Maybe it’s the classes, or other work or maybe a tough breakup. There are many ways college life can be stressful and transformative, beyond simply the steps it takes to get a diploma. To help students cope, there is a team of chaplains positioned strategically around DePaul to walk students through those challenges in a spiritually productive way.

“A chaplain serves the spirituality of students, faculty and staff,” said Katie Brick, director of the University Ministry’s Office of Religious Diversity.

So far, chaplains are attached to three of the colleges within DePaul, and the two main campuses have full-time chaplains working with students. Different religious groups also have on-staff representatives that work closely with the university on issues of spirituality on campus.

However, as an increasing number of students reject traditional notions of religion, the university ministry is learning in stride how to best serve the spirituality of students. And, in many ways, DePaul is breaking new ground nationally on working with non-religious students.

“An increasing number of students are coming in undeclared, or spiritual but not religious, or just non-religious,” Brick said. ”University Ministry as a whole feels very compelled from a Vincentian perspective to serve them, and support their spiritual path, which may not be a religious path.”

DePaul takes its Catholic identity very seriously, but its mission and values shaped around St. Vincent DePaul emphasize meeting students’ personal needs foremost.

“Most Catholic schools embrace supporting the spirituality of non-Catholics, and most Catholic schools have a certain percentage of non-Catholics. DePaul and a handful of other schools have decided to hire in-house chaplains to minister to different religious traditions,” Brick said. “There’s a space for that carved out here that can’t be carved out at other schools.”

“(Chaplains) care for students holistically. So in addition to making sure they’re academically successful, or have friends, we want to make sure they’re engaged in a meaningful conversation as part of their academic experience here at DePaul,” said Quang Luu, coordinator for residence hall ministry. “We’re educating the mind as well as the heart, and I think that’s very Vincentian.”

While DePaul is very open to serving students of all religious backgrounds, it still doesn’t want to reject its own identity. Rather, it chooses to build off of it.

“We want students to understand the Vincentian tradition in a way that doesn’t hide the fact that St. Vincent’s commitments were specifically based in an understanding of Christian tradition and following the example of Jesus, (sic)peace be upon him,” said Abdul-Malik Ryan, DePaul’s Muslim life chaplain and associate director of religious diversity. “At the same time, we’ve found people who aren’t religious or aren’t Catholic find meaning in the work of St. Vincent and Vincentianism.”

“I feel that DePaul’s chaplaincy program has a strong aura of Vincentian hospitality,” Brick said. “We try to invite people from a broad spectrum of beliefs, and sometimes that is harder.”

DePaul’s chaplains do this in many ways, with programs like Midday Meditation at the Ray every Thursday at noon, or a program called “Get Deep” that invites students to answer introspective questions.

“I’m a religious person, so I believe there’s this great need for beyond just the human body, or what you can sense. I believe in the ineffable, and I believe that a lot of people yearn for that,” Brick said. “Some people who aren’t religious find that in beauty or art or relationships.”

The chaplains fulfill this mission best, perhaps, by building those personal relationships.

“I think students who are exploring meet with me one on-one-to have conversations looking further in depth about what is it they are longing for, what is it that resonates at this moment in your life,” said Luu, who most often reaches students through referrals from Resident Directors.

“Recently, there was a student that had a friend who took their own life, so the RD referred the student to me, saying that I’m available to talk to … I’m not sure if they’re always looking for a spiritual perspective, but if they’re open to it, I always try to bring that lens to it.”

“We do pastoral presence, we have relationships with people, we get called on in times of crisis, like if there needs to be a ritual or memorial service,” Brick said. “We’ll do hospital visits, so we do a lot of the typical stuff that chaplains do.”

“I have attended funerals of students’ families who have passed away, and I’m always there for when students get in legal trouble, so I call and check up, make sure everybody’s doing okay,” said Matthew Charnay, DePaul’s Jewish student life coordinator.

“The chaplains are safe people to talk to, and they’re not going to try to proselytize you into something,” Brick said. “We’re more into exploring and meeting you where you are.”

Sometimes, though, the chaplains are called upon to resolve conflict on campus because they bring a spiritual perspective with them, instead of a political one.

“I’m here to be a spiritual leader, not necessarily a political leader, so I have to represent every student on campus,” Charnay said. “We try to turn things that are difficult to understand, and might be particularly volatile, into a learning opportunity.”

Many of those challenges are rooted in ethnic or racial perspectives on spirituality, and the difficulties students have with their own identities when interacting with someone different from himself or herself.

“I’m always trying to check people at the door as to whether people feel unsafe or uncomfortable,” Charnay said. “Those are two very different things.”

“How does one lead a religious community where the race seems to trump or guide activities of the faith experience?” Rev. Keith Baltimore, DePaul’s Protestant chaplain who mostly works with African American students, asked.

“Matthew, Abdul-Malik, and myself are in a very similar boat,” Baltimore said, referencing how ethnic identity is so often based around religious identity, especially in Judaism, Islam, and some Christian traditions.

“We, as religious people, are taught that it’s the reverse — you want who you are spiritually to guide who you are in the other aspects of your life,” said Baltimore.

As such, he suggests students make the best of DePaul’s diversity to shape their own, unique perspective on spirituality.

“One year, a student comes in and they’re super excited and hyper about their religious tradition, and then the next year they want to distance themselves, and we get that. In fact, I actually encourage it,” Baltimore said.

“I encourage testing the religious tradition a student has been raised from and in. Sometimes you have to separate from it, and look at it from a distance, seeing all of the other things before you make gradual steps back … we guide students through that process, wherever it leads.”

This approach often raises eyebrows among many conservative religious leaders, but there are few better ways to make certain a person is assured in their personal spirituality in such a diverse, urban setting as DePaul.

“We are confident in our mission, we are confident in the role that religious diversity plays in our mission,” Ryan said.

“There is something about DePaul being a faith-based school, where the idea of God, religion, the Divine, the ineffable, is permitted here in a way that I find very freeing, and very supportive of a wide variety of religious traditions, people just exploring, or non-religious,” Brick said.