Loyola University Chicago recently announced a new scholarship offered to undocumented students. Initiated by the University’s Latin American Student Organization (LASO) and the student government, the Magis Scholarship Fund was approved by the University board of trustees in December 2015. The students involved in initiating the scholarship fund hope to alleviate some of the financial challenges undocumented students face, as well as encourage conversations about migration in and out of the classroom.
The Fund consists of a $2.50 student fee per semester and will raise about $50,000 a year. The funds will then be given to undocumented students approved for protection from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The renewable scholarship will help cover the cost of tuition, room and board, and student fees for a year for five students.
The word magis, meaning ‘more’ in Latin, is especially important to Loyola University Chicago as a Jesuit institution. In an interview with Fox News Latino Flavio Bravo, former president of the University’s student government, expressed that the decision to use magis in the name came from the fact that it is a “Jesuit tenet” which encourages all “to give and do more for the community.”
At Neumann University in Aston, PA, student athletes are encouraged to include service to others in their team events. Joining together in acts of service to the local community brings the team closer together in the spirit of the Catholic mission of their university.
Last fall, Neumann University’s field hockey team was in Scranton, PA for a game, where an alumna and former team captain serves as a Jesuit Volunteer at a local soup kitchen. The team decided this would be the perfect opportunity to join in her work and connect with each other and the community through service.
The men’s and women’s soccer teams soon after joined the initiative and hosted middle and high school students from the Caring People Alliance, a West Philadelphia organization committed to serving children and strengthening families. The soccer teams spent the day getting to know the visiting students, discussing college and career goals, and playing soccer.
These activities flow directly from Neumann University’s Catholic, Franciscan identity and university mission. Service truly is at the heart of the University and plays a unique role in the relationships among athletes and between athletes and the local community.
Lauren Sciocchetti, a student currently on the women’s soccer team, reflects: “The ability to share [in service] with your teammates and lean on each other… is so important.” As athletes, one important element of the success of the team is the bond among teammates. By encouraging the athletes to “share in service,” Neumann University adds a spiritual element to this bond, supporting the university mission of service to others.
Last week, ACCU released the Spring 2016 issue of its quarterly newsletter, Update. Read it in its entirety here, but be sure to take note of the peace and justice related sections. The highlighted sections include:
Elms College Holds Memorial Service for Homeless persons who passed away during the year of 2015 in Chicopee, MA.
Le Moyne College Debuts ‘Magazine with a Social Conscience’ intended to help faculty, students, and alumni of Jesuit colleges and universities incorporate holistic, values-centered approaches in business.
Alvernia University Promotes ‘Justice Everywhere’ in a two-week event focused on encouraging service, tolerance, and interfaith understanding.
St. Peter’s University Hosts Interfaith Field Trips to local places of worship to help students expand their knowledge of other religions and explore different cultures.
St. Edward’s University Professor Examines Intercultural Ministry in a new book designed to help clergy and lay parish leaders to bridge the multiple ethnic, linguistic, and racial communities they serve.
For 14 years, Fr. Garanzini served as the 23rd president of Loyola University Chicago (LUC), and he is now serving as University Chancellor. Instrumental in making LUC one of the most sustainable campuses in the country, Fr. Garanzini is deeply committed to care for creation. Fr. Garanzini was among those who took the initiative to establish Arrupe College, a two-year associate’s degree program for motivated students with limited financial resources, housed at LUC. Fr. Garanzini is also a leader in Catholic higher education, previously serving as ACCU Board Chair.
To honor Fr. Garanzini, ISN will host a cocktail reception at LUC’s Water Tower campus in Chicago on Wednesday, April 27. Congratulations, Fr. Garanzini!
Although a recent ACCU Peace and Justice blog post featured three Catholic colleges and universities’ response to the Syrian refugee crisis, many other Catholic colleges have been working to assist refugees and advocate on their behalf.
The University of Scranton has been strongly committed to aiding refugees abroad and in the U.S., advocating for peace and for greater acceptance of refugees into the U.S., and educating its students about the crisis and inspiring them to act. The campus initiative In Solidarity with Syria seeks to combine advocacy and educational efforts.
President Kevin Quinn, SJ, wrote an editorial urging compassion for refugees in the Scranton Times-Tribune last fall. He also wrote a letter to federal elected officials urging the U.S. government to address the refugee crisis. He noted that the University was exploring how to help Syrian students interested in further education in the United States, as well as how to help refugee families that settle in the local community.
University alumni have also been extensively involved in the efforts to assist refugees. For example, Bill Canny ’77, H’07, as the executive director of Migration and Refugee Services at USCCB, has been working with DOS and the local Catholic Social Services to work towards doubling the 100,000 refugee ceiling that the government has set for 2017.
Another alumna, Elena Habersky ’13, has lived in Amman, Jordan, where she started teaching English as a Fulbright scholar and is now the program and administrative manager of Collateral Repair Project, a nongovernmental organization that helps refugees. Read about her experiences in her article “Bearing Witness: Stories from the Holy Land,” featured in America Magazine.
Finally, the university has been working hard to educate students on campus about the refugee crisis. Led by Anitra McShea, Ph.D., the vice provost for student formation and campus life, In Solidarity with Syria has taken off in various directions. The initiative has brought to the university activities such as The Refugee Simulation, in which participants walk through five stations that simulate the typical refugee experience. Students are then encouraged to learn about and work with refugees in the local community.
The University has also encouraged deeper academic and informal discussions on the refugee crisis and has implored its students, staff, and faculty to, as Dr. McShea puts it, “utilize [their] gifts, talents and collective resources (intellectual, fiscal) to serve those marginalized and persecuted in our global community.”
How has your college or university responded to the Syrian refugee crisis? Let us know!
ACCU and Solution Generation are excited to announce a call for entries to recognize Catholic colleges and universities that are especially innovative in their efforts to engage their campus in climate change and care for creation.
The winning ACCU member institution will be awarded a $10,000 for outstanding prioritization of education on climate change, forward thinking sustainability initiatives, and distinctive efforts to engage campus and local communities. The award will be designated toward furthering the institutions efforts around climate change and sustainability.
In addition to the award, another three Catholic colleges and universities will be recognized for their work on climate change and care for creation.
As more Catholic colleges and universities join the ranks of Fair Trade Colleges, Carroll College in Montana has recently achieved a significant milestone: it is now the first in its state to be awarded the certification.
For the past three years, Carroll College has been striving to achieve fair trade certification. The committee responsible for the achievement led the college in the five Fair Trade Campaigns steps: Build Your Team, Reach out to Campus Outlets, Source Fair Trade at Events and Meetings, Commit to Fair Trade Education, and Pass a Fair Trade Resolution.
Carroll College advances fair trade principles in several ways, including sponsoring “Fair Trade Fridays,” bringing local fair trade vendors to campus, and selling fair trade chocolate for holidays. In addition, the College now sells fair trade coffee, tea, artisan goods, ice cream, and chocolate on campus. Many Carroll professors are committed to educating students about fair trade in the classroom, especially in relation to global poverty and care for creation. The director of the Hunthausen Center for Peace and Justice at Carroll College, Dr. Chris Fuller, noted that the certification is “a manifestation of Carroll College’s mission to serve the poor and marginalized as well as its work with Catholic Relief Services”.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, that is the estimated number of people currently affected by the conflict in Syria. As Professor Neha Agarwal of La Roche College commented during a campus activity focused on the refugee crisis, “It’s easy for us to picture 100 of something, but wrapping our heads around a number as staggering as 12 million is very difficult.”
Helping people in the United States imagine the sheer magnitude of the problem is only the beginning of what Catholic colleges and universities such as La Roche are doing in response to the Syrian refugee crisis.
During the 2015–16 academic year, ACCU member institutions have demonstrated their deep commitment to welcoming the stranger and educating their students, faculty, and staff on the importance of doing so. One manifestation of this commitment can be found at Niagara University. In conjunction with Catholic Charities of Buffalo and New York’s Immigration and Refugee Assistance Services, the university’s College of Hospitality and Tourism Management recently graduated its third cohort of 15 students from a program specifically for refugees. The eight-week Hospitality and Tourism Training Institute trains participants in skills that help them “pave a sustainable career path,” says Niagara University president Rev. James J. Maher.
Deborah T. Curtis, CMP, director of Niagara’s Edward A. Brennan Center for Language, Culture and Leadership, has been the energy behind the program since its inception. Under her direction, the program has graduated 37 refugees—women and men from around the world, ranging in age from 19 to 60. The program consists of morning lessons in hospitality and afternoon English language courses, as well as excursions to local hotels and tourist attractions. The students also engage in a two-week internship at a partnering hotel, after which they are offered positions either at the internship site or another local hotel. The Institute helps the students combine their new skills in hospitality and in the English language to create “an opportunity to move up,” Curtis says. Because the students all come to the United States as refugees, she adds, “by definition . . . they’ve had some serious hardships.”
Niagara University’s Deborah Curtis poses with a cohort of refugee students at Niagara Falls. Photo courtesy of Niagara University.
Picture This
Other Catholic colleges are doing what Catholic colleges do: educating students about issues and grounding them in faith-based values. Last November, the La Roche College Office of Global Engagement collaborated with the college’s Design Division to focus part of International Education Week on the Syrian refugee crisis. The Refugee Experience event also was incorporated into the La Roche Experience (LRX), a required course sequence that introduces students to Catholic principles of peace and justice, diversity, and conflict prevention.
Asking students to imagine an equivalent to 12 million was one activity during the week. After design students drew selected visual representations of 12 million on a large poster, participants engaged in small-group discussion on the refugee crisis. Finally, all participants strung together a chain of 12 million pre-counted beads, each representing one person affected by the Syrian conflict.
Agarwal, chair of the La Roche graphic design department, explains that the goal of the program was to “come up with several equivalents to 12 million and visualize them in order to help viewers really understand the enormity of the situation.”
In addition to helping La Roche students grasp the magnitude of the refugee crisis, the program allowed participants to process the situation, as the students “opened up and felt confident enough to share their thoughts” in the discussion groups, she says. “In line with the college’s mission to promote peace, justice, and global citizenry,” Agarwal adds, the Refugee Experience program at La Roche has grown out of a commitment to preparing the college community to more actively and knowledgeably welcome the stranger and serve its neighbors.
Change of Plans
After a month of what should have been a two-month backpacking trip in the Mediterranean, Colleen Sinsky, a recent graduate of Santa Clara University, did something unexpected.
Her trek had taken her to Lesvos, a small Greek island where Syrian refugees had been stopping on their perilous journey to Europe. Sinsky decided to leave her traveling companion and travel to Lesvos after noticing Syrian refugees sleeping under a bridge, according to a university news article.
For the remainder of her time in Europe, Sinsky volunteered with A Drop in the Ocean, a rescue group from Norway. According to the article, Sinsky spent her days “helping refugees off boats… manning a lookout tower for boats in distress; providing tea, warm clothing, and a compassionate ear to refugees in the camp; cleaning beaches of castoff belongings,” and more.
After returning home, her experience in Lesvos inspired Sinsky to write about the experiences of the refugees on a blog titled, “I’d Rather Be Here Now.” Her goal is to “advocate for a more compassionate refugee resettlement program in the [United States] by humanizing the victims” of the Syrian conflict, Sinsky writes. She credits her education at Santa Clara with helping her “better understand the problem of labeling, scapegoating, and demonizing Muslims” and allowing her writing to “come to life with details and drama.”
Looking forward, she says, “I would like to incorporate storytelling for social justice into whatever it is that I do.”
Her time at Santa Clara University clearly shaped Sinsky’s ability to share her experiences living with refugees. And, as all these examples show, Catholic higher education is uniquely positioned not only to change students’ thinking about humanitarian crises, but also to help improve the lives of individuals around the globe.
Justine Worden is an undergraduate student at Georgetown University and the Peace and Justice Intern at the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities.
Today, we invite you to join us in a prayer for peace in Syria:
Almighty eternal God, source of all compassion,
the promise of your mercy and saving help fills our hearts with hope.
Hear the cries of the people of Syria;
bring healing to those suffering from the violence,
and comfort to those mourning the dead.
Empower and encourage Syria’s neighbors
in their care and welcome for refugees.
Convert the hearts of those who have taken up arms,
and strengthen the resolve of those committed to peace.
O God of hope and Father of mercy,
your Holy Spirit inspires us to look beyond ourselves and our own needs.
Inspire leaders to choose peace over violence
and to seek reconciliation with enemies.
Inspire the Church around the world with compassion for the people of Syria,
and fill us with hope for a future of peace built on justice for all.
We ask this through Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace and Light of the World,
who lives and reigns for ever and ever.
Amen.
This and other prayers for peace can be found on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ website.
This summer, July 24-26, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is offering a three day leadership conference for current CRS Student Ambassadors, who are invited to engage in higher-level skills training. Teams of 1-3 students, preferably rising sophomores and juniors, are invited to apply to attend the training in Baltimore, MD.
At the training participants will engage in:
Community building with other ambassadors and advisors
Content-based workshops to dive deeper into areas of CRS expertise (i.e. human trafficking, Syrian refugee crisis, climate change).
Traveling together to Capitol Hill to hear from government experts about the importance of integrating our faith into working for global justice and advocacy and then to do our own advocacy on issues of global justice and peace.
Idea sharing on engaging with CRS programs on campus (i.e. CRS Rice Bowl & CRS Fair Trade)
The priority deadline to apply is March 11. Download this flyer for more information!
ACCU Peace and Justice 