Our visit to Azusa Pacific University started with some very productive and intense meetings where we discussed all things elearning, graduate attributes and student experience.  We were engaged (and always running overtime I might add) right up to and during lunch.  Dr Andrea McAleenan the Special Advisor to the President of APU and our host, was extremely gracious and accommodating in trying to get all the pieces to fit.  Andrea had done a wonderful job in organising leaders from different parts of the university to see us.

However just after lunch things didn’t go as planned and spontaneously Andrea informs us they had a surprise. She guided us across campus teasing us by not telling where we were going nor what was about to happen.  We entered a room which was quickly filling with 100 male students and we realised this was a choir and this was going to be a rehearsal. Well it started out that way with Harold Clousing the choir director guiding this “army of males” through some of the best men’s choir music I have ever heard.  Who said you had to be Welsh.

Part way through the “rehearsal” they suddenly regrouped in a circle around us and began to worship and sing to us. Everyone there could sense that this was something special and being delivered from a completely different level.  This quickly became food for the soul, everyone was visibly moved. Take time to to watch but more importantly listen to “100 of the best men on campus’ to quote Harold.  I spend a lot of time thinking about graduate attributes and what graduates will “look like’  … these students are fine examples of what is possible.