Building Character and Getting Paid for It

This summer I was asked if I would be interested in becoming a Wendt Mentor. Now, to be asked to become a Wendt Mentor as a staff person is a pretty prestigious thing. Typically it's an honor reserved just for tenured or tenure-track full-time faculty, so of course, I jumped at the chance to come on board. The Wendt Center on our campus is a well-funded character building initiative started by a generous donation by friends of the university, and it's designed to work with the entire campus community to educate individuals about integrity, honesty, character in everything that we do. It is supposed to influence the entire campus and how we live out our lives both on and off campus. 

The idea of a center such as this is a brilliant one. Provide opportunities for the community to learn about, talk about, and read about all sorts of character-based issues, and the community will take those opportunities and grow. And I would even argue that the Wendt Center has positively impacted this place. But there is a strange dichotomy that exists within the center itself that I'm struggling with. As a mentor, I get paid to work with students that also get paid to build their character. Doesn't that just sound strange? 

There is a group of students on campus known as the Wendt Character Scholars, a group made up of students that apply, interview, and are selected to the program, and then receive a scholarship for their academic year commitment. But "scholar" is a bit of a misnomer, as they don't actually produce any sort of scholarly work within the program (a reflection paper or two does not a scholar make), and they are not required to reproduce any of the information (in the form of exams, poster projects, etc.). They attend weekly meetings with a lecture and discussion component and complete a required amount of community service. 

These students are great students. They are students that want to be there, that want to do service, that want to discuss issues and learn and grow. And I know that this program is changing the lives of some of the individuals that are a part of the program. Some of them look at life completely differently than before their time with the Wendt. But I wonder, what would the program look like if it was not offered as a scholarship...as in monetary scholarship? And what would it look like if the mentors were unpaid? And what if there was some sort of actual scholarship required...as in production of scholarly work? Would people take advantage of the opportunity to do scholarly work, learn about themselves, and grow as individuals? Would it feel like an elite group of students? Would it even survive? 

For me, I signed on before I even knew there was a stipend involved. Is the stipend nice? Certainly. Would it have affected my decision? No. Would everyone be able to say that? I don't know. So, I feel slightly stuck, stuck in an undecipherable dichotomy between enticement and actual benefit.

Despite the place I have found myself in this program, I am still very much looking forward to being a part of it. I enjoy my small group, and I think we're going to be able to dig in deep to all sorts of topics. And I know without a doubt that I'm going to learn a lot from them rather than the other way around. The topic for the year? Grace and Gratitude. And I have to say that I will need to do some personal reflection on what these two have in common, what they mean, how they apply to my life just as my students will have to. But that's another post for another time. For now, I'm just eager to see how in the world this all plays out.