The senior perspective course, Poverty in America, will give at least five students the opportunity to travel to the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia and participate in community outreach during the summer pre-session from May 18-June 5.

“The society there is very impoverished,” said Alice Smith, a senior instructional designer with the Office of Medical Education. Smith designed the course and will accompany students on the trip.

“[The course] is an opportunity to take the field that you’ve been learning and apply it to real life situations of reaching out and serving others.”

The students will stay at Bethlehem Farm, a small Catholic community in Summers County, W. Va., that focuses on community, service, prayer, simplicity and sustainability.

While they’re there, students will repair homes, tutor students and visit the elderly and homebound, among other things.

Smith said students will be able to apply knowledge from any professional field to their experience at Bethlehem Farm.

“Last year one of my students was in political science, so she got to look at how the politics address and affect poverty,” Smith said.

“Another student was in biology, and one of the things we looked at was sustainability and how it could have a positive effect on people who live in poverty.”

Robyn Kelly, Arts & Sciences senior, is one student who went on the trip last summer. After spending a month in Liberia after her freshman year, Kelly said she wanted to learn more about American poverty and thought the senior perspective course was a good opportunity to do so.

“I had never really taken the time to do service to the communities that are considered impoverished here, so I was interested in what American poverty was and I just wanted the chance to grow as a person mentally, physically and spiritually,” Kelly said.

“One of the things I got from it was that everything in life can have meaning – from how much toilet paper you use when you go to the bathroom to reusing plastic bags and how you talk to other people, making sure you’re actively involved,” Kelly said. “All those things are kind of common sense, but I would just stress how much it means not just in this community, but in the global community.”

Smith said the course is a way for students to understand how to use their skills and knowledge to serve others and deepen their own peacefulness and happiness.

“There’s this huge joy that’s found in being able to use what you know to be of service to others and develop relationships in that regard. I wanted to be able to provide that opportunity for students to find that sense of joy.”

Kelly said she thought the trip was a good time to think about vocations.

“I thought it was a really interesting place to kind of meditate on who you are as a person and who you want to become and what kind of vocation you would choose to be able to do that.”

Poverty in America, SRP 470/EDU 470/PJS 470, is a senior perspective as well as a service-learning and certified writing course. It’s also cross-listed with the Education department and Peace and Justice Studies.

Dr. Roger Bergman, director of the Justice and Peace Studies program, said the course is a welcome addition to the JPS curriculum because both the JPS minor and the Justice and Society major require a service-learning course.

“I think it’s important for students to see poverty in different situations,” Bergman said.

“I’ve been happy to cross list it, and I encourage my students to consider participating.”

All expenses for the trip, including housing and transportation, are covered by tuition funds, so the only cost for the student is regular pre-session tuition.

“It’s just a wonderful opportunity, especially since it’s just summer school tuition, which is reduced from the normal year,” Bergman said. “And somebody else is going to pay for your room and board, so what a deal.”

“The only thing that isn’t covered is the opportunity to go white water rafting, which we’ve done both previous years,” Smith said.

“It’s a beautiful river, and we always have a great time going. It’s a lot of fun to go.”

Kelly, an agnostic, said the most memorable parts of her trip were the morning prayers, the mountain setting and the community.

“You wake up really early in the morning, but you kind of feel at peace once you go to prayer,” Kelly said.

“It wasn’t a Catholic thing for me, but I know it was for a lot of people.”

Students must apply for registration in the class. The deadline is March 6 and applications are available at http://www2.creighton.edu/ccas/education.