Christendom College has always valued fostering close bonds between faculty, staff, and students, extending beyond the traditional settings of the classroom. Each year, students are given significant opportunities to spend time with their favorite faculty and staff members, who welcome them into their homes for events such as auction dinners, soup nights, cooking classes, and more.
These personalized events are prime examples of the familial culture at Christendom, where students grow in knowledge and virtue alongside the college’s faculty and staff. The auction dinners in particular have been highly popular for years, with faculty and staff members, including College President Dr. Timothy O’Donnell personally welcoming and preparing meals for students in their own homes.
These dinners provide an opportunity for the students to not only spend time with beloved faculty and their families but also to enjoy delicious home-cooked meals. Funds from these events go towards the annual senior class gift and to the Shield of Roses pro-life club, making the events that much more significant.
Professor Carol Balint, who teaches French and Spanish at Christendom, hosts a Shire-themed auction dinner every year. Megan Okula ’24, who attended Balint’s dinner this past semester along with ten other senior girls, greatly enjoyed this special interaction with this professor and her family.
Auction dinners have been highly popular for years, with faculty and staff members personally welcoming and preparing meals for students in their own homes.
“I thought it was a great way to interact with a professor and their family outside of the classroom setting,” Okula shares. “Sharing a meal between professor and student I think helps us further cultivate the community we have at Christendom.”
During Lent, faculty and staff also host soup nights in their homes for the student body, promoting community during this holy season. This year, ten groups of staff and faculty hosted soup nights with over 120 students participating. English professor Dr. Kathleen Sullivan and Director of Student Activities Marilyn Charba hosted one of those soup nights for students, seeing this initiative as indicative of Christendom’s tight-knit culture.
“I especially love this type of initiative because of how indicative it is of the welcoming culture we have at Christendom,” Charba says. “It’s amazing to be surrounded by fellow staff and faculty who are so open to getting to know the students and welcome them into their homes and families.”
Another faculty member, Professor Sharon Hickson, has welcomed students into her home for numerous events, including auction dinners, soup nights, and discussion sessions. She sees these events as opportunities to grow closer to the students and challenge them in their formational journeys.
“We sometimes talk about issues they are challenged by; we share stories and laugh at each other and ourselves,” says Hickson. “I am touched to see their hearts and their souls, their hopes and sometimes their wounds, and I suppose that, in my home, it is as a Mom that I embrace these wonderful young people. I especially cherish the evenings I have shared with the senior men and the senior women because I have known most of them for four years and have delighted to witness the fine young adults they have become; these occasions are always bittersweet since I have to bid farewell, once again, to some whom I have come to love as my own children.”
Christendom also offers opportunities for students to learn how to cook from its hospitable staff members. Vice President for Enrollment Tom McFadden hosts annual cooking classes for the senior men in his own home, teaching them how to make a variety of high-quality meals. For ten years, McFadden has taught the Senior Men’s Cooking Class, dedicating four nights each spring semester to different groups of senior men and teaching them valuable culinary skills while sharing post-grad plans and life advice.
Vice President for Enrollment Tom McFadden hosts annual cooking classes for the senior men in his own home, teaching them how to make a variety of high-quality meals.
McFadden believes that Christendom students not only have a much better chance of getting to know their professors and the college’s staff members on a personal basis than they would at a larger university, but it is also a crucial part of Christendom’s educational experience.
“It allows our students to see the faculty staff as mentors, as husbands and fathers, wives and mothers, and as real people trying to live a life of virtue in today’s secularized world,” says McFadden. “Having interactions outside of class with these great men and women of intelligence, virtue, and wisdom benefits our students in ways that cannot be duplicated in the classroom setting. These types of formative events can make a lasting impression on these young men, and allow them to truly flourish.”
Christendom College values personalized attention, which is why it keeps the student body size at the college intentionally low. This results not only in more one-on-one attention in the classroom but outside of it as well. Auction dinners, soup nights, and other similar experiences offer students a unique opportunity to learn from and be even more formed by the college’s faculty and staff, impacting students for the better.
Contributed by Samia Clerio ’24.