How Academics Affects Alumni Decisions to Pursue Volunteer Service
While the connection between service learning and volunteer service after graduation is patently apparent, a little-known phenomenon is the profound effect that academics–classroom experiences and professorial relationships in particular–have in the shaping of alumni careers. Senior Matt Hamilton told InterMission that, “because they are usually so short, service learning and mission trips can act as a catalyst, a sort of ‘shock’ that helps integrate what you are learning into your life, but without the understanding that classes and wise professors impart those same experiences can close you off.”
Many students of Hamilton’s generation are growing up in a “service culture,” a culture that emphasizes the importance of mission trips, service learning experiences, and hands-on learning. However, these experiences find most of their value in the further questions they raise, not in the answers they provide. Understanding and living these powerful “catalysts” brings to the fore the crucial importance of academics and relationships with professors, staff, and administrators. Hamilton has experienced this drive for authenticity first-hand in several of his classes, spanning the social sciences, theology, and biology, “for example, when I learn what is going on in Rwanda, I have to ask myself, ‘what do I do with this knowledge?’” The strong correlation between knowledge and action inherent in BC’s commitment to educating the whole person challenges students to live differently when they encounter provocative material presented by engaged faculty. The GSSW recently published an article that speaks to a similar experience of the correlation of classroom and service learning.
The education of the whole person seems to result in many alumni from Jesuit schools pursuing volunteer work after undergrad, as the annual statistics published by the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and Jesuit Volunteers International attest. The Heights recently published an article enumerating many of the various volunteer organizations that BC students participate in after undergrad. Professor Jennie Purnell, of BC’s Political Science Department, finds that seeing her teaching career as her service helps students to direct their desire to integrate knowledge, passion, and commitment to the greater good, “It’s not the specifics of what we [as faculty] do, but how we do it.” Purnell also noted that many of her classes do not focus on what her students should do themselves, rather it is the content of the class itself that elicits action from students. Where particular guidance comes in is with mentoring, “mentoring in particular is where faculty aid in the specifics of how a student puts what he or she has learned into practice.”
While the impact that academics has on the life decisions of students often goes unnoticed, the effects are plain for the inquiring individual to see.
April 2009
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