A Study of Three Faith-based Programs for College Students and Recent Graduates

Abstract

Despite calls for higher education to help young adults explore issues of meaning, faith, and vocational calling, colleges and universities struggle to provide adequate contexts and settings for its students to wrestle with these questions and purposes. Within the last 25 years, a number of faith-based leadership programs have developed along the perimeter of higher education to help young adults address these issues. This qualitative, comparative case study explores the factors that have given rise to and the spread of three faith-based leadership programs, articulates what each program hopes to accomplish in the lives of their young adult participants, and describes the practices and philosophical components used to accomplish their programmatic goals. These three organizational histories were written from the point of view of the founders, current leaders, and volunteers who run the programs. The view of the participating college students and recent college graduates were not included. Although this study is comprised of only three case studies, it has the potential to become a useful heuristic tool to inform future research on other young adult faith-based programs.