A core aspect of the Center for Student Formation's mission is to partner with faculty, staff and university departments to increase the amount of formational opportunities on campus. Collaborations often vary in scope. Ranging from advice and guidance on how to improve an existing initiative, to designing and implementing brand new programs to meet student needs in a particular area, the Center for Student Formation tailors its support to the needs of the partner. The ultimate goal of each collaboration is that the partner ultimately assumes total ownership of the program to ensure its long term sustainability.
How can I collaborate with the Center for Student Formation?
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If you're interested in collaborating with the Center for Student Formation please contact the Executive Director, Mike Sacco at saccomi@jiejuzhongxin.com. Since its inception, the Center for Student Formation has collaborated with a wide range of partners from every corner of the university to develop unique formational programs. We encourage you to consider inquiring about a potential partnership if you have formational needs or ideas. Collaborations are considered on a case by case basis and depend on available resources at the time of inquiry.
Collaborations
Asian Caucus FFP (Freshmen Formation Program)
This partnership mainly consisted of giving advice to student leaders who run a retreat for first year Asian students as part of the Asian Caucus. The Asian Caucus is a particularly well run student organization that provides a tremendous amount of support for its student participants. For this reason, many Asian students only participate in Asian Caucus programs and our assistance with the student leaders was meant to build a bridge to other university programs.
Partner: Asian Caucus
CTP Parent Welcome
A partnership with the Learning to Learn office to redesign their Parent Orientation. The project was undertaken to reduce redundancy between the CTP Parent Welcome and the University Orientation, and to provide new ideas to CTP on how best serve the parents of their first generation students
Partner: Learning to Learn
CTP Retreat
An overnight retreat was created for students participating in the College Transition Program (CTP). The program previously did not include this important initial bonding experience and as such lacked cohesion. The one night overnight that features student talks of upperclassmen who are CTP alumni added a tremendous amount to the other parts of the established program.
Partner: Learning to Learn
Compass Program
A mentorship program for first year students of color. The program was designed to provide immediate support of students of color when they come to campus in the fall. There are many resources for students of color on campus, but it often can take weeks or months to identify them. Compass groups begin on the very first day of school to help upperclassmen connect to mentors of color.
Partner: First Year Experience
Connell School Nurse Practitioner Program
The nurse practitioner program in the Connell School is highly intensive and has a mix of young graduate students and older adults. The Center for Student Formation helped them design a one day retreat for these students to help the two informal groups of students intermingle, and to provide vocational discernment support by featuring faculty and alumni speakers.
Partner: Connell School of Nursing
Conversation Project
This program was designed to provide students who get in trouble a conversation partner from outside of the conduct process. These types of conversations had been happening informally for years at BC, but the Conversation Project sought to provide the infrastructure to expand the number of these conversations.
Partner: Office of the Dean of Students
Ella Baker Mentoring Program
A partnership with student leaders for day-long mentoring program off campus. The purpose of the program was to have faculty and staff of color share their experiences with students and lay the foundation for longer term mentoring relationships back on campus.
Partner: Kevin Suggs (student leader)
Ever to Excel
This partnership with the Institute of Advanced Jesuit Studies sought to provide infrastructure and programming support to a new pilot program for high school students. The purpose of the program was to bring high school students onto campus for a weeklong program to explore their faith through a variety of programming and exposure to BC undergraduate mentors. The Center for Student Formation helped provide logistical support and creative insight into what types of activities would work best with the participants.
Partner: Institute of Advanced Jesuit Studies
GPS: Navigating Graduate Student Life at BC
An overnight retreat for graduate students to introduce vocational discernment since many grad students come from undergraduate institutions that do not provide that type of service. The program featured student talks highlighting the challenges of graduate student life to support first year graduate student participants and help foster community.
Partner: Office of Graduate Student Life
Graduate Foundation Seminars
This group of seminars was created for graduate students to better inform them about Jesuit education and Boston College. The thinking behind the program was that it is often graduate students who have the most contact with undergraduates when they work closely with them as retreat coordinators or service trip participants. By giving graduate students a formational experience in Jesuit education they could hopefully pass that on to undergraduate students as well as benefitting themselves in their graduate education.
Partner: Intersections
Graduate School of Social Work Retreat
A retreat for students in the graduate school of social work for fall 2018. The School of Social Work approached the Center for Student Formation to provide an experience for their students to help them bond and build community.
Partner: Graduate School of Social Work
OTE Preceptor Training
Talk coaching is provided OTE Preceptors who lead all the first year OTE students during their summer program. Supporting the OTE student population is very important and the Center for Student Formation happily partners with the OTE staff to help the preceptors give effective talks.
Partner: Thea Bowman AHANA Office
POD programs
A collaboration with faculty members for the Core renewal. The POD programs have 10 student leaders run a weekly small group of fifteen first year students in a 6 credit course on climate change. The purpose of the groups was to combine personal mentorship about the transition to college with intellectual mentorship on the topic of climate change.
Partner: Core Renewal Office
Prison Arts Outreach
For many years a professor in the Theater Department, Crystal Tiala, ran a program that brought small groups of students interested in the arts to local women’s prisons. The Center for Student Formation assisted in creating an infrastructure and marketing to increase the number of participants in the program.
Partner: Professor Crystal Tiala
R.I.D.E.: Racial Identity Development Experience
A two night retreat for students of color about racial identity that integrated an intellectual and personal approach to conversations on race. There can never be enough opportunities for students to engage in questions of race and identity and this particular program’s blend of an academic approach and a personal approach provided a unique experience for students to engage in a conversation about diversity.
Partner: Thea Bowman AHANA Student Programs
Residence Life Personnel
This collaboration involved providing support to the director and associate director of Reslife to aid in the recruitment, selection and training of reslife personnel. The Center for Student Formation produced a recruiting video that highlighted diversity at BC and featured current ResLife personnel testimonials in an effort to boost recruiting efforts.
Partner: Associate Vice President of Reslife and Associate Director of RA Formation and Training
Scrubs
A weekend retreat for the sophomore class of the Connell School of Nursing. Dean Susan Gennaro wanted a program to build community among the nursing students and the retreat was designed to help students make connections to each other, faculty, and young alumni.
Partner: Connell School
Spectrum
While there are many students who identify as LGBTQ on campus, there was not really a space for them to discuss their experiences with their identity. The Center for Student Formation designed a retreat for LGBTQ students to provide just such a space.
Partner: Dean of Students Office
Spirituality, Religion and College Student Experience Course
Professor Michael James, of the Lynch School of Education, wanted to expose undergraduates to the study of spirituality, religion, and higher education. The Center for Student Formation helped support the academic course in several ways, including performing marketing to get undergraduates to take the course and designing a retreat for undergraduate students in the course to kick off the academic experience.
Partner: Professor Michael James
Summer Football Program
Student on the football team have a highly demanding, year-long schedule that often precludes them from taking part in any formational programs during the school year. As such, the Center for Student Formation worked with athletics to create 3, 2 week long, concurrent seminars for each class of the football program on the history of BC and Boston, leadership, and vocation. Each class (sophomores, juniors, seniors) spent 2 weeks hearing lectures from BC faculty and visiting guests, participating in workshops, and going on field trips in and around Boston to give football players a short, but intense experience with a variety of formational programming.
Partner: Athletics
Self-Knowledge and Discernment: The Experience of Pilgrimage
A 3-credit philosophy course for 10 students that takes place while walking the Camino de Santiago. The program was designed to help students grow intellectually, socially and spiritually. The purpose of this unique academic experience, a 3 credit course taken while hiking across northern Spain on a centuries old pilgrimage route, was to provide an intellectual immersion experience for students seeking time and space to wrestle with big questions about themselves and their world.
Partner: Professor Jeff Bloechl and the philosophy department
Thrive
Thrive was created in partnership with the Women’s Center as a mentorship program to provide an opportunity and space for sophomore women to discuss their experience.
Partner: Women’s Center
Voices of Transformation
Retreat talks by students are often very powerful and instructive for student participants. The Center for Student Formation partnered with student actors who then performed actual retreat talks, given by BC students in the past, at Arts Fest. The purpose of the program was to connect the student experience and student culture, as expressed through retreat talks, in an innovative and artistic way.
Partner: Professor Crystal Tiala
Xcel
Xcel is a leadership retreat for varsity athletes. This 3 day, 2 night off-campus program was designed as a formational experience specifically for student athletes since their sports schedules often do not leave enough time for them to participate in many programs available to non-athletes.
Partner: Athletics