Scholarship Competition 2022 draws 112 high-achieving students to AU for the chance to experience the Asbury community and hear from faculty and administration about the AU experience.
Asbury University welcomed 112 prospective students to campus for the annual Scholarship Competition on February 17 – 18, 2022. The visit event allowed our guests to experience a night in the dorms with current students before a full day of AU classes and chapel. Each invitee interviewed on Friday to compete for one of four John Wesley Hughes full-tuition scholarships.
Asbury University’s Devin Brown, Ph.D., Professor of English, and Tim Campbell, Ph.D., Vice Provost, spoke to the students and parents midday at the scholarship luncheon. Brown shared with the students about the value of the liberal arts education they will receive at AU. “Instead of a list of unrelated gen-ed classes, subjects that you ‘get out of the way’ … AU will build a base of core classes, a foundation that will support your major and your career goals. Your degree from AU will prepare you to work in a variety of jobs over the course of your life.”
Brown’s address showed how an AU education stands out from the rest. “Asbury classes are about more than just information … if that’s all we did, we might as well be a YouTube video … it’s about transformation. Each semester that you’re here, you’ll grow and change … become more the person that God has called you to be.” He encouraged the students that they are invited to play a part in God’s work by sharing a quote from Frederick Buchner: “The place God is calling you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Campbell followed Brown with a talk that addressed the question many of the parents of our prospective students are asking: Will my student get a job after university?
He posited several approaches institutions of higher education have taken in response to this question and challenged those approaches with the following questions:
Is the university asking … How work may be misunderstood? If work can become an idol? What is work’s connection to human nature and human purpose? If social structures prevent people from having the opportunity and support needed to do good work well, or rest? Can a job provide meaning? And finally, should the university be asking these questions?
Seven AU faculty gathered during the 2022-21 academic year as a part of a planning group to read and discuss AU’s approach to answering the question of the university relevance to the 21st century marketplace. Campbell shared much of the philosophy of work that resulted from this group during his talk. In addition, the faculty group laid the framework for a course developed on approaching work in the midst of the great resignation following the covid-19 pandemic. Several AU alumni and guests shared their stories in front of the camera to create a series of short films to populate the course, which Campbell also previewed for the group. View the preview.
SEARCH is proud to facilitate project-based collaborations, like Good Work Initiatives, on Asbury University’s campus.
The Good Work Initiatives become a story of how AU helps all students – no matter their major – prepare for an unknown career, clarify calling and identity in Jesus Christ, and finish the interview prompt, “Tell me about a time when you created or improved something and shared it with someone.”