Road Through Xavier

Faculty advisors, Student Success, and Career Coaches are encouraged to utilize this year-by-year advising guide with students to guide their exploration and participation in high impact learning opportunities during their four years at Xavier.

Immersive Learning & Vocational Discernment on The Road Through Xavier

What is immersive learning?  Immersive learning is an academically based learning opportunity that incorporates an examination of social justice issues while immersing students in a community affected by systemic challenges and injustices. Prompted by observation, direct experience and reflection, students consider various worldviews and perspectives different from their own through direct interaction with diverse populations. Immersive learning provides students with both meaningful engagement opportunities in interactive partnerships with local, domestic or international communities and academic structures for analysis, reflection on their learning, and application to future action (Immersive Learning Attribute).

Immersion Experiences honor the Jesuit vision of educating the whole person, offering the opportunity to explore our sense of self and sense of connection to the world around us. These programs encourage students to engage in difference through direct contact, appreciative inquiry and reflection. Students are encouraged to appreciate the circumstances, knowledge, and resources of our neighbors and to invest their lives in the well-being of our neighbors. (Faculty Learning Community on Immersion, 2014)

 

What is vocational discernment?  On the Road Through Xavier, students examine the concept of vocation, or one's "call," from the Latin word vocare.  Vocation is what we are meant to do in life and the persons we are meant to be.  Vocation has depth, pertaining to who we are, of which labor, jobs, a career are parts.  Xavier students explore what types of people they can become, and want to become, through academic interests, jobs, clubs, service, faith, friends, and mentors.  Essentially, you explore your desires, that through time and attention reveal your vocation - a vocation based in the reality of your life and our world.  Discernment is essential in discovering one's vocation. 

Discernment is a process of making decisions - big or small - in which we pay close attention to our lives in particular ways: listening to our experiences, feelings, emotions and desires; using reason (e.g. making lists of pros and cons); taking time to reflect on a matter of importance; asking critical questions; and consulting with others.

Xavier guides students on these journeys informed by pursuit of the common good and through Xavier’s Gifts Of Our Ignatian Heritage.