Paying It Forward
Students in last semester’s Women & the Bible course served in a tutoring program funded as the result of a successful grant application that had been written by their peers in another class just the semester before. The grant, written in Judaism & Christianity: The Holocaust, funded an after-school program for local refugees.
Both courses include service-learning components added by Kathleen Gallagher Elkins (Theology & RS) after the experience of teaching the Holocaust class left her feeling that the students needed something more. “The class is generally about the history and theology of the Holocaust,” she explains, “and the theological reflection on how we understand God’s role there; how we understand the failure of people in that kind of genocide. I thought it was a good class, but [the Holocaust] seemed abstract to them in a way, so I added the service-learning component.”
Students in the spring 2018 offering of the course were required to complete 20-plus hours of service with a local organization whose mission somehow related to the themes of the class. Partnerships included one with COMSA (Community Services Agency Inc.), which provides services to Somali refugees and other immigrant and refugee communities in the area. St. Norbert students assisted with the organization’s Women Empowerment program, joined the Global U-Knighters to host a Somali Culture Night at SNC and wrote grants. The COMSA grant was awarded just in time for students in Gallagher Elkins’ new fall Women & the Bible class to
COMSA’s
March 17, 2019