"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/82"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12613"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12619,"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12613\/revisions\/12619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}