Vol. 4, No. 2: Fall/Winter 2008
Putting Ethics into Action
by Jeremy Shere
Leadership, Ethics, and Social Action capstone projects exemplify students’ commitment to reaching beyond the university to do good work in the wider community.
Say you’re leading a student group to a village in Africa to help build a school. Soon after you arrive, riots break out following a controversial election. The village is in a remote area accessible only by roads that have suddenly become dangerous. Do you press on with your mission to help the African schoolchildren, or does responsibility lie with protecting your group? What’s the right thing to do?
What might sound like a hypothetical situation in an introductory ethics course was a real-life dilemma for a group of IU students who went to Africa as part of a Capstone Project for IU’s Leadership, Ethics, and Social Action (LESA) program—a minor combining classroom learning with community service and project planning. The group compromised by helping another village located in a less dangerous area.
“Ethics is fundamental to the program,” according to LESA director and IU Professor of Political Science Marjorie Hershey. “Our hope is to engage students in service to the community with serious consideration given to the ethics of what they hope to do and how they hope to do it.”
LESA students take several ethics-themed courses, including L105 Beyond the Sample Gates (which requires two hours of weekly service in a community organization); an ethics course in philosophy, religious studies, or political science; a course on social organization; and a civic engagement seminar. The classwork, Hershey says, prepares students to “take a serious look at the content of what they’re studying as it applies to the real world.” While many students (and people generally) may encounter ethical situations without thinking them through, LESA “puts a premium on thinking about the ethical component of every project.”
LESA participants apply what they’ve learned in the classroom in a senior year Capstone Project—a yearlong collaboration among the student, his or her faculty sponsor, and a community nonprofit organization. Recent Capstone Projects have included an oral history of homelessness in Bloomington and a student-run garden at Fairview elementary school. Regardless of a project’s content, Hershey says, the overarching goal is the same.
“It’s about putting ethics into action in community service, which is central to the development of democratic citizens and to the understanding that each of us has interests and needs and preferences that are different from other peoples’.”
The following Capstone Projects exemplify LESA’s commitment to reaching beyond the uni-versity to do good work in the wider community.
Kevin Pozzi, Senior
Night Skies
When IU senior Kevin Pozzi visits his grandparents in Arizona, he makes sure to take a nighttime hike out into the desert to gaze at the sky. Thanks to ordinances that keep city lights focused on the ground, the Arizona sky is perfect for stargazing.
“It made me realize that in Bloomington, like in many places, it’s hard to see the stars because street lights shine up into the sky, obscuring the view,” says Pozzi, a journalism major with minors in sociology and LESA. “So for my Capstone Project I thought it would be a good idea to make Bloomington into a place where people can see a meteor shower, full moon, and any other things happening in the night sky.”
When Pozzi first brought the idea to a potential faculty mentor, though, he encountered some immediate ethical concerns. The faculty member, who is head of the IU women’s affairs committee, was concerned that a citywide ordinance that limited the intensity and trajectory of streetlights could compromise women’s safety. Although Pozzi questioned whether focusing streetlights on the ground would pose a safety issue, he decided to take the project in a different direction and lobby for an area within the city where lighting is either controlled or nonexistent.
After deciding with Hershey that “it would be best to target a specific audience” with a specific event, Pozzi has arranged with Bloomington Parks and Recreation for the the Tulip Trace Council Girl Scouts to gather at Thompson Park one evening in early October to stargaze and “learn more about the night sky.” Parks and Recreation will turn off lights in the park for the event.
As for how designating a spot for stargazing will improve people’s lives and benefit the community, Pozzi sees his project as more than a boon for amateur astronomers. Shining light into the sky for no reason is a waste of energy, and the night sky is a gift with which we’ve lost touch.
“The sky is one of the natural wonders of the world and it seems like we don’t care about it anymore. But we’re slowly waking up to the fact that we can do something about it. I’ve read that before electric light, in some places the Milky Way was so bright that its light cast shadows at night. I think that’s fascinating, and if I can help bring back even a part of that, I feel I’m providing something valuable for the people of Bloomington.”
Pam Loebig
Health Week
Child obesity is one of the more serious threats to American youth. Official statistics claim that one out of three American kids is overweight or obese. Recent IU graduate Pam Loebig decided to do something about it.
“I think that everyone should have equal opportunity at living a healthy life,” says Loebig, who graduated this spring with a BS in Exercise Science with minors in LESA and gerontology. “But because so many parents have to work and don’t have as much time to teach their kids about being healthy, a lot of kids don’t have a chance. I wanted to provide them with the opportunity to learn about health.”
For her Capstone Project, Loebig combined her love of exercise—she’s a competitive cyclist—and working with kids. Last October, with fellow IU senior Deanna Elkins, she organized “Health Week,” a weeklong series of programs and events for low-income children and their families in Bloomington. Events included a daily hike on one of Bloomington’s many trails, a canoeing trip on Griffey Lake, and a presentation about raising healthy children sponsored by Bloomington Hospital.
One of the most popular activities, Loebig reports, was “Healthy Snack Attack,” where kids made nutritious snacks using ingredients such as organic fruits and vegetables.
“We made veggie pizza on whole wheat English muffins, trail mix, fruit and yogurt dip using low-fat yogurt. And the kids really loved it. They even asked to take home the recipes.”
Loebig wanted to work with children, she says, because reaching them can have a lasting impact. “If you learn healthy habits when you’re young they can become lifelong habits. When these kids have kids someday, they can pass on what they learned.”
In doing a Capstone Project, Loebig also learned important lessons about the challenges of working in the community. Instead of focusing only on what you want, she says, “you really have to think about what the participants want and be willing to meet the needs of the community.”
Ashley Flora
Self Portraits
While volunteering with Girls Inc., IU senior and fine arts major Ashley Flora realized that the girls she worked with would benefit from more arts programming. And it struck her that offering a seminar on self-portraiture would not only make for a great Capstone Project, but also fit well with the Girls Inc. mission.
“Part of Girls Inc.’s mission—‘inspiring all girls to be strong, smart, and bold’—is helping girls build self-esteem and one great way to do that is to think about issues of self-image and how girls and women are portrayed,” Flora says. “Doing a self-portrait is about self-actualization and expressing yourself as you want to be.”
Set for fall 2008, the seminar will take place over two days and introduce Girls, Inc. participants to a variety of portrait techniques and media, including paint, pastels, and charcoal. Younger participants will try several projects, including a symbolic self-portrait using symbolic shapes to construct a face. Older girls will create a landscape with different layers corresponding to their life experiences and their likes and dislikes. The point, Flora observes, is to encourage the girls to think about the concept of a self as a person and as a woman and what those categories mean.
“There’s lots of pressure on what a woman should be, what’s normal and what’s not,” Flora says. “Creating a self-portrait helps you think through what a self is. Do we make ourselves who we are or is it something you have no control over?”
For Flora, making art is bound up with ethical concerns. Art may or may not be directly related to social issues, she says, but art is never completely separate from the world.
“I want my art to be about what’s happening in the world. Artists have the capability to see what’s going on and express it from a different angle. My hope is to use art as a medium for creating discussion and dialogue about social issues.”
Kendal Herget
Middle Way Health Care Survey
IU senior Kendal Herget got into the LESA program by accident. Choosing the introductory Beyond the Sample Gates course as a way to get to know Bloomington, Herget soon realized that LESA was a great way for her to combine her interests in medicine and community work.
“Ethically, we should be bound to give health care to everyone who needs it,” asserts Herget, who is studying biology and psychology in preparation for medical school. “But the way the system works now, not everyone gets the care they need. So I wanted to do a project that would help.”
After meeting with a social worker at Middle Way House—a shelter and domestic violence and rape crisis center for Bloomington-area women—Herget settled on the idea of creating a survey to study the health-care needs of women living at Middle Way. Although it is well known that many of the women suffer from mental health conditions, including depression, their specific health issues remain largely unknown. Herget is interested in learning about problems such as the availability of health insurance.
“One thing I’ve learned is that it’s difficult for these women to get through the paperwork for Medicaid without someone to guide them. Even when insurance is available, many women just don’t have the means or time to sign up.”
Herget’s main challenge, she says, has been to create a survey that will mine useful information without being overly invasive. The survey includes basic questions about employment history, level of education, ethnicity, and family, as well as more specific questions about the state of the women’s health and their major concerns about receiving care. After conducting the survey in the fall, Herget plans to use the data to write a policy proposal to present to local health insurance providers and possibly the state legislature.
“Ideally, I’d like to help set up a system where women have someone to guide them through the process of getting good health insurance,” Herget concludes. “The first step is making health care providers aware of the need.
Jeremy Shere is a freelance writer in Bloomington.
