Not your daddy's college course!

Why ASP can be a little surprising -- a look inside the program with the director...

She wrote wondering if she should attend ASP after all.  A semester away was going to cost more than she thought.  She wasn’t sure what she was getting into.  Was it worth it if she simply ended up with a cool Washington, DC visit and a few more poli sci credits?  Here’s a brief version of what I wrote back…  

First, ASP is a project-based, interdisciplinary, issue-oriented program that expects you to make tough choices in the vortex of national and global decision-making.  It’s American studies that puts you in the middle of things while you explore the meaning of the gospel for contemporary American life and global responsibility.   

•  It gets you into the city where you talk face-to-face with Washington decision-makers.  The program starts with breaking public events and tough leadership questions.  But it doesn’t end there.  ASP asks you to shape your own field projects on selected public issues. 
• You read widely and discuss diverse ideas from various fields, such as politics and history, business and economics, policy science, sociology, biblical studies, ethics and theology.  It is not simply a political science or business course.

Second, your ASP internship is an exploration into your response to God’s call on your life.  It may advance your prospective career path and help you get a job after graduation.  If so, we’ll be glad.  But honestly, that’s not even close to the major reason for the internship. 

• Vocation is more than a job or career.  We see it involving your emerging awareness of who God wants you to be, not just do.  It may include a special call for you to advance God’s kingdom in a specific arena of service, but it always involves who you are becoming.
• Vocation is response to God’s call to faith and obedience.  It thus includes sorting your passions, gifts, skills and interests.  Your internship provides a special opportunity for you to begin getting a little clearer picture of those things. 

Third, ASP doesn’t advance any particular ideology as being more Christian, whether political (conservatism? liberalism?) or socio-economic (capitalism? socialism?), neither is one career path honored here as being more spiritual than another. 

• ASP invites you to think in biblically informed ways about all kinds of political and socio-economic options, and all types of career paths. 
• We hope you leave here with a deeper understanding of your place in the world as a minister of Jesus Christ, whatever your eventual convictions or career. 

Finally, at ASP learning happens 24/7.  Though you spend time in the classroom, the best things you come away with may well be from your internship supervisor, or an interview with an official or business leader, or an apartment bull-session, or a downtown coffee shop conversation, or from simply sitting at the reflecting pool near the Lincoln Memorial.

• Some say ASP is one of their richest college semesters. Why?  Well, perhaps it’s because when we combine work and study, action and reflection, we come up against real-life questions. 
• Maybe it’s the buzz you get when you are ready to take responsibility for your own learning.  …or maybe it’s meeting Washington leaders and mentors who can rock your world.  …or perhaps it’s confronting surprising experiences to learn from other students.  …or maybe it’s making life-long friends.  …or maybe it’s discovering fresh ways to connect your biblical faith with real life.  …or maybe it’s finding new ways to put your gifts, interests or career hopes to work in the service of Christ's kingdom. 

I hope it’s one of these for you too.  All the best,

…Dr. Jerry S. Herbert, director