Dr. Darby Ray, Director
Millsaps College Faith & Work Initiative
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It’s hard to believe the Millsaps Faith & Work Initiative has been around for ten years! Since 2000 we’ve been helping
some of our nation’s best and brightest young people discern
their calling or vocation in life. And we’ve challenged them
to pursue that calling with determination, integrity, imagination,
and compassion. Many of you have served as mentors and guides for
their journey - providing internship opportunities, service
sites, and words of wisdom and encouragement. Others have offered
financial support to sustain our hallmark programs and enable us
to develop new ones like the 1 Campus, 1 Community program, now
in its fourth year and already an indispensable means of connecting
college to community in visionary ways.
Thank you(!) for supporting our work, for cheering us on, for opening
your workplace and your lives to our students. We hope you’ll
enjoy the snapshots below, which tell some of our story from the
past year. As always, we’d love to hear from you.
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 Student groups from across the campus have come
together to support Brown Elementary School in Midtown. Even before
classes had begun at the college this fall, every classroom at
Brown had been "adopted" by Millsaps students ready to
tutor, develop art projects, and plan field trips or classroom
celebrations for their adopted class.
Motivated by a grant from the Community
Foundation of Greater Jackson, a challenge program for Millsaps student organizations
was created over the summer: Which ones could recruit a cadre of
volunteers to adopt a classroom at Brown Elementary School in time
to become charter members of the new 100% Adopt-A-Class program?
The answer was, practically every one! All the college's sororities
and fraternities, as well as the Campus Ministry Team, the Wellspring
Community Service Living-Learning Program, and Sigma Lambda Service
Fraternity recruited adopter teams before the Millsaps year even
began.
Almost seventy students attended a Saturday training to prepare
for their roles as adopters. The training included information
and tips about professional decorum, classroom management, and
cognitive and emotional norms for elementary-aged children, as
well as a how-to guide for planning field trips to local sites
and ideas for other enrichment activities.
Both the Millsaps campus and Brown Elementary School are abuzz
with excitement about this new partnership!
Read
more at the Jackson Public Schools website
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Building A Vocation |
 Vocation can lead us in the strangest directions ...
Like from a doctor's office to a woodworker's shed and back again.
Last fall, Stephen Passman ('10) found a way to combine his passion
for medicine with his long-time love of building and woodworking.
When his internship mentor, pediatrician Dr. Dana Roe Grant ('97),
mentioned the possibility of participating in the Reach Out and
Read program that would supply her with books to give to her patients,
Stephen heard opportunity knocking (or hammering, as it were).
Off he went to his shed to build a bookshelf for Dr. Roe and the
new program.
These days, Stephen is back at Millsaps for his senior year, staying
busy as student body president and picking up a hammer daily at
an internship at Habitat for Humanity of Metro Jackson.
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Acting out isn't always bad. In fact, for the young people at the Boys & Girls Club, acting is a positive way to learn important skills. Students in one of Education Professor Stacy DeZutter's classes teach arts education at the Boys and Girls Club for an hour each week. According to DeZutter, "The purpose of the course was for Millsaps students to gain first-hand experience designing and implementing an arts enrichment class, and for children at the Boys and Girls Club to have an opportunity to learn in the arts."
Theater proved to be an effective means for teaching young people to work together, stay focused, and tell compelling stories. "The Millsaps students in the course were so pleased with what we had accomplished," says Dezutter. "They enjoyed working with the children so much that they decided to keep the class going at the Boys and Girls Club the next semester."
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A New Team in Town
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 As
a 1C1C Post-Baccalaureate Fellow with a focus on the Midtown neighborhood
just west of Millsaps, Mike Gaines realized that middle school
boys in the community needed some activities and opportunities
for mentoring. Drawing from his experience as a basketball player
at Lanier High School, Mike started a basketball team. With support
from 1C1C and private donors, the Midtown Majors sixth-grade boys'
basketball team was born, and they soon donned their very own purple
and white uniforms.
The team generated so much interest in the neighborhood that before
long, another team was created, both of which compete in the City
of Jackson Recreational Basketball League in the spring and summer
seasons. "This past season, in my opinion, was a very productive
season," said Coach Gaines. "The 12-U team improved dramatically
from their very first season. They improved from a disappointing
1-7 record the first season to a 4-4 record this season, along
with a playoff berth."
In addition to improving on the court, the young men are benefitting
from the teamwork experiences and the leadership of Coach Gaines. "I
believe that they are really starting to realize their potential
as one unit or team and also their power as young men" said
Gaines, "and I feel very encouraged and proud to witness this
beautiful transformation."
The plan for the new school year, says Gaines, is to continue
to develop not only good basketball players, but also successful
students and role models for other youth.
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"You mean I can write my name in this
book?"
On three different occasions last year, students at Brown Elementary
School in Midtown got to “shop”for a book of their
own. Thanks to a Reading is Fundamental grant obtained by 1C1C
Fellow LaQuanda Sims, over 600 books were distributed to the young
readers at Brown. "It truly brings me joy knowing that every child
at Brown now has three books of their own,” Sims said, “ I
feel that it's so important for children to develop a passion for reading
at an early age and knowledge of the importance of ownership in order
to be successful in their future." The grant was renewed for the
current school year, so the fun is continuing!
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 Everyone
has a vocation, but only fifty people in the United States have
a calling to ministry that is so compelling that it warrants a
fellowship from the Fund for Theological Education. Katie Sorey
is one of them.
Katie has explored vocation through the Faith & Work Initiative’s
C.A.L.L.S. (Considering a Life of Leadership and Service) program,
which provides opportunities for spiritual growth and exploration
of God's call.
Read
more about Katie's fellowship
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 You
would think that at the end of a long day of classes, meetings,
athletics, arts events, and leadership responsibilities,
Millsaps students might want to return to their dorm rooms
and pass out. But for the more than fifty students in the
Wellspring Community Service Living-Learning Program, their
dorm is a place of committed purpose and shared action.
Wellspring students come together as freshmen who share a passion for community service. Each student performs weekly service at a local non-profit, and the whole community comes together once a month for a large-group project.
Wellspring students also engage in learning and reflection about various social problems, as well as the possibilities for constructive responses to those problems. The Wellspring program is a vital component of the experiential learning programs of 1 Campus, 1 Community.
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 The
weather was perfect and the crowd was historic. The annual
Block Party in 2010 drew more than 500 people - a record
number of Midtown residents and students, staff, and faculty
from Millsaps - to share an afternoon of fun on the lawn
bordering West Street.
There were games led by sororities, challenging physical
activities organized by the Millsaps sports teams, art projects
led by student groups, and a cookout for all. The fourth
annual Block Party was a genuine celebration of relationships
that continue to grow between Millsaps and the Midtown community.
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