Berea College

Berea College commits itself to maintain a residential campus and to encourage in all community members a way of life characterized by mindful and sustainable living, health and wellness, zest for learning, high personal standards, and a concern for the welfare of others.

core/paragraph

At Berea College, we live and learn, simultaneously, together, inside and outside the classroom. In fact, our entire campus is a living-learning laboratory that teaches us to take care of ourselves, others, and the earth. The seventh Commitment is informally known on campus as the “kitchen sink” commitment, because it involves a holistic approach to improving how we live and behave on campus and on an individual level.

It means that we pay close attention to our impact on our environment and that we seek to reduce it. It means that as we take care of the earth, we take care of ourselves so we can be the best we can be. It means that we immerse ourselves in learning and seek to learn as much as we can our entire lives. And it means that we acknowledge we are not on this journey alone—we will need each other along the way.

field_62740bf0e7e38

acf/custom-quote

core/heading

core/image

When our Great Commitments were first articulated formally in the 1960s, the seventh Commitment utilized the phrase “plain living.” The phrase brings to mind living within one’s means, unornamented, in touch with the land, and with a sense of self-sufficiency. Plain living is quintessentially Appalachian, and reflective of rural values.

This way of doing things evokes pride in hard work, high personal standards, and concern for the welfare of your neighbors. All these elements of plain living came into play as John G. Fee and other founders set up the College. The conditions were rugged, and their goal of providing a quality education “at the least possible expense” to those who needed it most depended on the founders’ willingness to get their hands dirty and build it from the ground up.

But where they parted with the traditional rural values of the time was in their radical views on social issues, especially in respect to race and gender. A residential campus was established from the beginning, and students learned not only from instructors, professors, and books, but from each other. Men and women were expected to show society they could learn together without scandal. For the white and black students, who had never matriculated in society together, Berea meant learning to mend these rifts as well. They lived together, worked together, and went to church together, and by doing so became examples for the rest of society. Today, that example continues as students from “every nation and clime” still study together, work together, and live together in a tight-knit community.

Students over the decades have participated in a self-sufficient community. They have built College buildings, run bakeries and laundries, established and operated a power plant that supplied electricity for the city, performed campus maintenance, and managed financial accounts. The campus itself is a living and learning laboratory. As times change, so must language. What we used to call “plain living” is no longer enough. Again, the influence of industry and now everyday living and consumption has impacted not only our natural resources but our whole planet and our whole selves. To address this, we have broadened “plain living” to “mindful and sustainable living.” This means many things, but at its core it means being aware of your impact on the environment and reducing harm through personal standards and behaviors. It also means being aware of how your behavior impacts you and your neighbor.

This commitment is not just about living well—it is about living the best we can. Part of doing this is continuously keeping track of how we’re doing and seeking to continuously improve. This means we look for more ways to support a residential campus through themed living and student life initiatives; we pay closer attention to our health and wellness and encourage all in our community to do so as well; and that we reduce our ecological footprint more and more.

While all parts of the seventh Commitment are important, the environmental sustainability portion has never been more important. Impending climate change means we as a college community must serve as an example to the rest of the world of how to live sustainably. Our agriculture classes already take field trips to strip mining sites to plant trees, and spring of 2017 saw the opening of the <a href="https://forestryoutreach.berea.edu/">Berea College Forestry Outreach Center</a>, which will, hopefully, increase appreciation of our forested lands.

Our most ambitious and progressive project to date is the construction of a hydroelectric dam. The <a href="https://magazine.berea.edu/berea-in-the-community/the-first-lady-of-lock-12/">Matilda Hamilton Fee Hydroelectric Station </a>is the first hydro plant to be completed by an American college or university. It is also the first small hydroelectric plant built in Kentucky in 94 years. The small-scale demonstration project produces on average about half of the electricity the College uses on an annual basis, further reducing the school’s carbon footprint.

core/embed

field_card_stack_cards_title

Leandra Forman ’14 rescues squash. Squash that might otherwise go to waste. Forman, operations manager at Lexington-based Food Chain, works not only to redistribute the food into communities with food insecurity, but also to teach the community how to prepare it.

Leandra's Story 

The life of a Berean after graduation often leads to a career in community and/or public service, where the emphasis on high personal standards and concern for the welfare of others can translate to the changing of lives. Dallas Leake’s path led to just such a life.

Dallas's Story 

acf/card-stack

hide

Supportive & Sustainable Living

The German major and minor program can enable students to achieve a reasonable proficiency in listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. The program also introduces students to German literature and culture. Graduates have found their foreign-language education particularly useful in several professional and business careers including education, health services, and government.

acf/button-stack

core/spacer

German

Speaking a foreign language not only gives you a competitive edge on a global market and gives you access to better job opportunities and higher pay. It also helps slow down the aging process of your brain and allows you to make the best decisions and find creative solutions to problems. Here are just a few reasons why studying a foreign language is a worthy investment.

Knowing a foreign language will make you stand out on the competitive global job market in many industries. For example international corporations in tech and auto industries have a high demand for specialists speaking Asian languages, like Chinese and Japanese. Business and law also have a steady demand for foreign language speakers.

Interpreters and translators are among the top 5 fastest growing occupations in the United States, in high demand for a range of industries – from international corporations to medicine, from video games to sciences.

Have you wondered how much the investment of time into learning a foreign language is actually worth? Freakonomic and <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2014/03/language-study">The Economist have an answer</a>: the earning bonus for someone who knows more than one language averages about 2%, depending on the language.

This may not seem like a lot, but a lifetime compound adds up to about $70,000 extra savings over the course of your career ($128,000 for German, with the highest rate of return).

Learning a foreign language <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/10/more-languages-better-brain/381193/">keeps your brain healthy longer</a>. It protects against Alzheimer’s and dementia: even people who started learning a foreign language later in life were affected by these diseases later than monolinguals. People who speak a foreign language also have a better memory and attention span – because of the ability to switch between languages.

According to <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/bilingual-advantage-aging-brain">a </a><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/bilingual-advantage-aging-brain">New Yorker piece, </a> bilinguals are also better at task switching, more creative and have other cognitive advantages, like being able to make better decisions. Thinking in a foreign language slows down your automatic thinking, lets you focus better on long term outcomes and also boosts your creativity. A foreign language gives you access to different metaphors, different frames and cultural knowledge.

Knowing a foreign language also means you get to experience travel differently. You can access places that could otherwise go unseen. You can meet people different from you that you never would have imagined meeting. Most importantly, you can discover something new about your culture, your country and yourself in the process.