An Update from Provost Michael Carr
As provost, Dr. Michael Carr works closely with faculty, staff and students to support academic excellence at 萝莉社. Before joining us three years ago, he served as deputy provost at National Louis University in Chicago and brings a wealth of experience in scholarship and administration. With a doctorate in molecular biology from the University of Illinois at Chicago, he is passionate about advancing North Park鈥檚 mission and being a strategic partner to the president.听
What sets North Park apart from other institutions?
Our distinctives鈥擟hristian, city-centered, and intercultural鈥攕et us apart from other universities. If you look at others, they may have some of these elements, but none have all three together. There’s also a difference between words on a website and lived experience. When I first came to North Park, I liked the concept of the distinctives, but over the past three years, I’ve seen that students, faculty and staff genuinely live them out.
One example of us being city-centered is our Center for Civic Engagement, which we launched two years ago. Multiple elements go into the center, but one of the biggest is our students’s engagement with the city. This past year, more than 1,900 students worked with 85 community partners, and more than 100 courses were associated with experiential or service learning. That’s what being city-centered means. It’s not just being here and having a Chicago zip code; it’s having our students go into the city to learn and impacting the community with that learning.
That ties into us being a Christian university. It’s interesting to look at the current generation and see what faith formation means to them.
In the climate survey we administered last spring, students expressed wanting more opportunities to build their faith through service. In the context of Christianity, service often centers on helping our neighbor. Today’s students take it further to deepen and strengthen their faith journey.
Much experiential learning happens at faith-based organizations in Chicago, which also separates us from other institutions. There are many organizations with centers for civic engagement, but North Park has a dual approach: engaging our community while helping our students develop their faith.
We’re also starting to frame life after graduation as a vocation to students rather than a job. Yes, a career is part of it, but what is your life? What is the sum of the different elements of the life you’re building? That’s the language we’re starting to develop with our students.
How are faculty contributing to this?
A few studies have come out about where liberal arts education stands in today’s society. They have identified the type of individual positioning themselves for the highest career earnings: those who major in high-demand fields, like STEM, and have liberal arts skills.
Historically, employers said a bachelor’s degree was a proxy for soft skills. Today, employers expect more. They want demonstrated experience and skills rather than relying on a candidate’s bachelor’s degree as sufficient background. Our faculty realized this and launched an initiative called the Practical Liberal Arts, which examines the liberal arts and aligns them with career competencies.
Another study evaluated job postings’ desired skills and qualifications, concluding that they align with liberal arts. Employers want synthesis鈥攃an you gather multiple pieces of information, develop a coherent strategy, and communicate it? They want to know if you can de-escalate situations, navigate different points of view, build a consensus, and move forward. They want to see if you have a service focus. All these are rooted in the liberal arts, meaning they’re not obsolete skills. Instead, liberal arts institutions must better communicate the skills their students develop and how they present to employers.
Ten faculty members comprise the Practical Liberal Arts as fellows. They examine career competencies and build a framework our courses will map into.
Eventually, when students are in job interviews or constructing a r茅sum茅, they’ll know how to present themselves in a way that aligns with what employers want. We aim for students to develop a transcript and r茅sum茅 simultaneously, so they graduate from North Park with demonstrated experience.听
How has your perspective on North Park shifted over the past three years?
Throughout my career, I’ve always chosen to work at mission-based institutions. Looking at North Park from the outside, the culture of service and care is apparent, but you don’t understand its depth until you live it.
I’ve never been at an institution where the percentage of people who believe in its mission and students is this high. Our norm is investing in our students and caring about them as individuals, which has been significantly different for me. Our students know and feel it, too. If you talk to any student, they’ll say they love North Park, and a large part of that is our faculty’s approach in the classroom.
What鈥檚 an example of how North Park is directly impacting the community?
Another arm of the Center for Civic Engagement helps community-based organizations obtain funding. There’s an unfortunate distribution of charitable dollars, especially in Chicagoland. Public and private funds tend to go toward charities in high-income zip codes鈥攎oney often isn’t going where it’s needed.
We realized that nonprofit organizations in high-income zip codes can afford to bring in people to put together research studies, assess their impact, and create strategic directions. They can compile a compelling case statement to present to funders.
Knowing this, we decided to step in to help more community-based organizations. As part of their scholarship, some Psychology Department members work with Chicago nonprofit organizations to assess their programs and build case statements for funding. As a result, organizations are starting to receive grants with us as a partner.
We recently worked with Firehouse Community Arts Center, whose programming led to a 73% drop in violent crime in the affected neighborhoods. North Park’s Psychology Department provided the nonprofit with this assessment to determine productive versus unproductive programming, making it more effective for the community.