Redeemer is a place of community. All around campus, different groups and clubs form and meet, revolving around common interests or beliefs or music tastes. The Mature Student’s Club is just like any other club, except that what binds its members together is not music tastes or interests or beliefs, but something else—their age. The Mature Student’s Club started in September as a place for those who are older than many of their classmates to meet and partake in the community that Redeemer is known for. Emily Fedusiak, who started the club with Karen Lyall, describes the club as “a place for fellowship, for meeting other mature students… To feel represented a little more, because they haven’t felt represented before.”
It was precisely this lack of representation in the student community that gave Karen Lyall the idea for the Mature Student’s Club, as Emily recounted from a conversation with her. “I was having a conversation with Karen late in the spring or early summer of last year, and she was telling me that she saw kind of a need for a club for mature students, or older students, and that she had several students come to her, independent of each other, saying that they don’t really feel like there’s much of a place for them at Redeemer, or they didn’t really feel represented.”
Redeemer’s marketing is not necessarily targeted toward older students. While other universities might market to entire populations, Redeemer’s marketing seems to be targeted toward high school students. First-years usually join Redeemer right from high school or just a few years past high school, which makes the student population seem relatively young. This can be daunting for those students who decide to join Redeemer later in life, after other university degrees or careers.
There are older students who enroll at Redeemer, and many have degrees from secular universities. What draws them to Redeemer is the Christian perspective on their chosen field, as is the case for Emily Fedusiak: “I wanted to get a social work degree, and I wanted to do it at a Christian school. And Redeemer was one of the few schools I could find in Canada that offered social work and was Christian.”
It’s hard to find a place on campus when your classmates are significantly younger than you. However, having a social place or club on campus is beneficial to any student, especially students who have moved away from home to go to Redeemer. “I was 28 when I started here, and I was like, that doesn’t really sound like something a 28-year-old would do, right? That’s more of an 18-year-old or a 20-year-old thing. So I kind of had to push past that fear. And then I was thinking oh, I don’t know what it’s going to be like socially. And am I going to be one of the oldest people at the school? Am I going to find like-minded people?”
The Mature Student’s Club is a place for older students to meet and share in the joys and struggles of being older than their classmates. They meet every other Monday and share devotions and conversations. Like other undergraduates, they share in Christian community, fellowship, and joy.