Manhattan College team to present at Service Learning Conference

by Kerri Mulqueen. Assistant Professor of Education and Evelyn Scaramella, Associate Professor of Spanish

 A team of Manhattan College faculty and administrators will present at a roundtable at the 2019 International Association for Research on Service Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE) Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico from October 23-25. Titled, "The Global Bronx: Crossing Borders to Find a Better Way Forward," the roundtable will showcase the multiple ways that Manhattan College works across the institution to encourage literal and figurative border crossing through community engagement and service learning programming. Speakers include Kathleen Von Euw, Assistant Director of Community Engagement and Partnerships, Lois Harr, Director of Campus Ministry and Social Action, Evelyn Scaramella, Associate Professor of Spanish, and Kerri Mulqueen, Assistant Professor of Education, who will all highlight key initiatives at the College. The Manhattan College Strategic Plan calls for programming that will "enhance support for interdisciplinary teaching, scholarship, and service, especially, but not exclusively, aligned with the Lasallian and Catholic national and international networks, and integrated with academic, curricular and co-curricular programs" as well as "exemplify and enhance local and global civic engagement consistent with the social justice values of the College’s Lasallian Catholic identity, with particular attention to the alleviation of human suffering." Answers to this call for consciousness raising and advocacy training can be seen in myriad locations across the College.

 Ms. Von Euw will address the ways in which the Social Action office encourages the application of Community-Engaged Learning as a pedagogical approach through which faculty develop reciprocal community partnerships towards a goal of engaging students in relevant and meaningful service or research connected to course content and addressing real community needs as defined by the community. Ms. Harr will discuss Manhattan's position as a Catholic Relief Services Global Campus, promoting the virtue of solidarity described by Pope John Paul II. As a result, students and faculty at Manhattan strive to cross borders literally and metaphorically through approaches informed by service learning and community engagement principles and practices. Dr. Scaramella will explore the implementation of Spanish-English language exchange sessions, intercambios, between non-native college students and adult native Spanish-speakers, as they are employed within service trips in intermediate and advanced level Spanish language classes. Dr. Mulqueen will address the integral nature of campus to community partnership and reciprocity in teacher education using the lens of an ongoing partnership between her Adolescent Language and Literacy course and ELLIS Prep, a local secondary school where the student body is made up entirely of immigrants with less than one year in the United States at the time of enrollment.

 The roundtable will provide a varied perspective on the border crossing opportunities facilitated at our College vis a vis its fortunate geographical location in the diverse cultural landscape of the Bronx as well as via its positionality as an institution whose mission and affiliations are rooted in social justice. Through this conference, we will share best practices around how to specifically and more broadly infuse the student experience with meaning community engagement and service learning opportunities across offices and across disciplines.