Loyola has joined a new trend in universities across the country with the development of service-oriented living/learning communities. After extensive research in similar communities across the nation, this semester the university introduced the Cardoner Leadership Program.
Jessica Murphy, assistant director of co-curricular programming, put the program together, and in its first year it has 18 students. The program is one year long and only open to incoming freshman who go through extensive screenings and interviews to qualify based on their high school community service experiences – the common thread between the students from a variety of majors and come from all over the world.
All students live on the same floor wing of Buddig Hall as research has shown that freshmen who both learn and live together, even just for a year, are more likely to succeed for the rest of their college career, Murphy said.
Bryce Eastwood, a jazz studies freshman from Milwaukee, said, “The program keeps me intact and knowledgeable of what is happening around me while pushing me to be focused on my own work.”
All students in the program also take political science professor Peter Burns’ Rebuilding New Orleans class. In the class both research and activism are equally emphasized as the foundations of the class. The students’ research includes American, urban and New Orleans politics; the effects of Katrina; ideas for rebuilding after natural disasters; and determining what the cities issues are.
Then, they take that knowledge and explore specific local issues to write full policy reports on. The students are involved with local politicians and the community to use their minds justly in action on such issues as city school system organization, in-class organization for public schools, international business and how to initialize trade between New Orleans and foreign businesses and how to solve issues faster in case of such things as natural disasters.
The program is special because it is the first of its kind to include a Social Challenge Project in which the students apply their leadership in a chosen project for social change through research and action. The Social Challenge Project chosen this year is raising money and supplies to help support schools in Uganda through fundraisers, awareness and working with a group of Ugandan refugees who raised money for New Orleans after Katrina.
The dynamics of the program are unique in that the students all wanted to come to New Orleans to make an initiative for change, while the class and the project help them do that as they make decisions and develop the subjects they choose to research. The students in the Cardoner Program are a close knit group that is involved in other programs such as Loyola University Community Action Program and attend special university functions, lectures and dinners. Besides the small scholarship received by the program and credit for their common class, the students don’t receive anything from the university for their work.
When the year is over, the students will become peer mentors and continue to work with the program from afar. Loyola however, is open to extended projects but, does not offer a minor in leadership or political science for those who have a different major.
Garrett Cleland can be reached at [email protected].
