Our Faculty

 Through service-learning, higher education and communities see one another as creative resources that inspire vision and action for positive change. Each semester, the picture becomes clearer: art sustains us and we sustain the arts.

                                                                --Lynn Sondag, Assistant Professor/Chair, Department of Art

Service-learning makes my religion classes
more meaningful to me and my students because
it helps us apply the religious values we are
learning/reading about to the community where we live.

One of the best ways that I have found to get students excited about science is to have them actually do science.  Service-learning provides opportunities to experience hand-on science in a meaningful way.

                                                                --Lindsey Sullivan, Instructor, Natural Science and Mathematics

My tax students gain valuable insights and appreciation for the honesty and integrity of lower income taxpayers of all ethnic groups who use Tax Aid's income tax preparation services. They also learn how the tax law affects people of all income levels.

                                                  --Dan Jordan, Instructor, Business

Working with community groups organizing for economic and social justice helps students to understand what it means to do an “ethics from the margins.”  Listening to voices that are not often heard assists them to critically analyze what strategies will actually empower people, and getting to know people within dis-empowered communities encourages them to work in solidarity with these communities to promote just political and economic structures.

                                                       --Laura Stivers, Associate Professor, Philosophy

Service is truly a text in my Literature of Gender Subcultures Class. Students say, write and continuously demonstrate that in the service the literature comes alive in unexpected ways.  Service teaches things that I cannot. Service is not abstract. It’s messy and complicated and fun and tiring and enlivening, just like life. Service is real.

                                                                  --Thomas Burke, Assistant Professor Term, English

Taking college freshmen back to high school to address the achievement gap and education inequity not only informs their essays but also enriches their educational experience.  Service-learning in Expository Writing engages students from the start and can shape their future goals.

                                                   --Caroline Hanssen, Instructor, English

How do ideas, theories and historical documents become real? When our own experiences connect us with these ideas, theories and history and they become incarnated in our lives of service.

 For me philosophy is about connecting thinking to action.  As noted by Paulo Freire, "There is no knowledge without practice". I cannot imagine teaching Philosophy or Ethics without having the students actively living these ideas in the community.         

                          --Julia van der Ryn, Assist Professor Term, Humanities
                                                          Service-Learning Director

Service-learning provides an opportunity to reflect on the deeper root causes of unsolved public issues related to course content, while participating in meaningful action toward their solution.  I have partnered with local community gardens and groups that support healthy food and activity environments in our local schools to provide a chance for my students to literally roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty while learning about the complexities of creating food and activity environments that improve health.  This dynamic learning process engenders a new level of insight about personal, public and global health issues and a compelling awareness of the impact of every day choices on health that would not happen in a classroom.

           --Lynne LoPresto, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Health & Natural Science            

Ethics has to be lived, embodied. More than that, at the heart of ethical response is the capacity to be moved by another – and that cannot be programmed. But service-learning provides a platform for encountering people we might not otherwise have noticed. It lets us try out specific values and structures and behaviors. Then when we come back to the classroom, the ethics conversation is more lively and focused. 

                                                                --Bonnie Howe, Instructor, Philosophy

Spiritual and religious dimensions of ethnic cultures are difficult to talk about without actual experiential contexts. Service-learning provides great opportunities for students to participate in the activities and lives of fellow citizens with a wide range of social, economic, cultural, and ideological locations. It not only allows the students to better understand the globalized world they live in, but also for them to reflect on who they are as individuals and as members of the greater collective.