A Letter from Dr. Jake Bucher
“Role Players in Origin Stories”
I get the pleasure this month to use this newsletter to focus on the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (IPP) principle of “action.” Whether you understand this as the value of contemplatives in action, or people in the service of/with others, one of our primary responsibilities is to move students from knowing to doing. For me, I distinctly remember the turning point early in my teaching. It was when a student told me that taking my class was like rattling a dog’s cage (Sociologists are often accused of “rattling” things!) – he was being sent out into the world without knowing what to do with all this emotion, reflection, and knowledge that had been learned/gained. I then began thinking of my teaching, and all of my interactions with students, with this idea of “action” as articulated in the IPP as the “external expression of things learned.”
I opened with the frame that it is my pleasure to discuss this topic, and that is because I get to share a few examples of how many in our community are preparing and facilitating our students to take their knowledge and truth, and to serve others through action.
- Liz Belton, an amazing MS in Nursing Leadership nursing student in the Global Health Pathway, is going over and beyond by creating a new tracking/data system for the Global Health Pathway health clinic at Haven of Hope.
- Four Regis College students (Sophia Siong, Ellis Langham, Maria Sanchez Chafalote, and Brianna Flores Chavez) will be presenting at the Peace and Justice Association Conference in Buffalo, NY at the end of October. These four students will be contributing to a panel that “explores community-based research within peace and justice studies as a way for undergraduate students to practice solidarity with minoritized communities across multiple forms of difference.”
- Kurt Riggin, a student in the MS in Biomedical Sciences certificate program, just presented at the American Ornithological Society meeting in Estes Park. The poster, titled “Ecomorphology of the Hindlimb in North American Sparrows” was undertaken along with Regis undergraduate alum (and current MSBS student) Zoe Sicat.
- Maddiana Finley-James, a Junior Psychology major, is doing an internship with the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Maddiana has shared how she is not only applying what she has learned from her discipline, but applying the compassion and empathy she has learned.
- I recently attended the Physical Therapy Research Symposium and saw amazing research that our PT students are doing.