So Macalester has changed your life. Here you’ve begun to learn what’s really important, to you. You’ve begun to reconcile what’s valuable enough to struggle for, and what’s not. And you’ve begun to think, “What’s next?” What will life after Macalester be like? How will you shape a meaningful working life based upon those things you’ve come to value so highly?

Examining these questions is the goal of this year’s symposium, “Committed Living: Life, Work and Values after Macalester.” The event will bring together people of many walks of life—a filmmaker, a graphic artist, a singer, a journalist, a scientist, a rabbi, an entrepreneur, scholars, labor organizers, alumni and students—to talk about their own ethical compasses and how they have used them to shape their working lives.

Highlights will include a keynote address by Andrew Delbanco, a Columbia University comparative literature and humanities professor, recently named Time’s Social Critic of the Year. Delbanco has written widely on questions of ethics and society, and his most recent book, The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope, investigates how Americans have organized their lives, both effectively and ineffectively, in order to make sense of the pain, desire, pleasure and fear that human experience brings. In his talk, he will focus on the power of the marketplace to influence our decisions and our lives. For those entering the workforce, acquisitiveness and competition too frequently eclipse other philosophical and religious values, including that of the greater good. In his words, “If we fail to contribute some good beyond ourselves, we condemn ourselves to the hell of loneliness.” Yet Delbanco remains hopeful, convinced that our society remains desirous of transcendence and that we continue to search for existence and identity constructed outside the symbolic power of the marketplace.

Other sessions during the symposium will allow students to sit down with people who have committed themselves to work that expresses their most deeply held values. One session will feature three artists or activists who use their work to engage in a variety of social issues. One of these artists, Ricardo Levins Morales, of the Northland Poster Collective in Minneapolis, has designed the poster that announces this symposium. His image of life’s journey as a sailboat in which the sailor is guided by a compass illustrates our intention to aid students in setting their course.

One session, featuring religious studies scholars, a rabbi and a journalist, will discuss the importance of rest within a committed working life. Another will examine the lives of three Mac alumni who work in the labor movement. Jon Beckwith, a noted geneticist, will deliver a lecture discussing the ethical dilemmas he sees in the recent advances in genetics, a lecture that will be co-sponsored by the Jardetzky Lecture in Science and Ethics. Two student panels will be presented, one featuring the summer research projects funded by the Lilly Project in the areas of work, ethics and vocation, and the other featuring stories of students who have altered their intended paths due to a variety of experiences.

The final session, Saturday morning, will focus on socially responsible entrepreneurship in the restaurant industry. Judy Wicks, the founder of the noted White Dog Café in Philadelphia, has used several strategies to improve her workplace, including paying workers a living wage, using locally produced organic foods and engaging customers in volunteer projects.

Will attending this symposium change your life? Probably not. But it will help you connect with a variety of people who are a bit further along the journey of “committed living.” Knowing how they have charted their courses can only help as you begin to chart yours.

Symposium schedules are available at the Information Desk in the Campus Center or online at www.macalester.edu/lillygrant/programs/symposium.html. All sessions are free and open to the public. Join us!