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Common Ground:
Bethel’s One-of-a-Kind Shared Educational Experience
“Seek. Serve. Grow.” We live it every day. And nowhere does that commitment to personal and community growth find its expression more powerfully than in Bethel College’s core academic program, our one-of-a-kind shared educational experience: Common Ground.
So just what is Common Ground?
It’s your gateway to the world. An exploration of the soul. It’s a nurturing, challenging, exhilarating opportunity to change your mind, your self, your world, for the better. It is a community seeking together, serving together, growing together.
In our unique freshman seminar, College Issues Colloquy, you’ll get to know your hallmates through small class discussions about individuality and community.
Convocation, an all-school assembly that meets twice a week, brings renowned guest speakers, performing groups and presentations to campus, exposing you to issues in politics, society, religion and the arts and sciences.
Whether you’re hiking through a cloud forest in Costa Rica, singing with the choir in the great cathedrals of Europe, speaking to Israeli and Palestinian religious leaders and scholars in Jerusalem, asking questions of a playwright in Chicago or sharing a meal with members of a mosque in Wichita, Bethel’s Cross-Cultural Learning initiative will give you the opportunity to engage a culture significantly different from your own.
On both a global and local scale, ours is often a world in conflict. In Bethel’s Peace Justice and Conflict Studies courses, you’ll have the opportunity to engage questions and develop practical skills regarding how to actively pursue peace and justice, to seek understanding where others might demand vengeance, to find “common ground.”
Read a student blog post from the Social Development and Social Justice travel course
In Bethel’s Integrating Faith and Life initiative, you can choose from a wide variety of perspectives, be it focused biblical study or classes investigating the world’s major religions, empowering you to explore the relationship between your personal beliefs and chosen career.
As a senior, you will complete a URICA project – a rigorous, independent study experience meant to be the crowning achievement of your academic career. You’ll finish your career at Bethel confident you can plan a major independent project and see it through to a successful conclusion.