The Berea College community is made of many individuals with almost as many passions. And while we are bound by a shared commitment to excellence and to education, these passions sometimes lead to tension with each other and difficult balancing acts. This can be a challenge, but I believe that by looking beyond tension and even balance for synergy, we foster a stronger and more intentional community.

Berea College honors Eight Great Commitments, so there are a LOT of places tension can develop and many places to seek balance.  For example, when we consider “whom shall we serve,” the question arises, should we focus on Appalachian students from the mountains or emphasize our commitment to interracial community and education? Similar conundrums occur when we ask, how do we honor our Christian commitment while recognizing that “God has made of one blood all peoples of the earth, (Acts 17:26)” whatever their faith commitment, and welcoming all into the community; or how should we balance the tension and stress for students who participate in a very rigorous academic program while making substantial time commitments to their work for the College and their interest in service?

When the community confronts such questions, Berea’s approach is unlike the strategies that most other institutions use. For example, unlike other institutions, we do not simply allot each idea a certain amount of resources and “let a 1000 flowers bloom.”  Nor do we ask the community to vote on priorities for the year and use the results to choose between alternatives, because we are committed to all of the Great Commitments regardless of changes in outside circumstances or our own varying interests.  Most importantly, we do not simply ignore the tensions, which is probably the most common strategy of all when it comes to institutional planning.

How, then, does Berea College confront these challenges as a community? The truth is, there is no simple recipe or governance process, but our solutions and outcomes often reflect a synergy between efforts that might have been in tension, a synergy that finds value beyond simple balance.

A good example of this is how we approach the tension between our Second and Seventh Great Commitments to a high quality liberal arts education and a labor program requiring all students also to provide upwards of 10 hours of work to the College each week.  In this case the tension manifests itself as stress in the lives of students who are trying to meet both of those obligations at a high level of accomplishment.  And simply seeking balance might mean lower expectations in both areas, so that students could accommodate both a full academic schedule and their labor contributions.  Here, the synergy we have found is the understanding that work is a key part of student learning.

Jay Buckner, multimedia production manager, helps Felicia Johnson ’17 develop skills in video editing as part of her labor position.

Labor supervisors are not only helping students learn work skills, but also supporting them in learning the time management abilities that will be crucial to them later in their future busy professional lives.  And, many of Berea’s labor positions allow students the opportunity to apply what they are learning in their courses.  While not every current Berea student would agree that seeing work as part of education resolves that tension, I have spoken with countless alumni who see that aspect of their Berea education as its single most important aspect and a key reason for the successes they have achieved in their professional lives.

Does the realization that work contributes so essentially to the educational experience fully resolve the tension for Berea students?  No, it does not, and we are very aware that these pressures are a challenge for our students. So I am very happy that our newly created FRESH Start initiative, will introduce understanding of stress and coping skills to our students in their first year, as a way to improve their academic performance and health, with the added benefit of providing a model for understanding how activities in one area of life connect to other areas. The model uses eight dimensions of wellness: emotional, financial, intellectual, occupational, physical, social, spiritual, and sustainable. Through the program, students will see that one’s occupational wellness influences all the other dimensions, not just financial wellness, as some might expect.  Understanding these interrelations helps prepare students for success throughout college and also, for their futures, to seek synergy when facing similar challenges later in life.

For many people, the word “sustainability” calls to mind images of recycling and hybrid vehicles. Both are important, but genuine sustainability goes much further: it is comprehensive, deeply rooted, as it were, in how we as a community and as individuals approach our place in the world. Berea is fortunate to have a tradition of thinking about sustainability guided by the Seventh Great Commitment, which calls us to adopt “a way of life characterized by plain living, pride in labor well done, zest for learning, high personal standards, and concern for the welfare of others.”

These same goals are reflected in the definition of “sustainability” that guides the work done by students in our Office of Sustainability, led by Joan Pauly. Their definition of “sustainability” refers to the capacity of individuals, communities and societies to coexist in a manner that maintains social justice, environmental integrity and economic well-being today and for future generations.

The college has long been mindful of the need to recycle, to reduce carbon emissions and to limit our use of electricity. Now, thanks to Joan’s team, led by Tsering Dhondhen ’17, data tracking & analysis coordinator, and with the help of Dr. Scott Heggen, lecturer in computer science, and his student Phyo Phyo Kyaw Zin ′16, we can all see the progress being made through a newly developed dashboard that tracks our efforts on a month-to-month basis. It can be accessed here.

While the dashboard shows the College’s overall progress, we are also interested in what can be achieved in single home. Clover Bottom House, the 110-year-old log house that serves as the new headquarters for the sustainability program, models sustainable retrofits for single family homes. Some features, like the use of solar panels, high performance windows and a biomass-fired generator for creating electricity, support energy efficiency, while others, like a Victory Garden and a Monarch Butterfly Station, encourage good nutrition, self-sufficiency and environmental health.

Soon, we may have the opportunity to achieve a first in the state of Kentucky, when a Tesla Powerwall battery is installed in the house. Joan believes the battery will store enough power to enable the home to be energy self-sufficient. We are also taking this initiative on the road with grant funding from the United States Department of Agriculture, enabling Berea College to become a center for energy efficiency. Working in partnership with Kentucky Highlands Corporation, the Promise Zone Board and Jason Delambre from Midwest Clean Energy Enterprises, our students will perform energy audits for businesses like grocery stores and small factories in Eastern Kentucky helping them to reduce energy costs and thereby enabling them to grow and support the region’s economy.

Laurie and I are joined by members of the men’s basketball team to plant trees to offset carbon emissions as part of the Green Games project.

Lest anyone think this is all hard work, we also have a lot of fun with sustainability on campus.  In each of the last two years our athletic program has organized “Green Games” in which the community, working together, takes measures to fully offset the carbon footprint of an athletic event. We celebrate at half-time (https://youtu.be/5GivUstO5xo), and afterwards the teams lead the community in planting enough trees to offset the carbon emissions from building energy use during the game and the bus travel.

And that brings to mind what we’re doing in the College Forest, but that’s a story for another blog.

Fellow Bereans,

As I’ve become part of Berea College community, my admiration for it has increased, especially its members’ capacity to learn and grow while remaining true to its founding principles. The pattern of articulating, examining and reaffirming our beliefs and how we act on them is woven into the fabric of the institution. In it one can trace how founder John G. Fee’s ideas became the Eight Great Commitments, and one can still see the process at work today, shaping how we live out these principles as individuals and as a community.

Over time, there have been changes in the process of self-reflection, one of which – a very good one, I believe – is how the conversation can be shared with the larger community through social media. To take advantage of this, each month I will make a post (or two) highlighting the work done in support of the Great Commitments, celebrating the accomplishments of dedicated Bereans and, in return, I hope to hear feedback from the community at large.

March is Women’s History Month, so it seems fitting to focus my inaugural post on the sixth Great Commitment, “To create a democratic community dedicated to education and gender equality.”

Laurie and I accompanied the Berea College Concert Choir on a recent tour to the Chicago area as they performed at the University of Wisconsin – Parkside, the Bahá’í House of Worship, the First Unitarian Church of Chicago and Field Museum. All were noteworthy venues, and the choir, 60 voices strong, brought great credit to Berea College through its moving performances. Particularly remarkable too was the visit to the Bahá’í House of Worship, a thoroughly impressive structure located on the shore of Lake Michigan north of downtown Chicago. The photo shows choir members in front of this amazing building after their performance.

The Bahá’í faith emphasizes “unity in diversity,” an interesting belief that resonates with Berea’s motto, “God has made of one blood, all peoples of the earth.” The Bahá’í faith is based on seven Core Principles, which like our Great Commitments, form a mutually reinforcing unity, but my attention settled particularly on the third of those Core Principles – “Equality of women and men.” How striking is that? The wording matches ours exactly (!), and how remarkable for a system of faith to elevate gender equality to the level of central dogma. These are not just words either. In a short video presentation on the history of the National Center of Worship, we visitors learned that female and male adherents of the Bahá’í faith are equally involved in leadership and were similarly equally involved with planning all aspects of their magnificent building.

What a delightful coincidence that this visit occurred in the month of March! My next post will celebrate Berea’s Women’s and Gender Studies program, which is celebrating its 25^th anniversary this year.

Faithfully yours,

Lyle

You can follow me on Twitter @RoelofsLyle.

If you would like to hear some of the Berea College Concert Choir, check out the video below.