Tens of thousands of university students will arrive at UBC over the weekend, preparing for the start of the academic year on Tuesday. Many will be away from home for the first time and struggling to find their place among throngs of other students and boundless opportunities for extracurricular involvement.
When students peruse their choices at the first-day-back orientation festival, Imagine UBC, one of the tables will invite them to explore their spiritual side. The UBC chaplains, (officially, the University Multi-Faith Chaplains’ Association at UBC) will feature the variety of options for students to meet other people of similar theological orientation — or to explore something completely new.
Pastor Rich Carruthers has been on the UBC campus for 12 years as a chaplain affiliated with the Canadian National Baptist Convention. With his colleagues across the religious spectrum, he will be on hand Tuesday to let students know that there are study sessions, worship groups, social activities and fellowship opportunities for everyone who is interested. And that the chaplains are always available to discuss religion and, well, anything.
“The beginning of the school year is the most intensive time,” says Carruthers. “Getting to know new people, make new connections, reconnecting with people from past years. It’s exciting… There are usually several thousand students who are coming looking for a place to fit in on campus and UBC is a behemoth of a campus.”
Chaplains play multiple roles, he says. Sometimes students approach them for academic work, like pointing them in the right direction for an essay on a religious topic. They also coordinate activities for students in their own faith. And they are often called upon to listen and help when a student is in crisis.
In addition to Imagine UBC, chaplains spread the word at a variety of events, including those specifically for international students, for first years and for transfer students. As UBC and other post-secondary institutions have been recruiting madly worldwide, the number of international students has spiked and these students, depending on their place of origin, may be more likely to come from a religious background than the average North American student. They may be looking for find halal, kosher or vegetarian food, familiar rituals, a place to fit in.
Among Canadian students, statistics suggest this is the least religious generation ever — especially those from British Columbia, which is the least religiously affiliated place in the country. But Carruthers does not let stats dissuade him.
“When a student, especially from North America, comes to university, often they are leaving home for the first time and so that gives them greater freedom to investigate what they believe,” he says.
Over almost three decades on various campuses, he has also noticed a difference in students’ readiness for the big adventure of heading off to university and being on their own.
“One big factor that I’ve experienced is that, as more and more students have come from broken backgrounds, that they seem to not be as far along in an emotional way when they reach university and so there’s a lot of just basic kind of life learning that needs to take place,” he says. “Part of it is that more people have had no kind of spiritual background. But often when they get on to campus they begin to explore and look around and face different challenges in life and realize ‘maybe I should check this out.’ We’re here to help them in that exploration.”
Carruthers, who is originally from Illinois and who was raised in a Baptist family, decided to become a university chaplain after his own positive experience as a student, though he is careful to give credit first to the driving force.
“The short answer is God,” he says. Then: “I had such a good experience in university. I went to Eastern Illinois University, a small university in central Illinois, in farm fields. I studied psychology there but I connected with a couple of Christian clubs on campus and those kinds of relationships really helped my university life. I really enjoyed that setting. I really enjoyed meeting young men and women coming to campus who were open to study and explore.”
Carruthers and his fellow chaplains represent a swath of theological spectrum, including multiple types of Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, as well as Judaism and the Baha’i faith.
“All of the chaplains, I think, would agree that we think the spiritual dimension of life is very important.” Carruthers cites the university’s slogan and talks about how students should round out their college experience.
“The university has the theme of being ‘a place of mind’ and we want to fill that out and say a significant part of that is also the spiritual dimension of life… This is a particularly significant part of their health, their academic health, their emotional health and other parts of their life.”
