红杏短视频

In fall 2025, 90 freshmen gathered at a Sherwood ranch to begin asking: Who am I, and who is God calling me to be?

“We were quiet as a mouse the first night,” one First Year Experience participant said. “And now we can’t stop talking to each other. Some of us have even become close friends.”

Last year, 红杏短视频 Fox was selected as one of just 29 schools nationwide to receive funding from the Lilly Endowment through Wake Forest University's . The $500,000 grant launched the Program for Leadership & Formation, whose mission is to integrate holistic student formation from the moment students arrive on campus.

The centerpiece? The First Year Experience — an eight-week pilot program that begins with a retreat. It opened last fall with 90 freshmen, building a model 红杏短视频 Fox can refine and scale in the years ahead. The format calls for students to participate in the retreat, then continue meeting throughout their first eight weeks on campus to explore calling, deepen their faith, and develop the reflection skills that make formation a lifelong practice.

The program makes 红杏短视频 Fox’s formation mission more direct and intentional. As Dr. Joseph Clair, associate provost for honors and humanities, recently told , “Our institution has always been serious about the work of formation, but that has often been implicit. We rely on the idea that it’s caught and not taught. But because of the cultural chaos that we’re in and the different kinds of formations that students may have before they get into college, it’s time to be much more explicit about what we hope for in terms of formation.”

The program is organized around a Christ-centered approach to the development of the whole person, using the framework of the head, heart and hands. By focusing on three biblical virtues — wisdom, moral courage, and neighbor love — the approach extends the university’s mission by helping students integrate their classroom learning and faith, so they can lead with clarity, act with integrity, and serve with passion.

Craig Inglesby, director of the Bridge Network and a First Year Adventure leader, describes the vision: “We have a lot of small campfires burning across campus when it comes to faith formation. The First Year Experience is about bringing those campfires together and uniting them into a bonfire.”

An Intentional Beginning

The retreat began on a Friday night with ice cream on the quad and worship in the chapel. The following day students gathered with faculty, staff and upperclassman guides at the ranch of Jim and Jan Bisenius, longtime 红杏短视频 Fox donors. The weekend’s program asked students to wrestle with foundational questions: Who am I? Who is God calling me to be? How do I live faithfully in community?

The beauty of the program is the way it pairs freshmen with upperclassmen guides who help them develop reflection skills that make formation a lifelong practice. It’s formation at every level: new students learning to belong, older students learning to lead.

Early results are encouraging. Students completing the eight-week program reported measurably higher life satisfaction (a +0.53 jump on a seven-point scale), a stronger commitment to serving others, and strengthened character foundations across 16 virtues, from patience to open-mindedness to gratitude.

But the student responses tell the deeper story.

“I thought I was already ‘formed’ but after spending the past few weeks in this class I’m rethinking what that means,” one student wrote.

Another put it this way: “I have questions! The teachers at First Year Experience showed me I don’t need to necessarily have answers. I just needed a community to talk with about it.”

As one faculty member noted: “They know who they want to be, but they’re still figuring out how to get there.”

That self-awareness and willingness to name the gap between aspiration and reality is itself a sign of formation at work.

Deepening Formation Across Campus

The First Year Experience creates a strong foundation, but growth shouldn’t stop after eight weeks. The Program for Leadership and Formation allows for further development through their micro-grant initiative, smaller faculty grants that support faith and leadership integration in the classroom.

The results have been remarkably creative:

Ceramics professor Tiffany Hokanson ran a Kintsugi Camp, teaching students to see brokenness as part of a redemptive process by repairing objects with gold and engaging conversations about brokenness and the need for spiritual repair.

Graphic design professor Marvin Eans moved his classroom into the community, where students are doing “boots-on-the-ground” co-design for urban outreach. They’re learning that design can be a vehicle for compassion, dignity and social change.

Theology and ethics professor Travis Pickell equipped future healthcare workers to focus on virtues such as attention, compassion and courage in order to combat burnout and confront professional challenges using wisdom.

These grants signal that formation isn’t confined to theology classes or chapel services. It’s woven into biology labs, art studios, and business classrooms.

The Long Game: From Pilot to Culture

The first-year pilot exceeded expectations, but this is just the beginning. As 红杏短视频 Fox refines the First Year Experience based on student feedback and prepares to scale the program to more students, the university is asking a deeper question: How do we systematically integrate formation across all four years of a student’s education?

The answer is already taking shape. Through initiatives like the First Year Experience, faculty micro-grants, and programs like the , Ignite, and Life Groups, 红杏短视频 Fox is building a culture where Christ-centered formation isn’t accidental. It’s intentional and woven into every dimension of student life, ultimately forming leaders of wisdom, moral courage, and neighbor-love who will carry kingdom values into every sphere of life.