Service learning where everyone learns
Talk about a win-win. With the help of a $2,500 grant from the Fisher Charitable Foundation, education professor Dr. Janice Rey created a new service-learning program at a local, urban school that does many things at once for the benefit of all. Using environmental education curricula, the program promotes science literacy, helps prepare Saint Joseph’s education majors to work with culturally diverse populations and offers professional development to teachers at the school.
At Riverton Elementary School in Portland, Maine, more than two dozen education majors are teaching hands-on, investigative activities to help 120 students learn about water resources, wildlife, and environmental issues. In the process, six of the school’s faculty are learning how to use the Project Learning Tree, Project WET and Project Wild curricula. The curricula also connect with reading and math, subjects critical to the school’s multicultural population where English is often a second language.
“In a school where literacy is emphasized, our Saint Joseph’s students are showing that science can promote literacy in reading, writing, and inquiry,” says Rey.
The grant allows Saint Joseph’s to purchase the curriculum material, guaranteeing sustainability of the project annually at this school or other sites, and supports the efforts of a student coordinator.
“This is truly a golden opportunity for sophomores enrolled in a science methods course to teach science during the regular school day,” says Rey. In this educational partnership, everyone wins, including the planet!
College launches new athletics web site at gomonks.com
Saint Joseph’s has partnered with PrestoSports to launch a new athletics web site at www.gomonks.com.
The new site, which has a whole new look and format, will allow fans, alums and media to quickly find information about the school’s teams. Now part of the PrestoSports Network, scores entered into the gomonks.com site will immediately update the web site’s schedules, the GNAC schedules, and national media sites such as d3football, d3hoops, d3soccer, d3baseball and laxmagazine.com.
Some of the distinctive features on gomonks.com include a headlines ticker, calendars, scoreboards, rotating stories, in-depth student-athlete bios and more. The site also highlights recreation programs.
“We are very excited about our partnership with PrestoSports,” says Saint Joseph’s athletic director Brian Curtin. “We are looking forward to having this new site as one of our strongest ways of promoting our student-athletes and our athletics department.
College partners with Catholic health care provider to offer online graduate degree
Saint Joseph’s announces an educational partnership with Catholic Healthcare Partners (CHP), a large Catholic health organization based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Under the agreement, employee leaders at CHP are eligible to receive tuition discounts while taking courses online to earn a Master in Health Administration degree with a concentration in Catholic Health Leadership.
The Catholic Healthcare Partners organization includes 33 acute care hospitals and 13 long-term care centers in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana and Pennsylvania. It also runs seven hospice programs, 10 home health agencies and 17 affordable housing facilities. The health care and service provider employs more than 28,000 people, including more than 6,000 medical staff.
Catholic Healthcare Partners is a mission-driven, not-for-profit health system charged with extending the “healing ministry of Jesus by improving the health of our communities with emphasis on people who are poor and underserved.”
