FOUNDER’S STATEMENT

Semester for Change came about in the final weeks of the spring 2020 semester, a time when education as we had known it was turned on its head. When the semester ended in May, I got thinking hard about the fact that the disruption to educational norms was not only the result of Covid-19; it was a reckoning of sorts regarding some long-standing blindspots of higher education.

Moving courses to the online environment at breakneck speed last spring left little time to ask if the crisis higher education found itself in was simultaneously an opportunity to think hard about why we structure college the way we do – particularly the way we have traditionally launched first-year students into the college experience. 

Asking first-year college students to choose from a dizzying array of required and elective courses comes at the expense of something else that should be a key aspect of the transition from high school to young adulthood. Rarely are young people offered a space in which to engage a deep process of discovery that helps them explore and connect their interests to a sense of purpose behind those interests; they aren’t generally asked why their interests matter in the world. Many people go through life never having explored a process that connects their interests and abilities with the values that drive them to feel they are living their lives purposefully.  College students simply aren’t asked often enough what sort of life they can cultivate to provide them with a sense of fulfillment and intrinsic happiness. Semester for Change aims to orient young people in this direction before they reach their mid-to-late 20s.

Discovering one’s purpose may come as a result of the college experience, yet my experience as a professor and designer of academic programs tells me this is largely hit or miss. Many college students do what they are asked to do and yet never figure out what they truly care about. And I’ve known more than a few get into serious debt while never finding a direction, or in some cases, earning a degree.

My proposition is straight forward: Semester for Change offers young people a transitional experience somewhere between high school and the beginning of their careers (and most often somewhere in the middle of college) that supports them in a self-directed process so they can figure out what they want to do and why they want to do it before they get deep into their college investment. My hope is that participants will feel energized to plan out and act on their next thing while keeping an eye the values that promote long-term fulfillment.

Semester for Change aims to help young people figure out what interests them in a highly supportive environment that couples a Life-Design tools with a sustained exploration of their interests in the form of a self-designed exploration they care about. Rather than advising being done as an aside, Semester for Change faculty have a hybrid role that sees teaching, advising, and coaching as deeply integrated. Furthermore, an online documentation and accountability process helps students stay organized, and reflect on and document their work over the course of the program. This approach can, I hope, clear a pathway participants can walk for a long, long time. 

John Giordano, PhD, MFA

September 2020