In this course of about 20 students, students are finding ways to aid others.
By Talia Schmitz ’11
After two years of absence, the January Interim Experience class Changing the World has returned with new ideas, bigger questions, improved projects, and more men!
Who am I, what really matters, and how can I make a difference in the world? These are some of the questions that the students participating in Changing the World are asked to think about throughout the January course. Chris Johnson, director for the Center of Vocational Reflection at Gustavus Adolphus College, has resurrected this class after a two-year break from teaching it. “I feel that there is a new sense of urgency in the world to equip people who are really going to use the information that this class offers with ways that they can help,” Johnson said, explaining why he decided to offer the class again. Other than that, he missed teaching the course.
In this course of about 20 students, including at least seven men, which is more than ever before, students are finding ways to aid others. The main objective of this class is to teach each individual how to be an agent of meaningful change in the world, as well as to explore what it means for him or her to own and exercise power. Johnson explained that the students will realize this objective by choosing a service-learning project from two options. One option is to work with Eric Utne, a nationally known entrepreneur, as well as founder and publisher of the Utne Reader and head of the Utne Institute, as he strives to develop the Earth Council not only on the Gustavus Adolphus campus, but nationwide as well. The other option is for students to come up with their own community service project, individually or in a group, in consultation with the Community Service Center on campus.
“My goal for the Gustavus Earth Council is to start a nationwide movement that will get young people working with older people to address the social and environmental crisis of our time,” Utne said. The Gustavus students would be creating the first campus Earth Council, which would become the prototype to be replicated on hundreds of other campuses. “Eventually I hope to see Earth Councils spread worldwide. With any luck, years from now we’ll be looking back, saying Gustavus is the place where it all started, where the end of the environmental crisis first began.”
The students who aren’t participating with the Earth Council development will be doing projects of their own. A few of the individual and group endeavors include knitting scarves for women’s shelters, working with Kids Against Hunger, and setting up donation sites such as the “Toilet Tree.” Megan Patzke, a member of the group that is knitting scarves, said that she decided to take part in the project after the class witnessed first hand what it was like to be homeless in the cold. “I didn’t have a scarf that day,” Patzke said of her excursion in downtown Minneapolis. “After being in the cold with no scarf, I knew that I definitely wanted to work with that group.”
Whether it be knitting scarves or addressing environmental issues, these students are bringing justice. “This course has to do with deepening right relationships between students and others, the world, and the planet,” Johnson said, describing how his course communicates justice. “The students take collective ownership of how the course is run. They are receptive to each others’ yearnings, gifts, hungers, and questions.”
“Changing the world is a topic that is very much seeking justice for those that are less fortunate. If you see a problem with something and you plan on changing it, that is bringing justice to a problem,” Patzke said.
The students in the class have found numerous ways to bring justice to the world. In their own small ways, they are changing the world one step at a time.