From Clinic to Classroom: Power of Experiential Learning

Abstract

In 1993, after working twenty years as a clinical pastoral counselor and edu cator, I became a full-time teacher in Department of Religious Studies of a small liberal arts college. My academic responsibilities involved teaching both traditional and nontraditional students, in graduate and undergraduate courses. As I prepared to teach, my intuitive sense was that strongest asset I brought to this work was my experience in clinical setting, as student, educator, and practi tioner. The challenge that emerged in my new role was how best to use that experi ence?without turning teaching into ther apy or classroom into clinic. As a third-year seminary student at University of Chicago in 1971,1 took my first unit of clinical pastoral education (CPE), a program that began in 1920s, under direction of Anton Boisen. Boisen, a Presbyterian minister then serv ing as chaplain at Worcester State Hospi tal in Massachusetts, together with Richard Cabot, a cardiologist at Harvard Medical School, founded Council for Clinical Training of Theological Stu dents, organization that ultimately became American Association for Clinical Pastoral Education (Stokes 1985; Thornton 1970). Drawing heavily on the methods of