In line with Baylor University's mission to educate our students for "worldwide leadership and service," the Office of Engaged Learning strives to help our students cultivate ways of thinking, being, living, imagining, and leading that help to usher in a greater good—for both their communities and the world at large. The formation of leadership and character, we believe, is about accompanying our students and working with them to discover how we might navigate and transform the cultural, social, economic, and political contexts around us so that we might help to create a world that is more just, fair, inclusive, equitable, and sustainable—one in which all flourishing is mutual. We believe that lives of leadership and character are lives marked by purpose and meaning, and rooted in our framework of Excellence Together, we believe that leadership and character are shared, not solitary, endeavors. In this way, we heed Robin Wall Kimmerer's call “to see relationships, to seek the threads that connect the world, to join instead of divide."
It is also our belief that it is insufficient to form our students for the world as it exists today. Not only is the world changing quickly in our "age of accelerations"—from the perils and promises of technological innovation to shifting democratic norms, social dissolution, resource exploitation, and many more seismic shifts currently underway—but it is also the case that all of us, formed with the right kinds of commitments and character, might be part of leading toward a world that is better than the one that exists here and now.
Animated by these aspirations, we in the Office of Engaged Learning strive to cultivate character and leadership through a variety of programs and strategies—from cooperative, cross-cultural participation in learning, service, and civil society efforts to structured mentorship in programs such as the Baylor Engaged Fellows and Provost's Scholars programs.