The Compass and the Questions

A Call to Adventure

Journey, Lipscomb’s Core, is made up of four Sign Post courses. The first course is called Compass. Every journey begins with a question. Or. in the case of Lipscomb’s Journey, four questions. The Compass course at Lipscomb invites students into a community of inquiry that asks: Who am I? What is truth? What is a good life? and Who am I becoming? Each of these courses has a unit that is organized around it which includes a Compass Point session, in which all students across the different sections will gather together for a large community moment, a common assignment and a common learning experience. These have been intentionally crafted by small teams of the faculty members who are teaching the course so that we all have input and ownership over the course.

Rather than starting college with a list of general requirements, our students start with a call to adventure. The Compass course brings first-year students together in a shared experience of asking life’s biggest questions through a Christian liberal arts lens. This course and the learning experiences we’ve built within it are not just academic exercises, they are invitations to transformation in community.

As students wrestle with each question, they engage shared readings, common assignments and learning experiences, and the mentoring guidance of faculty. This past May, our Compass faculty trained together, preparing to support our students in their journey of learning and to be a part of the learning community ourselves. Rather than seeing ourselves as the sage on the stage, we plan to join our students in learning to think well, be well, live well, and serve well. In our time together in this course, we won’t give easy answers. We’ll help students find the courage to keep asking, keep wondering, and keep growing.

And in our time together as we prepared, what became clear is that we’re also building a beautiful learning community amongst ourselves as faculty! As we spent intensive time thinking and dreaming together, we debated assignments and their goals, how to make our community gathering times meaningful, and how to support one another in the joy and challenges of mentoring our first year students. We formed small teams to work on the common assignments for the units, to be sure that we are focused on student learning outcomes and assessment of those in a way that resonates with all of us. We’ve even built an AI literacy component into one of the four common assignments, to be sure that we’re merging timeless wisdom with innovation, and that our students see that these two things can and should work together.

At a time when higher education is often transactional, Compass reminds us that learning is a journey. And it’s one we take together with our students as we all intentionally step onto the pathway of lifelong learning. As I tell our first year students at New Student Orientation, they are starting a great adventure, and we are there to support them every step of the way.