Saint Anselm Nursing Students Take their Services and Learning Worldwide

Saint Anselm College nursing students recently further developed their skills while completing clinical work in Cost Rica through the course, Community and Public Health Nursing. Through this immersion experience, students have the opportunity to “assess families in the community to provide health education, and then refer sick patients to receive health care in the clinic that the group sets up and works at.” This winter trip is a core component of the course which aims to discuss the role and impact of nurses in health promotion and disease prevention on a worldwide scale. The goal is for students to discuss what they learned in Cost Rica in a classroom context to further understand the concepts of communicable disease, environmental health, and disaster relief.

Students note that the course takes on a holistic approach, by stating “it has a focus on not just assessment but on the resources available to vulnerable populations, and learning how to treat the whole person.” This fits perfectly in line with the Saint Ambrose’s mission of fostering a “lifelong pursuit of truth and fostering intellectual, moral and spiritual growth to sustain and enrich its graduates’ personal lives, work, and engagement within local, national, and global communities.”

To read more about Saint Anselm nursing student’s experience, visit Saint Anselm news.

Saint Anselm Students Spend their Break Serving

A total of 138 Saint Anselm College students gave their time and energy by serving with the Service and Solidarity Missions during their winter break. From January 6-13 groups of about twenty students traveled to ten different U.S. sites, ranging from Appalachia to Washington, DC. The Service and Solidarity Missions offers alternative winter and spring break trips that include service in a variety of areas, including home repair and construction, food service, social justice in the city, refugee resettlement, and many more.

Saint Anselm students continue to participate in these alternative breaks because it gives them the opportunity to “plunge into challenging service circumstances” and transform the lives of everyone participating. Lauren Case ’19 speaks of her time serving with Service and Solidarity Missions by saying, “I get to see the light of those we get to serve; the happiness and appreciation that they show towards us is unreal.” These trips provide students with experiences that are useful throughout their life whether in service, prayer, relationships, or in the classroom.

To read more about Saint Anselm’s Service and Solidarity Missions, please visit Saint Anselm news.

Laudato Si Release: Act

Earlier today, Pope Francis released his long-awaited encyclical letter, Laudato Si.  We at ACCU are sharing resources and best practices to help our campuses pray for commitment to care for creation, learn about the encyclical and our call to stewardship, and act upon our beliefs to work for the common good.

˜ACT˜

ACCU member institutions have acted upon their call to care for creation through a number of sustainability and environmental justice initiatives.

• The Catholic Climate Covenant, with support from the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, the Association of Franciscan Colleges and Universities, and the Catholic Campus Ministry Association, have produced Sustainability and Catholic Higher Education: A Toolkit for Mission Integration (PDF; 3MB).  Through mission-based initiatives, the Toolkit offers practical suggestions to inspire individuals, families, schools, parishes, and dioceses to follow the Catholic Coalition on Climate Change’s St. Francis Pledge.
• 29 Catholic colleges and universities have taken the St. Francis Pledge, sponsored by the Catholic Climate Covenant, committing to living out the value of care for creation through reflection, action, and advocacy.  These campuses include: Aquinas College (MI), Cabrini College, Chestnut Hill College, College of Saint Benedict, Creighton University, Gonzaga University, John Carroll University, Lewis University, Loyola University Chicago, Marquette University, Mercyhurst University, Mount St. Joseph University, Neumann University, Rosemont College, Saint Anselm College, Saint Francis University, Saint John’s University (MN), Saint Joseph’s College (IN), Saint Mary’s College of California, Saint Michael’s College, Salve Regina University, Seattle University, St. Thomas More College, Stonehill College, University of Notre Dame, University of Portland, Villanova University, Viterbo University, and Xavier University.
• The Center for Environmental Justice and Sustainability at Seattle University lives out a core tenet of the university mission.  The Center has undertaken a number of initiatives, including supporting faculty and student research through fellowships.  Dr. Trileigh Tucker, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Seattle University, and one of CEJS’s first Faculty Fellows, developed a teaching resource on environmental justice, compiling syllabi, assessment methods, and foundational documents used frequently in courses on environmental justice.
• Benedictine University in Illinois has received a $46,000 Food Scrap Composting Revitalization and Advancement Program (F-SCRAP) grant from the state to allow for the diversion of food scraps generated in the campus cafeteria and other buildings.
• In spring 2015, Cabrini College held a conference, “Faith, Climate, and Health”, to examine how climate change affects the health of the most vulnerable citizens.
• At the University of Portland, professors Dr. Russell Butkus and Dr. Steven Kolmes, teach a course entitled “Theology in Ecological Perspective”, exploring Catholic and Christian teaching and environmental science.

Read more ways ACCU member campuses have undertaken sustainability initiatives on the ACCU website.  Check back frequently as we will post new updates and ways that ACCU campuses react to the Laudato Si to the blog!