Letter From the Director

As I reflect on the Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing’s 30-year history, one word comes to mind – gratitude. It has been the honor and privilege of my lifetime to serve as the Center’s founder and director. I have often been asked what has contributed to our success, and without a doubt, my response is – the Center attracts REALLY GOOD people. Over the years, faculty and staff have been drawn to the Center’s vision and mission.

In this supportive environment, they have flourished both personally and professionally. Many have found space to be creative and to pursue novel work that meets community needs while nourishing their own spirits. Some expected to stay in a job for a year or two, and instead found careers that have spanned a decade or more! At the Center, we have always shared an expectation that to remain relevant, we must continually evolve – in what we teach, how we teach, the type of research we conduct, how we adapt to technology, and how we serve the community. It makes for a dynamic, sometimes hectic, and ever-changing environment for those who work at the Center.

Throughout the years, we have attracted many REALLY GOOD students who are eager to explore perspectives beyond their primary field of study at the University of Minnesota. I remember receiving a letter, slipped under my office door, from a graduating PhD student. In it, she shared that a Center course she had just completed was the most important class she had taken during her entire academic journey. The course helped her reflect on her life, gain perspective, and clarify her future direction. Although I had not taught the course myself, she wanted me to know how deeply the Center was shaping students’ lives.

The Center has also attracted REALLY GOOD and special donors. It takes a leap of faith to invest in a brand-new organization that has high aspirations and an unproven track record. In the early years, Bill and Penny George, Ruth and Bruce Dayton, and Earl Bakken provided the lift under our wings, which enabled us to soar and establish a solid track record of outcomes and impact. We continue to use philanthropy to fuel innovation 
and accessibility.

The Center also has thrived within a REALLY GOOD university. From the earliest days, the University of Minnesota embraced what other institutions may have seen as superfluous or irrelevant. Senior administrators systematically removed barriers and made it possible for us to become an independent, entrepreneurial engine designed to do good in the world through our teaching, research, and community engagement. During a particularly tough budget year, Dr. Frank Cerra, who at the time was the Senior Vice President for Health Sciences, advised me that the Center could grow as much as we wanted - we just needed to be entrepreneurial and find ways to fund the growth. We should consider what we received from the University as most vulnerable and what we earned on our own as the most stable. It was the greatest piece of advice I was ever given by a University leader. 
This framework became an opportunity and an imperative to be outwardly-focused and to really understand the needs of those we intended to serve.

I am so excited about what’s on the horizon as we are in the process of creating our strategic plan for the next 5 years. We are doing this planning in parallel to the University of Minnesota’s strategic planning process, which will create a vision for the state, nation, and world. The tag line for the University’s strategic plan is “The future belongs to the BOLD.” That describes well where we have been at the Center and where we are headed. So stay tuned! Many exciting ideas have already emerged in our own planning process, which will build upon our successes and lead to even greater impact.

Thank you for the many ways you have supported our work. 
Stay close - we will need your input going forward. 
In Gratitude – Mary Jo