Month: April 2015

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to address an entire room full of the people who help make Community-Based Learning a viable program for students at Holy Cross.  I wrote this speech, which I’ve included below, not only to thank our community partners for the work they do, but to remind them of how this work contributes to our academic and personal growth.

If my four years here have taught me anything, it’s that college isn’t just about what you learn.  It’s about the person you become through your learning.

In that respect, CBL has been an invaluable aspect of my experience here at Holy Cross, contributing to both my academic and personal growth. Before I arrived at Holy Cross, social justice and community service were things I’d never really considered.

But now, as a graduating senior, social justice and community service have become integral to my identity as a student and as a citizen. Going out into the community and experiencing both the frustrations and the successes of treating social problems awakened in me a social consciousness developed otherwise.

Being able to forge a relationship with the Worcester community has shaped my college experience into one I’m proud of and excited by. Many Holy Cross students neglect to explore Worcester and claim it as their community. We tend to get wrapped up in the monotony of campus culture so that even when we do engage in community service, we do so with a level of distance.

Our objective is not to get to know the community and make its problems our own; our objective is to become more “well-rounded” by adding yet another item to our collection of commitments and responsibilities. We approach service with romanticized hopes of intimately touching the lives of those we (often condescendingly) deem to be “less-fortunate” than we are.

I’ll be the first to admit I initially became involved in service at Holy Cross for that very reason. It wasn’t until I unwittingly enrolled in a CBL course that the paradigm of service shifted for me. When I found out my Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies course would require me to go out into Worcester and try to determine how our course objectives played out in the real world, I was skeptical.

But as the semester progressed, I came to see the pedagogical value of observing theory in practice. For me, engaging in the community didn’t just illustrate the social problems and structural inequalities discussed in our course readings; engaging in the community broke down the “us/them” boundary many of my peers carefully maintain between ourselves and the Worcester community. Immersing myself in the community made theoretical problems and inequalities personal imperatives.

Through the relationship I’ve grown with the Worcester community, I’ve come to see Worcester not as a place I inhabit between vacations but as my home. I’ve come to see broader social problems as personal calls to action. I’ve come to see that theory and practice are never mutually exclusive things.

In the same way, I’ve learned that academic and personal growth often develop in positive feedback loops. As my academic objectives pushed me into the community, the community’s willingness not only to receive me but to teach me changed my personal perspective on social justice and community engagement. This new perspective then inspired a sense of urgency in my academic pursuits that continues to motivate me in questioning the ways inequality is constructed in our society.

So, if I can speak for my fellow Community-Based Learning students and Interns, on behalf of all of us, I’d like to thank the community partners who warmly and generously open up their doors for us. Thank you for taking the time to engage with us in such deep and inspiring ways. The impact you have on our lives stretches far beyond the four-year window of our time here at Holy Cross.

Thank you.

 

–Rachel E. Greenberg, ’15

By Michelle Sterk Barrett, Director of the Donelan Office of Community-Based Learning

There have been so many exciting events for the Donelan Office in the past week including: a welcome dinner where our new CBL Interns met the current Interns; the Vanicelli lecture by CBL Intern Jake Medina ’16;  the second Hidden Worcester Tour for faculty and staff led by Dr. Tony Cashman; a CBL faculty lunch where three CBL Interns (Cindy Nguyen ’15, Jenny Sipiora ’15, and Sarah Paletta ’15) shared their reflections about how community engagement impacted their intellectual and personal growth at Holy Cross; a fishbowl reflecting upon Volunteerism and Social Problems moderated by CBL Intern, Cindy Nguyen ’15 and SPUD Intern, Nick Cormier ’15; the Community Partner Reception sponsored by the College’s Community Engagement Committee; an evening reflection session led by three CBL Interns (Lauren Suprenant ’16, Jenny Sipiora ’15, and Kristen Kelly ’15) in conjunction with Bridget Cass and Isabelle Jenkins; an in-class reflection session led by Isabelle Jenkins and two of our CBL Interns (Shea Kennedy ’17 and Bridget Cullen ’17); and an article entitled “What is the point of service, really?” by Kathleen Hirsch on the Crux website that highlights my dissertation research.  Thank you to all who participated in making this a very successful and inspiring week!

While there were numerous remarkable moments within these events, I would like to highlight a few public comments made during the week that I thought were worth repeating in this forum.

Monday’s fishbowl, Volunteerism and Social Problems: Making Things Better or Worse?, included a critical look at  community service by the panelists (myself, Emily Breakell ’17, Sr. Michele Jacques from Marie Anne Center, and Nancy O’Coin from Quinsigamond Elementary School).  We considered the way in which service may perpetuate systemic injustice, strip dignity from those being “served,” or be burdensome to the organizations that host volunteers in an effort to ensure that we serve with greater intentionality, thoughtfulness, and understanding of community partner perspectives.  During the event I was asked what I consider to be “success” in our office’s work with students.  I responded, “At a minimum, I hope students will gain a deeper understanding of their course content through integrating theory and concepts with real world experience. Beyond this, I hope that students’ prolonged community engagement experiences (through CBL, SPUD, community work study, immersion trips, etc.) will lead to questions—questions around who society tends to blame for poverty and the related assumptions many hold about those living in poverty; questions around fairness and how systemic inequality perpetuates itself across generations; questions about what responsibility each of us has towards the common good. Ultimately, my hope is that through community engagement experiences and reflection upon those experiences, students will learn to think more critically about societal structures, act more compassionately towards those facing inequity, take greater responsibility for recognizing the role that all of us (often unintentionally) play in perpetuating injustice , and develop a commitment to staying engaged with the ‘gritty reality of the world’ for a lifetime.”

Wednesday’s community partner reception included a presentation from CBL Intern, Rachel Greenberg ’15 expressing gratitude to community partners for the ways in which she has been impacted by community engagement and CBL during her time at Holy Cross.  Within her speech Rachel made the following particularly powerful comments, “I’ve learned that academic and personal growth often develop in positive feedback loops. As my academic objectives pushed me into the community, the community’s willingness to not just receive me but to teach me changed my personal perspective on social justice and community engagement. This new perspective then inspired a sense of urgency in my academic pursuits that continues to motivate me in questioning the ways inequality is constructed in society.  So, if I can speak for my fellow Community-Based Learning students and Interns…I’d like to say thank you to the community partners who warmly and generously open up their doors for us. Thank you for taking the time to engage with us in such deep and inspiring ways. The impact you have on our lives stretches far beyond the four-year window of our time here at Holy Cross.”

At that same event, we honored Professor Mary Hobgood for her many years of teaching CBL courses and challenging students to think more critically about the ways in which our world marginalizes so many of our fellow human beings.  Isabelle Jenkins offered her reflections on how taking Mary’s class impacted her life trajectory in making the following remarks:  “Professor Hobgood reminded us, and continues to remind us through her scholarship, that the why is a critical component in addressing the systemic issues that we all tirelessly work to address. We all do this work because we desperately want to see the world as it should be. But Professor Hobgood, and her powerful voice, teaches us that in order to actually see our dream world come to be, we must also get at the root causes of why the world is the way it is right at this very moment. Why the world marginalizes more people than it brings to the center. Why the world shuts out the majority of its citizens. Why the world silences the voices that we most desperately need to hear…Professor Hobgood’s course was probably the hardest course I took here at Holy Cross, even harder than Organic Chemistry. This is because Professor Hobgood wasn’t afraid to make me and my fellow students uncomfortable. She wasn’t afraid to push the boundaries, to name the unnameable, to unveil the elephant in the room and force it to cry out. Professor Hobgood made me want to work harder, to read more, to write more, to use my voice in ways I had never used it before. She encouraged me to take on the world in an entirely new way: not only with my hands and my heart, but also with my head. She lit a fire under me that has yet to go out, that only yearns for oxygen to spread and to grow…I am positive that Professor Hobgood and her work has not only been an incredible gift to me, but to this campus, to the students who go out into the Worcester community week after week ripe with not only fantastic energy to serve, but also armed with that tiny but great question of ‘Why?'”