Ouachita Stories

Note: This column, an abridged version of my 2019 commencement address, is relevant to all alumni as we explore meaningful work. Read the full version here. 

At the beginning of the academic year, I used my Convocation address to help us initiate a university-wide conversation on the theme, “Lives of Meaningful Work.” It’s a phrase from our mission statement that speaks to one of Ouachita’s desired outcomes for graduates: that you will be prepared for such lives and work.

It’s also a topic of national attention. For example, Gallup recently released a report titled “The Future of Work.” It highlighted a decade-long study surveying 2 million employees. Their research focused on how engaged employees were in their work and how meaningful their work feels.

The Gallup president said this study was “the single most profound, distinct and clarifying finding in its 80-year history.” What did they learn that was so astonishing? Gallup found that only one-third of Americans feel they are doing meaningful work. Gallup also discovered that employees who feel their work is meaningful were those who reported two particular experiences in college.

First, “they had at least one professor who made them excited about learning, and cared about them as a person.” The second was the opportunity to engage in experiential and deep learning where they were “able to apply what they were learning in the classroom.”

From a statistical perspective, our alumni score Ouachita highly in both of these areas. More than that, though, the personal stories I hear from you are many and compelling.

Stop for a moment and think of someone on this campus who made you excited to learn and who cared about you. Get his or her name in your mind. He or she spent focused time with you, believed in you – invested in you. Perhaps it is a name you saw within these pages – Scott Duvall, Glenn Good, Barbara Pemberton, Amy Sonheim.

Furthermore, they extended themselves to enrich your learning by creating opportunities inside as well as outside the classroom for hands-on learning. This better prepared you for work or graduate school – better prepared you to lead a worthy life of faith, hope and love through your contributions in whatever place or settings you choose.

So let us, then, not lose this point. They – faculty, staff and coaches – made their work more meaningful for themselves – and for you – by investing more of themselves in you. You made your time more meaningful by investing your hope, your faith and your energy in them – and in your belief in your future.

Your Ouachita education and experience have given you a foundation from which you can find meaning in your work in all the God-honoring roles and careers you pursue. But you have taken it from there to achieve successes near and far that we could never predict – and of which we could not be more proud.

Thank you for being ambassadors of Ouachita and examples of “Lives of Meaningful Work” in every setting imaginable. We hope you’ll continue to share your stories with us as an encouragement to each class of Ouachitonians who pass through this formative place and join you in their own quest for meaning.

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Ben R. Sells, PhD
@OuachitaPrez

 

 

 

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