CAMPAIGN PRIORITY
The experience of every Salve undergraduate student will be enhanced through the Salve Compass, our four-year hands-on program that will distinguish us from our peers, increase the value of a Salve degree and prepare students to thrive in an ever-changing world.
A signature expression of the Salve Compass program, the new Learning Commons will provide comprehensive services for students throughout their Salve journey. Like the Salve Compass program itself, the Learning Commons will guide students from academic advising to career services, from internships to civic engagement. Located on the first floor of McKillop Library, the Learning Commons will become a crossroads where students connect their academic goals, their personal values and their learning experience on and off campus with their professional ambitions and career and life goals.
The Salve Compass program will integrate our longstanding strengths: student-faculty research, experiential learning, and community partnerships. Together, they provide opportunities to learn from hands-on experience as students apply their research and knowledge in communities near and far. Through a Compass Summer session in Newport, every Salve student will participate in project-based learning that collaboratively addresses a pressing issue or critical concern facing our world. Community-engaged learning courses linked to their major or interdisciplinary minor will enable students to bring high- impact experiences into the classroom as they partner with local businesses and nonprofits for internships, service, and cultural immersion.
In their first year of college, students are exploring and discovering their purpose, their place at Salve and how their educational journey can help them to make a difference in the world. The Salve Compass first-year retreat will invite students to reflect on who they are and consider how their gifts, strengths and story can contribute to the building of a more harmonious, just and merciful world. The first-year retreat will give students the opportunity to connect Salve’s mercy-inspired mission with their life mission and develop habits of reflection and discernment to guide their future.
Introducing a new signature program – and carrying it forward – requires new people and new resources. In developing the Salve Compass program, we will build a team of professionals dedicated to each student’s success: Advisors to accompany every student; a community liaison to secure relationships with local businesses and organizations; facilitators to help students deepen their connection to our mission; and career coaches to provide mentorship and support. The campaign also will provide resources for training student mentors, coordinating leadership development programming and securing transformational plenary speakers.
