Building Community Outside the Classroom (And In It, Too)

Her job is to form students outside the classroom, but she has learned how students are changed inside the classroom, too.

Three years ago, Annie Sullivan came across an opening for assistant director of student activities at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. She had loved working in student activities during her undergraduate years, and the position would bring her closer to family, so she applied.

Today, Sullivan helps deliver the student life program at Benedictine College that has garnered national attention. When she saw an opportunity to study in the Master of Arts in Classical Leadership program, she became even more deeply involved in the life of the college.

Sullivan’s main job is fostering community at Benedictine College.

Benedictine College is strongly residential, with more than 75% of students living on campus, and the college sees its student life program as an integral part of its mission.

The college’s strategic vision, Transform Culture in America, says that its programs are meant to ensure that students learn the mission today so they can express it later:

“Benedictine College forms students to develop meaningful relationships in their personal lives, provide an attractive witness to their faith, accomplish team-building at work, and build effective coalitions in their communities.”

This year, Residence Life offered 1,529 unique programs and activities designed to integrate the Characteristics of a Raven within the pursuit of community, faith, and scholarship at Benedictine College. Staff invested countless hours in accompanying, challenging, supporting, and forming students.

For Sullivan, assisting with these programs in her day job prepared her for the college’s master’s program in Classical Leadership. Her studies, in turn, helped her find new ways to share the faith with others through her work.

“All these elements have helped me practically, giving me a new perspective to share with my students and helping them see life through the lens of God’s great and mysterious plan,” she said.

Sullivan said the MACL program also allowed her to experience what Benedictine College offers inside the classroom. Alongside courses in leadership and education, she studied the humanities within the Catholic intellectual tradition.

“Benedictine has been transformative in the way I view education, leadership and all these great works that we’ve read,” she said. “One of the reasons I really loved the MACL program is that, alongside these leadership and education classes, I got to study philosophy, history and English in the light of the broader classical tradition.”

Sullivan also discovered that professors give students the same kind of community-building attention that student life staff members give them in the residence halls.

“My professors within the classical track have been phenomenal,” Sullivan said. “They’ve been beautiful examples of exactly what they’re trying to teach us. In this program, there’s a love for your craft, love for what you teach and love for the community that you’re leading.”

Sullivan will leave the program with practical knowledge of leadership and school administration. But she will also take with her something deeper: a renewed love for classical education — its great works, ideas, and worldview — and a clearer understanding of how education can help people discover their gifts, their vocation, and their place in God’s plan.

Isabella Wilcox contributed to this report.

By Editorial Staff