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As a practical requirement, some divinity students must take a 4.5 in business school.
Alex Ori
Staff Reporter
Look at the heart
In the year In 2017, Andover Newton Seminary transitioned from a sole professional school on the outskirts of Boston to an affiliate of Yale Divinity School. During the move, Sarah B. Drummond ’93, ANS founding dean at the Divinity School, had one guiding question in mind: How could the seminary take advantage of the new fellowship it now calls home?
One answer was found in the seminary’s neighbor, the Yale School of Management. Andover Newton students are now required to take 4.5 credits in the business school to complete their degree, making Andover Newton the first seminary in the country to require all students to take a business course. News spoke about the special relationship with professors and students that began in 2018 and is approaching its five-year anniversary.
“When we were at Newton, we didn’t have a SOM,” Drummond said. “Actually, no one else has a SOM — because our school of management is world-renowned for leadership education in a variety of economic sectors. It’s not a place where you just get an MBA and just work in finance or just work in business.”
Andover Newton—unlike divinity schools in general, where students want to enter a variety of fields after graduation—is focused on service in local faith communities. According to Drummond, such a leadership role requires extensive knowledge; Their responsibilities include not only religion but also payroll, insurance and other business matters.
Understanding that ministers are leaders and managers in their own right, Drummond believed that requiring students to receive training at SOM would be beneficial to their education. Others agreed—when Drummond consulted with alums, she found that the more successful her ministers were, the more supportive they were of the business school’s standards.
At the same time, members of the SOM community were looking for new perspectives in their own classrooms. When management professor Raphael Duguay joined SoM three years ago, he was tasked with teaching “how to measure social impact” and wanted to open up the course to students from other vocational schools.
Duguay has taught students from the Yale School of the Environment and Yale Law School, but said he found the Divinity School students to be “very special.” When looking at an issue, SOM students are primarily concerned with ethical business questions, while divinity students focus on the intrinsic morality behind certain decisions.
“[Divinity School students] Don’t tend to focus on things like litigation risk for a given move or public relations implications. [business decisions] They’re considered bad,” Duguay said. “Their concern is, what if we’re doing something wrong internally as opposed to right? There is something about divinity school students that has this internalized notion of right and wrong or good and bad.
Duguay’s class structure is largely built around case studies in which students analyze nonprofit organizations.
Like Duguay, Andover Newton students bring a unique empathy to these issues.
“One of the traits or characteristics that these students have is this closeness to the general public,” Duguay said. “When we talk about the type of people in nonprofits, we’re talking about people who are struggling in life. YDS students have a good understanding of these people’s needs, their reality.
I’onli Hal DIV’22 was a rector in a church in North Carolina before coming to the divinity school. As an Andover Newton Seminary student at YDS with an interest in business, Hal “lost count” of how many SOM classes he took.
As a divinity school student, Hall recognized two different approaches.
“It was really a different mindset, thinking about the bottom line and profitability, knowing that’s the main driving force,” Hall said. “[That,] Serving God, and making the world a better place, loving people well and answering those existential questions. It is definitely a mindset shift that needs to take place. And that can be a little overwhelming to step from one area to another.
As Executive Pastor, Hall is involved in financial management, logistics and managing the business of the church.
After completing the requirement, he said the courses offered at SOM helped him think critically about service practices and question assumptions.
“I think a lot of times, we separate spirituality from other areas of our lives,” Hall said. “I think spirituality is a part of life, of the moment. Spirituality informs the way we live. And if we’re truly connected to spirit, we allow that to inform the way we make decisions, whether it’s business or family, whatever we do.”
The Over Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School was founded in 2017.
Alex Ori
Alex covers campus politics. She is a freshman majoring in English at Trumbull College.
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