STUDENTS CAN TAP INTO A WORLD OF LEARNING
The College of St. Scholastica has joined a group of liberal-arts colleges that offer programs here and abroad examining social justice issues
BY STEVE KUCHERA
NEWS TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

College of St. Scholastica students will soon have more opportunities to study, and become active in, social justice issues in America and abroad.

The school recently joined the 17-member Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs. Since 1971, the group has offered programs that give students the chance to season academic learning with first-hand experience.

“The whole business of trying to bring theory and practice together is one of the toughest things to do on small liberal arts college campus,” said Macalester College professor Jim Stewart, who has been active with the consortium since the 1980s. “By their nature these campuses are sort of sequestered places that look inward a lot.”

HECUA's programs, he said, allow students to learn about social justice and change while getting their hands dirty in the real world. “Many of the programs include internship opportunities,” said the consortium's executive director, Amy Sunderland.
Under the consortium, students have traveled to Bangladesh to study development; Ireland and Northern Ireland to study democracy and social change; Scandinavia to study urban studies; Guatemala and Cuba to study politics, development, the environment, economy and community.

They have also studied city arts, environmental sustainability, social justice and civil rights here in the United States.

Students who enroll in HECUA programs receive credit through the colleges they are enrolled in. St. Scholastica students will be able to begin participating in the consortium's programs next year, said Dorothea Diver, a professor in St. Scholastica's Languages and International Studies program. She will be the school's representative on the consortium's board of directors.

St. Scholastica considered joining the group of liberal arts colleges for two years, Diver said.

“The advantage is that smaller schools like ours can join together to sustain a really high-quality program which they couldn't do by themselves,” she said. “We don't have the faculty resources. We don't have the student population. We can't come up with 15 students every time.”

Not just students benefit from the programs. The consortium also offers training for college instructors. Ninety-two percent of faculty said their involvement with HECUA had a major influence on their teaching, Sunderland said.

"It's going to give our faculty and staff some real good opportunity for professional development,” Diver said. About 300 students and faculty participate in consortium programs each year.

The consortium's foundation dates to the late 1960s, when an Augsburg College professor established a course in a minority, strife-torn Minneapolis neighborhood. Community activists, politicians and others visited the course to talk about the neighborhood's problems and possible solutions.

The consortium formally organized in 1971. It began offering programs overseas in 1973.

STEVE KUCHERA can be reached at (218) 279-5503, toll free at (800) 456-8282, or by e-mail at [email protected].