Training Faithful Adults to Accompany Undergraduate Students

Undergraduate students throughout the United States are tasked with making many large and small decisions, frequently for the first time. To their detriment, undergraduate students are, often times, removed from familiar surroundings which may have provided much-needed support for these emerging adults. Across university parishes, Catholic student centers, and Catholic campus ministries, there is a catastrophic shortage of prepared laypeople ready and willing to accompany these college students through the challenges and triumphs they face during their undergraduate years. Yet, wise lay people of faith who have already navigated the stages of emerging adulthood are nearby in local parishes. This project in ministry sought to bring these two proximate groups of the faithful together. By training local faith-filled adults to accompany undergraduates, this project in ministry aimed to provide undergraduate students with well-trained and confident spiritual mentors. To prepare these spiritual mentors in training, a six-session training course gathered weekly for six consecutive weeks during the summer. Participants accompanied each other and reconnected with their own experiences of emerging adulthood while learning about the nature of accompaniment and the many positive impacts spiritual mentors have on the lives of emerging adults. To effectively serve undergraduate students, participants learned how to let a person know they are being heard and understood using the art of empathetic listening. Through role-playing, participants practiced listening actively and responding empathetically. This project in ministry was evaluated through the comparison of identical pre- and post-training surveys. The surveys aimed to assess the participants' knowledge of key topics and their confidence level. Overall, participants' post-training surveys revealed a greater understanding of key concepts related to accompaniment and an improved level of confidence in their ability to accompany an undergraduate student. Therefore, this project in ministry was deemed successful in preparing participants to accompany undergraduates. Notably, while participants more accurately answered the survey questions about empathetic listening and applied their empathetic listening skills in the post-training surveys, participants' confidence using their empathetic listening skills decreased. Further study is still needed in the fields of accompaniment training and teaching empathetic listening. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]