Rev. Alex Serna-Wallender, who has spent almost two years as the campus chaplain, reflects on his time at the College.
Would you mind introducing yourself?
I am Rev. Alex Serna-Wallander. I am the Henry J. Coplain Chaplain and director of the logistics of the spiritual life here at The College of Wooster. I use he/him/his pronouns.
Could you elaborate on your job description and day-to-day activities?
The chaplain holds what I find to be wonderfully different opportunities to serve this community, such as holding specific one-on-one conversations with students, faculty and staff and providing care and counsel in times of hardship and struggle. Simple things like helping people journey through questions, be it of spiritual or religious nature or just places of struggle. I also have the gift of being one of our confidential resources on campus. The other side is helping to encourage and support a vibrant spiritual life here on campus. That means making sure student groups have the spaces, resources and opportunities they need to live out their own faith traditions; helping students form new groups as they need or as there is a desire and making sure that we’re doing a multifaith program that bridges the conversation between groups; helping people figure out how they can incorporate a spiritual life into the work they are doing here but also into a holistic wellness; also, helping to connect the College with faith-based community partners in town and other needs of the College in special instances, for example, if a student passes away or is at the hospital. We ran specific programs out of the office of Religious and Spiritual Life such as Interfaith scholars and our break programs to Detroit.
What drew you to Wooster and working with Spiritual Life?
There is something about the small size of Wooster and the intimate way of life on campus here. We are a community together: students, faculty, administration. We make up this space, and there’s an exciting way of engaging with this community. It’s really beautiful. And there’s the aspect of how religious life is centered here on this campus and is integrated into larger conversation of diversity and inclusion and is in the mix of all that is going on in student life. In some other institutions, it’s off in some corner, but here it’s in partnership with multicultural students’ affairs, diversity and inclusion, civic rights and responsibilities. And so, it has really helped to create an intersectional approach to how students engage with spiritual life.
How are you able to take care of yourself while taking care of others?
It’s a privilege that people trust me with their journeys and part of their stories, and they invite me into that. That is a gift I do not take lightly, and I’m grateful for that. But you’re right; we need to find ways in which we do self-restoration well. For me, that’s journaling, spending time outside in nature, spending time in the mornings doing my devotion — a really powerful and quiet time of being in the present. When it’s not snowing outside like it is now, we have a beautiful labyrinth on campus, and so walking the labyrinth as a form of meditation. Just finding what brings me life. Sometimes those things change.
So when did you first come to Wooster?
July 2017. It has been a short time, and this Friday is my last day. I was not looking for a new position, but my alma mater, where my spouse and I met, invited me to be their next chaplain. Trinity University is where we are transitioning. But Wooster is a resilient community, and we’ve been working on making this transition a smooth one. I’m excited for the next person who will step into this role.
What are the main events on campus for the chaplain?
The biggest one is Baccalaureate during senior weekend. This is a multi-faith event that takes places the Sunday morning before graduation on Monday. It involves a team of seniors representing various traditions. It’s a whole service of reflections, mediations, music, poetry and dance in preparation for celebration of graduation. This has been going on for 105 years, but it looks different now. There are interfaith dinners, usually every Monday night. There is also Worthy Questions and the Interfaith scholars.
Is there anything you would like the Voice to let the Wooster community know?
To remember that you are bigger than what you do, that you matter and are valued for just being, and that your value is not tied up to your work in class or research. You as you are inherently valuable.
Interview by Jenelle Booker, a Contributing Writer for the Voice (Photo from Wooster.edu)