As a Jesuit institution, Creighton University has always valued service, and plenty of opportunities exist for students to give back to the community. While Creighton students are handing out food and nailing down rafters between classes, faculty members are involved as well.
The Lakota Immersion Mentorship Program allows Creighton faculty to participate in a year-long service project with students at Red Cloud High School and Pine Ridge High School in Red Cloud, Neb.
Rev. Raymond Bucko, S.J., one of the founders of the program, began with three goals in mind: to familiarize faculty with the cultural context of some of Creighton’s students, provide inter-cultural dialogue and contribute to community strength by mentoring Lakota students applying for college.
“Faculty need to be of service. We can’t just tell [the students]. We have to be models of what we espouse,” Bucko said in explaining why the program is only open to faculty.
The partnership works because both Jesuits and Lakota value giving, receiving and forming relationships, Bucko said.
Faculty are selected in the spring by an on-line process, and there is only space for 10 volunteers. Mentors visit several times to become familiar with the culture and students before helping with college applications in the fall.
Several students have attended Creighton, and many of them are the first in their families to attend college. Many lack funding for higher education, so faculty help with applications, including applying for the Gates Millennium Scholarship, which is specifically designed for minority groups.
Red Cloud High School has the highest percentage of students receiving the Gates, as a result of the Immersion program.
Three-year participant and an associate professor of sociology and anthropology James T. Ault, III, said many of the Lakota students have drive but lack funds.
“Most of the students [at Creighton] are upper middle class,” he said. “I’m impressed with kids who lack those kinds of resources, but set their sights high.”
This program has encouraged further participation between faculty and Lakota students.
Dr. Carol Zuegner, associate professor of journalism, got involved first with a Pizza and Proofreading program, which had journalism students working with Lakota students to polish their written applications.
Zuegner decided to “take the plunge and do the immersion thing.”
After staying a few nights at the reservation last year, “The immersion project part of it was really a great experience. I got to see the beauty and the ugliness of it – the poverty,” Zuegner said. Ault and Bucko both participate in a spring break program that takes students to map burial locations and grave sites as an index for Lakota families.
Ault said the program succeeds in part because of its enthusiastic participants.
“The more I’ve learned,” he said, “the more I’ve concluded these are people I can admire.”