"Faciendi et Credendi" means, in Latin, "Believing and doing." For the Christian, this should evoke the Letter of James: "What good is it if someone says he has faith but does not have works?" (2:14). It also evokes the idea that the study of religion involves both the beliefs and practices of a religious community. Finally, it recalls that students of theology and religious studies are engaged in both classroom learning and active participation in volunteer service, ministry, etc.

Faciendi et Credendi is the blog for the Religious Studies/Theology Program at Loras College. It is an ongoing, public account of student progress that the program requires of all its majors. The blog provides an electronic “space” for students to reflect on their experiences as a major and on the relationship of those experiences to other facets of their life at Loras.

In order to post to the blog, first find the appropriate topic by clicking on the Blog Prompts tab. Find the prompt based on how long it has been since you declared your religious studies/theology major. Then, return to the Home tab and click on New Post in the top right corner of the page. This will open an html editor where you can type your post.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

6th Semester, Week 11


This is one of my last blog posts, which is kind of surreal.  I cannot believe how my time at Loras has flown.  This blog post I am supposed to be reflecting on my practicum and the progress I have made with it.  For my practicum I have been mainly working with the Archdiocesan office of Adult Faith Formation.  I have been working with a woman named Mary Pedersen who is a recent hire.  I have been doing a menagerie of things for her.  One of the first things I did was do research regarding adult faith sharing, learning, and discipleship models.  While I did not think I would like to do mainly research, I actually found it fascinating and it opened my eyes to how complicated adult faith formation is.  When I say complicated I mean that there are so many factors that go into how a successful adult formation program is built.

 The next project I worked on was helping both the Archdiocese and Loras College restructure the lay formation program.  I was asked to research dioceses in the United States that were similar in size, demographics, majority rural areas, and Hispanic presence.  Then, after identifying similar diocese’s I was asked to take a close look at each of their lay formation programs and interview the person in charge of their program to understand how they built their program.  The dioceses that I ended up interviewing were Davenport, Lacrosse, and Winona.  After I did that I was asked to write up a proposal for possible curriculum changes in the program for the Archdiocese of Dubuque’s lay formation program. 

  The next and last large thing that I have been asked to work on is helping the Loras College Religious Studies department do research regarding wants and needs of parish leaders in the Dubuque area regarding continuing education and lay formation.  This project is still in progress, but we have our first interview group finalized for the second week of January and I have also just submitted a proposal for interview questions. 

 If you couldn’t tell already, my practicum is not on schedule.  Due to no fault of my own (verified by Dr. Waldmeir), I do not have enough hours to be able to complete my practicum for the end of the semester, so Dr. Waldmeir has kindly agreed to give me an incomplete and I will finish the practicum over J-term.  I will also do most of my writing of the portfolio over Christmas break and J-term.

 In regards to the topics that I plan to discuss when I present my capstone to the religious studies staff and students, I will probably talk about how I have learned through research and experience that adult faith formation is essential to help the whole Church flourish and how it is much more complicated than I first thought it was.  I also was planning on talking about my research work regarding the lay formation program in the Archdiocese.
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2 comments:

  1. Dr. John Waldmeir, Associate Professor, Loras CollegeApril 5, 2013 at 1:42 PM

    Kelleryn:

    Thanks for describing the capstone project, which is always such a mystery for students until they actually start to work on one. I hope that others who read this post in hopes of learning about theit senior year pick up on one of your main points--that the research skills you developed at Loras can be very useful when working for an orgaization like the Church, which desperately needs to gather information about how to reach out to world around it. That will make a good focus for your final presentation as well. See you soon. jw

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  2. David PittApril 9, 2013 at 10:17 AM

    Congratulations on the completion of the major Kelleryn! I am happy to hear that the practicum project was so helpful to you. All of the pieces that you have been working on seem like they should be quite valuable, especially from a larger "institutional" framework (an Archdiocese/Diocese or an educational institution like Loras). How do you best see some of this important material best translating to parishes?

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