Student-Centered Learning
Bread for the Mind, Body, and Soul
The best way to students’ minds and hearts is through their stomachs. At least, that is what the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture (CEC) believes.
Thanks to an initiative by Jennie Bradley, a 2004 ND graduate, the CEC inaugurated “Breaking Bread” in the spring semester of 2004. The dinner event brings together professors, students, and guest speakers to discuss theology.
“In Jennie Bradley’s proposal for this event, she reflected on how Elijah found God’s presence – not in a great wind or in fire – but rather in ‘sheer silence,’” says Elizabeth Kirk, J.D., Associate Director of the Center. “She expressed the hope [that] at Breaking Bread, our relative ‘sheer silence,’ through low-key dinner, brief talk, and small-group reflection, will provide a venue through which God can really work.”
As if great food and conversation were not enough, Breaking Bread takes place in the Notre Dame Stadium press box. After participants greet over hors d’oeuvres, the guest speaker begins the evening with a short reflection on the theme. Students and professors are then left to discuss the theological topic as they enjoy their entrees.
“We usually have 14 tables, with a professor at each one, so students usually recognize at
least one of their professors among the guests,” says Greer Hannan, a sophomore theology and philosophy major and research assistant at the center. “The professor has the role of helping to direct the discussion towards the speaker’s topic so that students can think more deeply about it in relation to their daily lives.”
“Sometimes it seems like the distance between students and their professors is continually widening at the university,” says philosophy major Stephen Freddoso, who is also a center research assistant. “It’s nice to have an occasion for us to eat together and talk about what’s really important to our lives.”
All Breaking Bread topics explore challenging aspects of the Christian faith. Past themes have included “Forgiveness and the Challenge of Loving Enemies,” “Walking with Cleopas: Emmaus and the Theological Life,” and “Welcoming the Stranger: Hospitality in the Christian Tradition.”
Student center workers collaborate with center faculty to organize the event and invite the guest speaker.
“The speaker chooses the theme for the dinner,” says Hannan. “Oftentimes they pick a topic which they have written about and reflected on before, but it’s entirely up to them.”
To encourage future discussion among students and professors, participants receive complimentary copies of a book relevant to the evening’s theme.
“After four years as a Notre Dame undergraduate, there is no other campus event
that so fully embodies the Notre Dame mystique,” says senior Kate Wilson, a biology major and center tutor. “Celebrating the Christian tradition of gathering together to discuss issues of faith, the respect and friendship between professors and students, and the view of campus at sunset from within the stadium make this event one that every Notre Dame student should experience.”
The spring 2007 Breaking Bread dinner, titled “The Way of a Pilgrim,” took place on April 23, 2007. The guest speaker was Timothy George from Beeson Divinity School of Samford University.
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