Loyola seniors graduate from service experience

This May, Loyola will celebrate the graduation of seven students from the Service Leadership Program, which provided them with an academic experience focused on social justice and community service.

The graduating seniors are Jill Eckart, Paul Giletta, Beth Giordano, Ben Gruswitz, Kevin Kmiec, Leila Mojibian and Shannon Simmons. These students will receive special acknowledgment on their transcripts to mark their successful completion of the Service Leadership Program, but more importantly, they will leave Loyola with valuable skills that will help them make decisions and shape their futures.

"This program ties together classroom course work with experiences of the community," said Dr. Sandra Gooding, director of service learning.

"It emphasizes social justice and develops leadership skills with an eye on using those skills for the good community," she said.

The Service Leadership Program began at Loyola in the spring of 1999 when the Introduction to Service Leadership course was offered to introduce students to the methods and goals of service leadership.

Kmiec participated in a variety of volunteer programs with his service-leadership classes, including involvement with the Keswick Adult Day Care Center, Care-A-Van, Children United by Beans and Bread (CUBB) and the Caroline Center.

"My motivations for becoming a part [of this program] were that I wanted to find an opportunity to further involve my course work with my extracurricular activities, and this was a great way to integrate the two," he said. "I was also drawn to the opportunity to really share my experiences and learn from others as well."

The Service Leadership Program involves three one-credit practica: the introductory course, an immersion experience, which involves students participating in Spring Break Outreach, and a service leadership in action course.

Eckart spent her Spring Break Outreach in Camden, N.J. The experience changed the way she thinks about community, poverty and diversity.

"This immersion experience was a most powerful and awakening experience," she said. "Throughout the week, I felt many different emotions. I felt nervous, entering a new community; excitement, to embark on a new adventure; saddened, by much of the poverty I was witnessing; cared for, by the members of the community who invited us into their home to share a meal; and elated, when I was able to communicate in a different language with an older gentleman at a nursing home."

In addition to these practica, students take a capstone seminar course, which aims at bringing together four years of classroom and community service experiences, and also three service-learning electives, which they can choose from courses already existing in Loyola's curriculum that involve a service-learning component.

Gooding believes that this program will continue and grow in the future. She feels that this first group of graduating students, who were a kind of test pilot, definitely illustrated the value of this type of structured program.

"The Service Leadership Program takes service learning to a deeper level. It has a transformative nature," she said.

Kmiec said that he enjoyed working with his instructors because they challenged him to go deeper into his thinking and examine issues in a different light.

"My career will definitely be service-oriented," Kmiec said. "I think I always knew that fact, but I feel much more prepared to really reach out for what I want with this training."

The Service Leadership Program is currently recruiting freshmen and sophomores for next year, when the sequence of courses will begin again.

The deadline for applications is April 20, and students should submit their essays to Associate Director of Service Learning Susan Burton at the Center for Values and Service. She can be reached at ext. 2092 for more information.

After submitting their essays, students will be called to sign up for an interview during the week of April 23. The top 15 applicants will be invited into the program.