Experiential Learning in Festival of Scholars

Dear Faculty, Staff, and Students,

This week marks our 17th annual Festival of Scholars. This tradition celebrates many of the high-impact programs such as student research, service-learning, internships, and capstone projects that make Cal Lutheran a special place to teach and learn. When the first Festival of Scholars was introduced in 2007, it featured projects only from undergraduates in the College of Arts and Sciences, but today it includes undergraduates, graduates, and faculty from the entire campus.  

This year, the Festival returns to an in-person format after being virtual for a couple of years and having a number of hybrid programs last year. Seeing this event in its full splendor — replete with spending time with student scholars, listening to them describe the outcomes achieved in internships, and witnessing the innovations they have catalyzed via their entrepreneurial projects — has been the highlight of the year for me.

It’s not too late to experience the sense of awe that I have felt because the Festival continues through today and tomorrow evening. As you skim through this schedule of events, you can see the culmination of student-faculty collaboration, scholarship, experiential learning, creative activity, and more. And while the students are truly impressive, it is clear that our faculty have played the preeminent role in helping them actualize the talents that are showcased this week. I thank you all for the life-changing work you do with our students.

Throughout the week, the extent to which our faculty and students engage in high-impact teaching and learning is evident as a focus of Festival of Scholars is experiential learning. It has been a real treat to see students augment their classroom learning via research, fieldwork, internships, practicums, study abroad, service-learning, and civic and community engagement. In all of these cases, students are guided through a structured learning experience that calls them to translate existing and emerging ideas to concrete activities. This same call is embedded into IDEAS, the new General Education curriculum, which requires rather than encourages students to complete an experiential learning activity before they graduate. 

More than 40 events are taking place during Festival of Scholars; one of my favorites is Honors Convocation. The Chapel was at near capacity with faculty, staff, friends, and family who came together to celebrate students who have received an honorable distinction, scholarship, and/or an undergraduate research fellowship. I also had the honor of bestowing the President’s Award for Teaching Excellence to mathematics professor Dr. Michael Gagliardo. This was followed by the keynote address by School of Management professor Dr. Paul Witman, recipient of the 2023 Honorary Alumni Award.

Festival of Scholars, like Commencement, is a time when the entire campus comes together to celebrate the essence of who we are and what we do: a teaching and learning community whose members, one and all, collectively use our gifts and talents to support our students and their success. Thank you to all who have kept the Festival of Scholars alive and well for nearly two decades. There are so many of you behind the scenes who make this week possible. I offer a very special thank you, however, to Donna Travis, Erik Hagen, Jee Jung, Ben Hengst, Milad Malakooti, Connor Richert, Alysha Nizam, and Vanessa Webster-Smith who are instrumental in orchestrating so many of the moving pieces behind the stage. 

Thank you to all of you who planned, implemented, and participated in this year’s Festival of Scholars. It is a great reminder of why we are here and what we can accomplish when we work together, prioritizing the members of the community around which all things should revolve: our students.