Meaning and Purpose Reflection
Who is invited to explore their meaning and purpose? Everyone! No matter where you might be on your journey at Butler, having opportunities to reflect on what your values are, how you make big decisions, and how you navigate the uncertainties of the future is an essential part of the college experience. Pursuits of meaning and purpose are about considering how best to make a contribution to the world with your life’s work.
What do we mean by “meaning and purpose”? Who are you? Where are you going? And how can you help others? These questions are big, and often take a lifetime to answer. The Compass Center offers experiences and resources to not only ask these questions, but to give students the tools to self-author the answers by making decisions informed by their values. Our goal is to journey alongside students in their pursuit of connection and direction.
How does The Compass Center facilitate exploration of meaning and purpose? We provide students, faculty, and staff with ways to assess their values, make hard decisions with confidence, use choices as opportunities for self-authorship, and find mentors and networks of support on their journeys.
See below for more details and resources and specific programs that foster vocational reflection.
Meaning and Purpose Practices
Identifying your values is important to knowing how best to spend your time. If your time, energy, area of study, or other commitments are in alignment with your core values, we believe you are more likely to be fulfilled. But first, you must ask “What are my values right now?” The Compass Center offers tools to help you know.
Making decisions is essential to leading a meaningful life. During their college experience, many students will have to decide on a major, whether to study abroad, how to spend time on extracurricular commitments, what internships to pursue, and how to explore life after Butler. All of these moments require thought and intentionality. The Compass Center has two methods of decision-making, one that is reflective and the other that is more analytical. We are here to walk through either process or talk through decisions together. Decisions are the inflection points of one’s life. Come to The Compass Center to help navigate your direction!
Most of us are not equipped to chart our path through college and our future direction all on our own. Mentors create opportunities to affirm us, open new doors, challenge us to explore opportunities, and see possibilities in us that we cannot yet see in ourselves. Mentors are essential for vocational development and it is important that Butler students know how to seek mentors on and off campus.
Students are welcome to schedule a 1:1 conversation to learn more about how to build mentoring relationships and perhaps even use The Compass Center network to build new connections.
Who am I and where am I going? How does my past experience inform my future direction? A vocational story can help you discover the answers. The Compass Center offers reflection tools, writing exercises, and conversations that are designed to help students look back on who they have been and then project forward on who they are becoming. This is a helpful step when trying to design your life or preparing for next steps within or beyond your college career.
Programs and Opportunities for Exploring Meaning and Purpose
Now you can explore meaning and purpose by participating in our Canvas class self-paced modules. Each module provides a path for identifying your values, making big decisions, identifying mentors, and telling your story.
The Compass Center provides paid internships for students to gain experience working in faith-based or social justice-based contexts in Indianapolis. The internships not only provide experiential learning, but also are accompanied by meaning and purpose reflections that are led by Compass Center staff as part of the paid internship.
In collaboration with The Compass Center, the Office of the Core Curriculum and the Office of the First-Year Experience invite full-time instructors who teach first-year students to apply for a unique professional development opportunity. Limited to 12 faculty, the Fellowship will compensate each participant with a $1,500 stipend and provide a year-long learning community designed to help faculty encourage, support, and inspire first-year students as they seek answers to the following central questions:
1) What is the purpose of my education – beyond getting a job?
2) How can my education lead to a meaningful life?
3) How can I best meet the challenges of today’s uncertain world?
The Fellowship will include two sessions in the fall, two sessions in the spring, and then two intensive days during the summer of 2025. Discussions will be facilitated by colleagues within The Compass Center, Core, and FYE as well as faculty teaching within the FYS Living Lives that Matter in the 21st Century cohort. For all dates, topics, and Fellowship expectations, click here for the
The FYE Faculty Fellowship on Meaning, Vocation and Uncertainty is supported by the Council of Independent Colleges and the Lilly Endowment, Inc.
The Compass Center staff members are available for Spiritual Care Conversations, which can be requested online at the link. We are here to listen, reflect, ask deeper questions, and imagine new answers with students. Our agenda is strictly to hear you fully and mirror back what we hear you saying.
Oftentimes, students benefit from one to three conversations with The Compass Center staff during a season of meaning and purpose exploration.
The Compass Center has developed a menu of resources for ways to bring meaning and purpose exploration into the classroom, whether the topic is in the sciences, the humanities, the Core Curriculum, or one of our professional school settings. The Compass Center is available for consultation with faculty on how best to adapt a lesson, an assignment, a syllabus, or an arch of lessons. Some of the techniques we have worked with faculty include:
- Sharing faculty personal narratives
- Sharing student personal narratives
- Vocational interviews
- Regular, in-class “my story” moments or “my mission” moments
- Values exercises
- Case studies that put students into contexts of your discipline
- Writing for wellness
Download Strategies for Incorporating Vocational Reflection into Lesson Design.
From 2018 to 2022, the Center facilitated workshops for faculty on strategies to develop courses to meet the SJD core curriculum learning objectives while also infusing opportunities for vocational reflection. The overlap of the importance of identity, narrative, and the pursuits of justice resonated as important tools and rationale to embed vocational reflection into the SJD Core Curriculum courses. The faculty workshop was a result of The Compass Center, Career and Professional Success, and the Social Justice and Diversity Advisory Committee receiving a grant from the Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education.
From 2016–2019, The Center facilitated a series of workshops for faculty and staff on the topic of “Informal Vocational Mentoring.” As a result, we have developed best practices for mentors on campus and also have a growing list of faculty and staff who are excellent resources on campus.
Resources are available for faculty seeking to grow in their mentoring skills. Please reach out to Marguerite Stanciu to schedule an appointment to discuss these resources.