The beginning of the Fall semester always brings such great energy to our campus. After a short season of dormancy during the summer, suddenly the hallways are full of students again, and overnight we are back to full life! Freshmen bring excitement for the new! New classes! New friends! New freedoms! (which we expect they will handle well!) New opportunities to mature and grow in faith! The returning students have their own kind of excitement that shows up in hallway hugs with old friends and renewed commitments to starting well in the classroom. Both add up to an enjoyable first few weeks of classes before we all settle in for the longer, more steady rhythm of the semester.

We are excited to invite students to conversations around our Student Life theme this year. The theme is CONGRUENCE:Looking In. Living Out. Congruence isn't a word most of use in our every day language, unless we happen to be a Math professor, but it is a word with great relevance for today's students. Congruence is defined as the quality or state of agreeing or coinciding. We are hoping to challenge students to make their lives consistent with what they believe. Their lives and their faith should agree. Perhaps it is another way of saying that popular phrase of 'walking your talk'. Beyond that, often times students are not really sure what they believe and so through the process of looking in, we hope to help students be able to better understand themselves and articulate what it is they do believe. Parker Palmer’s book, Let Your Life Speak, is our theme-related book for the year. He provides many helpful signposts to direct us towards considering our inner lives.

We count it a privilege to work with your sons and daughters. As my staff and I interacted with students through our great first week of classes, the students lived up to the high esteem we have for them. Not that any of them has arrived, but then none of us has either. Their great potential inspires optimism for the new school year. It makes this a great time to work on a college campus, specifically at AU. Thank you for trusting us with your most precious possession. We hope to return them to you to live in your house again after graduation (just kidding!). We hope as the year progresses and they return home you will notice changes that speak to their growing maturity. In cases where that is not true, and this will absolutely be the case for some, I encourage you that we all have times of learning from mistakes and the Lord’s timeline for growth isn’t always what any of us would prefer. The good news is that the Lord has His hand on this place and even more importantly on your son or daughter. Sometimes that is the best news and the only news that matters.

We look forward to partnering with you this year. Please let me know if there are ways I or my staff can be helpful to you or your child.

Many blessings,

Brent Baker
Vice President for Student Life
and Dean of Students