This project will equip Goshen College (GC) employees (administrators, professors, staff) with practices of faith they can engage with students, in and out of the classroom, which will strengthen GC as a faith mentoring environment. Previous on-campus research indicates that students desire more interactions about faith with employees than what they have experienced, particularly in hearing their faith journeys. Though students believe that employees care about their faith, they rarely initiate faith conversations with employees or view them as “faith mentors.” It is also clear that though employees are willing to serve as faith mentors, they do not feel adequately equipped to do so.

I will engage in more comprehensive analysis of quantitative and qualitative data previously collected, survey peer institutions about their “best practices” of faith mentorship between employees and students, conduct follow-up phonecalls with some institutions, and do further reading on this topic. Then, I will write a practical, employee-equipping book using a Knowing-Being-Doing framework: What do we need to know about student faith development? How should we be as faith mentoring people? What can we do to nurture students’ faith, in and out of the classroom?