“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

“What are you majoring in?” and “What do you plan to do after you graduate?” are the two most common questions college students are asked. With the Coherence+ Summer Fellows program, 10 Geneva students delved deeper into two alternative questions.

“I think probably at its core, [the Summer Fellows Program] is a space to slow down and contemplate ‘What type of life do you want to live?’ and ‘What kind of person do you want to be?’ — and why those conversations matter,” says Assistant Dean of Calling & Career & Strategic Initiatives Krista Autrey, one of the facilitators of the program.

The Coherence+ Summer Fellows program is an eight-week leadership practicum where students investigate a weekly topic primarily through discussions and experiential learning that often involve traveling off campus to places such as the Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium or Washington, D.C. The topics range from themes such as “beauty and hope” to “justice” and are guided by a different faculty member each week. Students are selected via a written application and interview process and earn two credits for completing the full summer program. A grant made the program completely free for students and covers all housing, books, and travel supplies for the students.

Jamie Swank, VP and dean of student development, adds, “As a college, [we] desired to have learning laboratories, co-curricular programming that enhanced the learning that happened in our core curriculum.”

Henry Trevisan ’27, one of the 2026 program’s participants, says, “Nothing we did was really like traditional classroom learning. [It] just made for a really unique environment.

“I think probably the [wisdom module] camping trip that we did after the first week was one of my favorites and most memorable. [It was] the first big trip we all took together as a group… Saturday morning, basically from the time that we woke up until lunch, we practiced the discipline of silence. And so none of us talked to each other, at least in words, the whole morning. There was a lot of hand signaling and whistling. But that was just really fun to do. And I think you get to figure out ‘How do I communicate and understand people when we can’t actually talk to each other, and then go on a hike in West Virginia where we were camping?’”

Phoebe Nel ’29 was another student partaker of the program. She reflects, “A few of the themes that impacted me a lot [were] empathy, otherness, and created diversity, and work and rest that Autrey taught. Those two weeks were really eye-opening for me and kind of just took everything I knew and put it on its head. And it was really challenging, but in a good way. Wrestling with the topic “work and rest,” and how we should operate from a place of rest and not work to rest, how work is a gift and also not finding our worth in our work. That really challenged me mentally. Then the week after, it got put into practice because I actually had to rest that week because I wasn’t feeling well. That whole week I was forced to rest and I was like, ‘I want to do stuff!’ And [the others] said, ‘No, Phoebe, you can’t … Are you finding your worth in your work?’”

Henry continues, “We talked about themes like authenticity and self-awareness and something that was said is ‘the bridge to get from self-awareness to authenticity comes through self-acceptance.’ We did a lot of reflection on ourselves, and, you know, being able to accept the things about us and accept the way God created us, knowing that He designed with intention. If we can live into that and live into who He’s called us to be, then we can be more authentic people, [which resulted in me] having more confidence. It really helped having other people who are wrestling with the same thing, but also being really supportive of each other in that.”

Phoebe agrees about the Summer Fellows program. “It’s life changing. It stretches you out and it grows you. Something we did over the summer was we worked out a couple of times a week. And when you work out, it hurts. …it’s good kind of pain, where I know I’m growing from this and I know that it’s making me stronger.”

The Summer Fellows program was like strength training for the soul.

“That was what I felt the whole program,” Phoebe continues. “We wrestled with so many deep topics and such difficult conversations that it was like, this hurts, but you know it’s strengthening you and you know it’s stretching you out and it’s making you into a better person … it kind of puts you into the reality is of the world as well and how to live it.

“It opens up a new world in a way. For me, specifically, [going to DC to visit] the Capital building, [I thought], ‘Whoa, this is where politicians and people meet and affect 300 million people or more in the world’ … going to the Native American museum or the Holocaust museum … it was so amazing but also hard to grab those concepts, between justice and power week. …how can I navigate life through this idea of loving others and giving up what I have for them or helping serve justice in small ways to other people as well.”

Henry adds, “I think the final thing was just knowing that these are conversations that are going to take a long time to really live out. It’s an eight-week program, but this is just the launching pad in a sense where we can start to have these conversations, but it doesn’t end here. Something we talked about the very last week is having resilience and the ability to slow down and really take our time with things. We all discovered that we can continue to come back to these conversations. We know that we can come back to them 10, 20 years down the line [and] reference the stuff we did here, and be able to continue to grow through it.”

Henry concludes, “My life is much deeper and broader than I could have ever thought. Just diving into Scripture deeper as well in some of the things that we’ve done … reading through Genesis 1-3, doing that three times over and just really sitting in it. [This program] helped me to be just okay with not always having a simple answer to things, recognizing that God can work through that.”

On her final thoughts of the program, Phoebe concludes: “So fun, but it’s life changing.”