Continuing Education
As the 1980s drew to a close the Institute explored new avenues of fulfilling its mission: particularly in the area of continuing education. In June 1989, the organization sponsored a national symposium entitled: The Age of Gold: The Roots of Our Tradition. This event, which examined the French spiritual roots of the Vincentian tradition, took place at Saint Mary's of the Barrens in Perryville, Missouri. Two years later, in 1991, to mark the 400th anniversary of the birth of Saint Louise de Marillac, the Institute sponsored a second national symposium at Marillac Provincial House, Saint Louis, Missouri.
The next continuing education effort sponsored by the Institute began in June 1997. After extensive consultation, the membership determined that a pressing issue in contemporary Vincentian experience was mission-based leadership development. This led to the choice of the theme for the resulting national symposium: Vincentian National Leadership Symposium: Unfolding the Legacy of Our Mission. The effort proved so successful that the Institute repeated the symposium three times in November 1997, September 1998, and November 1999. This offering drew a wide representation from all branches of the Vincentian family. The organization is presently discerning a future direction for these Vincentian leadership development efforts especially in collaboration with the Hay Vincentian Leadership Institute at DePaul University in Chicago.
Evaluations of these programs have been uniformly high. A total of 459 members of the Vincentian Family have attended the six national symposia.
Recently, the Institute held a national symposium in Chicago for Vincentian archivists in conjunction with the celebration of its 25th anniversary in April 2004. The theme of the conference was Vincentian Archives for the 21st century: The Records of Our Past Look to Our Future.
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Famous quotes containing the words continuing and/or education:
“It is our continuing love for our children that makes us want them to become all they can be, and their continuing love for us that helps them accept healthy discipline—from us and eventually from themselves.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)
“It is not every man who can be a Christian, even in a very moderate sense, whatever education you give him. It is a matter of constitution and temperament, after all. He may have to be born again many times. I have known many a man who pretended to be a Christian, in whom it was ridiculous, for he had no genius for it. It is not every man who can be a free man, even.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)