of Canterbury, or in the gardens on Loyola’s Lake Shore Campus. “At Loyola, one of the pillars of a Jesuit education is service to others and commu- nity interaction, so they have an opportunity to experience a different side of Chicago that maybe they hadn’t been aware of before,” says Fehr. In addition to helping others, this outreach
program lets students put their language skills to work. They need to interact with patrons and fol- low directions from the kitchen’s employees and regular volunteers. Fehr often sees students go back as often as five times a semester—or decide to start volunteering on their own. “It was a great experience to do something
outside of the curriculum,” says 18-year-old Meret Charyyev after volunteering at the café. “I enjoyed it a lot and learned how to talk to people and how to serve them.” From Turkmenistan, Charyyev finished high
school in Connecticut before coming to Chicago. Like Stanziola, he also volunteered before arriving on campus, including raising donations for those in Haiti. The ELLP program’s roughly 140 international
students receive help with speaking, listening, writing, and reading comprehension. To tie in their volunteering experience, their instructors incorpo- rate it into class discussions and coursework. Students in a beginner-level class might write
a short reflection describing what they did at the soup kitchen. In a more advanced class, students may read an article and write a three-page report on topics such as poverty, homelessness, mental illness, or addiction. Stanziola wrote about the children and families she has helped. “I always work with kids because the thing
I want to specialize in is child psychology,” she says. “So when I first came here, for my first essay I wrote about the soup kitchen and how good it is to help not only kids but be part of something that can help other people.” Like others in the ELLP program, Stanziola and
Charyyev will attend Loyola next semester as degree-seeking students. Stanziola plans to study psychology; Charyyev will major in business. While both say the program has been a mean-
ingful experience, Fehr sees it as a way to also help students break out of their comfort zones. “You can do great on a standardized test, but that’s not the same as an academic program where you’re going to be required to talk to people, work in groups, work with people who are different from you, who may have different backgrounds,” he says. “These volunteer experiences prepare them for that—or whatever they go on to do.” L
Lending a healing hand
ACCESS TO QUALITY HEALTH CARE is a critical concern today, and three Loyola students have stepped up to offer innovative solutions. Following the Jesuit tradition, the students— Kamaal Jones, Pablo da Silva, and Heidi Cerneka—were selected for the prestigious Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, which will enable them to spend the next year spearheading health care initiatives in underserved local communities. Named in honor of humanitarian Dr. Albert Schweitzer, the fellowship program encourages
students to design and implement a project to address an unmet community health need. Recipients must partner with an existing organization and commit at least 200 service hours to their project—on top of their already heavy school workloads. With only 250 Schweitzer Fel- lows chosen nationally each year, these three Loyola students are truly among elite company.
STRITCH SCHOOL OF MEDICINE KAMAAL JONES Project: I will be working with Project Brotherhood, a health clinic in the Woodlawn community on the South Side of Chicago. We’ll be teaming up with high schools to establish a public health program that works with students to identify the most important health-related concerns in the community and pushes students to be drivers of change. I entered medi- cal school knowing I wanted to work in this specific community, and as I listened to and reflected on the thoughts being shared by some of my mentors, this idea began to take shape.
STRITCH SCHOOL OF MEDICINE PABLO DA SILVA Project: My project aims to help community college students become health care profession- als. Often these students don’t pursue careers in medicine due to the lack of proper guidance and poor counseling. Students will receive mentorship at the Stritch School of Medicine, where they will experience not only what medical school is like through workshops, Q&A sessions, and hands-on activities but they will also learn the necessary steps to get there.
SCHOOL OF LAW HEIDI CERNEKA Project: I wanted to go to law school so I could address mental illness in prison. There are a lot of people in prison today who would not be in jail if they had access to the proper resources. My work is a two-part project. For the first part, I go to the Cook County jail every week and visit with women who have mental health issues. For the second part, I work with a legal clinic called the Uptown People’s Law Center, which works to improve mental health conditions in prisons. I take all that I learn and inte- grate it into my understanding, which helps me to be a better advocate for mental health.
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