Work and Vocation is designed to help prepare Malone students think and live more faithfully through readings, discussions, and spiritual formation and life design exercises. This class will reframe dysfunctional beliefs about life and careers and challenge conventional beliefs about Christianity, work and calling. The goal is to equip students to apply deeper theological truths, practical wisdom, and concrete tools so they can serve church, community, and world more wisely after college.

 

 

This course explores the hidden barriers and systemic inequalities that shape the experiences of individuals living at the intersections of unconscious bias, disability, and poverty. Students will examine how societal attitudes, institutional policies, and historical structures contribute to discrimination and economic hardship. Through interdisciplinary readings, case studies, and discussions, the course will investigate the impact of faith, ableism, classism, implicit bias on access to education, employment, healthcare, and social mobility. Emphasis will be placed on critical analysis, self-reflection, and strategies for advocacy and policy change. By the end of the course, students will develop a deeper understanding of these interconnected issues and explore pathways to creating a more inclusive and equitable society that seeks to glorify Christ's kingdom.

 

 

This particular course in the senior seminar series invites students to consider the place of prayer in the life of a Christ-like, servant leader, to engage in prayer through various disciplines including music, art, literature, history, theology, and biblical studies, and to formulate a greater understanding of how one’s prayer life might impact his/her unique calling and vocation, not only individually, but corporately and globally as well. Issues that will be addressed will include questions such as: How have people over the centuries encountered God through prayer? Is there a right way or wrong way to pray? What does one do with prayers that do not seem to be answered? Does prayer really make a difference? No matter on what level students commence as these and other questions are examined, all are encouraged to take a step forward in their faith journey through prayer. 

 

 

This is a course on loss and grief; but it is also a course about joy, truth seeking, and laughter. This is also a course about—and a course that involves—vulnerability. Whether we want or expect to be or not, we are all, at various times in our lives, awash in the vulnerability that comes with loss. What does it mean to be vulnerable and what can result from it? How do we (and how do we help others) embrace vulnerability and loss and accept the roles they play in our lives–in order to live wholeheartedly and faithfully? That is not only the central question of the course; I believe it is also our life’s work—our singular and most important challenge: How do we still love and live, despite the pain and sorrow of loss?
 
In order to understand loss—one of the great complexities and mysteries in life—we will draw on interdisciplinary approaches to and ways of grappling with it. Think of these approaches not as separate lenses but as various ways of understanding that can be integrated and interconnected in ways that can help provide a broader, richer, and more meaningful understanding of and acceptance of loss in our lives.