The APU community gathered Tuesday for the university’s semi-annual Common Day of Learning, when professors and guest speakers, including students, host various sessions on more than 80 different topics. This spring’s conference was planned around the central theme, “Speaking the Truth in Love (Eph. 4:15): Knowledge in the Framework of Compassion.”
Beginning at 9:30 a.m., students chose from a selection of lectures and panel discussions led by APU staff and friends of the university. The sessions lasted approximately one hour each and spanned a broad range of topics and fields of study from health care to the Holy Land, bullying to cyber security. Sessions were organized into four time slots, and the keynote address also gave students an opportunity to earn chapel credit.
“I would say it [Common Day of Learning] is a unique opportunity to interact with experts, both on campus and off campus, about some of the most important issues that God is calling followers to know about and be involved with,” said keynote speaker Kara Powell, executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute and assistant professor of youth and family ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary.
The sessions were used to expose students to new topics as well as address specific areas of study relevant to campus culture. Among the most popular sessions was one titled “Intersex and Transgender: Give Us Ears to Hear and Eyes to See.” Professors from multiple departments came together to facilitate a conversation about what their respective fields have to contribute to the intersex and transgender conversation. More than 70 people crammed into a classroom with a maximum capacity of 49 to listen to the panel delve into a thought-provoking and at times provocative discussion, complete with a live Q-and-A.
“In a liberal studies environment, I think it’s very important to consistently be integrating our ideas from different disciplines,” said Dr. Stephen Lambert, an associate professor of psychology, after finishing up his own notes on the intersex and transgender session. “Everything taking place here is basically meant to be pieces of information that fit into the whole, and so there’s a beautiful integrative component.”
Throughout the day, students not only had the opportunity to listen, but to share, too. In one of the last sessions of the day, senior nursing major Cambria Reese and junior biblical studies major Gary Conachan had the opportunity to see Common Day of Learning through a new lens — that of a presenter. The two students partnered with Erin Thorp, assistant director of the South Africa study-abroad program, to present “Responding to Home-Culture Frustrations After a Cross-Cultural Experience.”
“I understand a lot of times why students don’t come, especially because we’re in the classroom every day, five days a week at least, and so it’s overwhelming,” Reese said. “[But] this isn’t the same as a classroom experience; this isn’t us lecturing and you learning and writing things down.”
The university also worked to attract the attention of students by integrating voices from the community. During a midday session titled “God’s Kingdom Come: Unleashing Compassion in the City,” three representatives of churches and nonprofits throughout the Los Angeles aea led a panel about missions work in the community.
“It’s really fun to be here in a learning environment where people are trying to figure out kind of what path God might have for them,” said Becks Heyhoe, a liaison for homelessness at Rock Harbor Costa Mesa Church. “I think if I’d had chances to meet people in this kind of a setting when I was a student, it might have given me a better idea of what I was going to do when I graduated.”