Welcome to our Alumni Profile series. Each month we’ll catch up with a HECUA alumni, and see how their time in a HECUA classroom influenced their career goals, their life in the community, and their pursuit of continued education. If you or a friend would like to participate in this series, please email [email protected]. This dispatch comes from Emily Seru, HECUA's Manager of Internships and Community Partnerships.
In 2003, Robby Callahan Schreiber was attending Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. Through his involvement with the student led outdoor education programs, he discovered an interest in experiential education, biology and philosophy. During his senior year, he found out about the HECUA Environmental Sustainability course and used the program as his senior capstone in a self- designed environmental studies major.
During HECUA, he interned with the Longfellow Community Council in South Minneapolis where he organized volunteer efforts for invasive species removal and designed GIS maps to engage residents in the annual buckthorn bust. After his HECUA program, Robby stayed on as a teaching assistant for the Environmental Sustainability program, where he used the connections he had made in the Longfellow neighborhood for the class community-based research project. Robby’s experiences with HECUA, both as a student and as a teaching assistant, nurtured a passion for meaningful experiential programming for young people.
Teaching Assistants for Environmental Sustainability through the years, gathered at Julia Nerbonne's farewell ceremony (with Rep. Frank Hornstein, and Dir. of Internships Emily Seru). From left to right: Frank Hornstein, Dylan Kesti, Julia Nerbonne, Siri Simons, Emily Seru, Eleonore Wesserle, Robby Callahan Schreiber.
Robby says, “A seed was sown. I saw how educational projects can also have a true impact in the community. HECUA provided the support for me to take on a large-scale project I would not have been able to do otherwise.” The combination of the community-centered project with personal and professional support allowed Robby to see how large-scale issues connect to people’s daily decisions and in how we choose to live our lives. “I was amazed at the wide network of people I was exposed to through the ES program. Through HECUA, I saw that people live their work and that the world is not black and white. It broadened my perspective and knowledge of how the world works.”
Robby now leads experiential learning programs for young people at the Science Museum of Minnesota. His goals as an educator are to have students be grounded in who they are and their own values and skills and to help them to grow to articulate how they want to make change in their world. “Before HECUA, I did not feel I had any models for how I could make social change. The ES program showed me the many paths I could take.”