Being A Force For Good

ND Admissions interns and seniors Rory Finn and Hailey Oppenlander discuss their service experience during their four years at Notre Dame and share how the theme of Being a Force for Good is implemented in that service work as well as some of the courses offered to students. 

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00:00:11:09 - 00:00:36:06

Hi, everyone! Welcome back to College Bound, Notre Dame Admissions' podcast. I'm Rory Finn, one of the admissions interns this year, and I'm so excited to be here with you today talking about Notre Dame's mission to be a force for good. Of all the podcast episodes that we've released this year, and I mean honestly, in the past few years, this is my favorite topic and I really cannot wait to dive in. 

00:00:36:13 - 00:00:58:22

A little bit about me, I am a double major in psychology and Chinese, and I have a minor in digital marketing. I'm originally from Dallas, Texas, but on campus I lived in Pasquerilla West Hall, which, by coincidence is also where my co-host lived. My fellow intern Hailey is with us today, and I'll let her introduce herself. 

00:00:59:03 - 00:01:08:18

So, like Rory said, I also live in Pasquerilla West. I'm a senior American Studies and sociology major, and I'm originally from the Cleveland, Ohio area. 

00:01:09:02 - 00:01:50:06

Thanks, Hailey. Hailey and I, as we said, are both seniors. And we've been here for four years. And we've had a little bit of time as we approach our graduation in May to reflect on our experience here. And I remember, you know, before even coming here, that we in our application to come to Notre Dame wrote about how we wanted to educate our hearts as well as our minds. And I think I kind of understood that back in the day. But as the past three and a half years have progressed, I feel like I definitely have a better idea of what that means and how Notre Dame imparts that into its students. 

00:01:50:28 - 00:02:06:15

There are so many opportunities here on campus, and I cannot wait to talk about them with you, Hailey. So my first question is: how have you seen that mission to be a force for good in your own experience and what you've been involved in on campus? 

00:02:06:23 - 00:02:47:12

Yeah, that was definitely one of the reasons why I chose Notre Dame is because I didn't want my education just to be kind of for selfish reasons, but I really wanted to learn and to grow in order to make the world a better place. So sometimes naive as that sounds, but I've really found that I've been able to do that in a small way through being involved with Matriculate, which is a nonprofit that pairs college students with high schoolers who are going through the college application process. And these high schoolers are high achieving, low-income students. So sometimes they don't have the resources or the knowledge about the college application system, which, as everyone knows, can be very difficult to navigate. 

00:02:48:04 - 00:03:31:25

And so you're paired with like two to four students every year and see them through the entirety of the process, helping them come up with a list of colleges that they're interested in, working with them on college essays, helping them look at their financial aid offers and make sense of them. That's been really rewarding to as a student at Notre Dame, kind of sharing my experience with college and help others go through this process and help them find schools that they love and thrive at. We have a cohort of advisors here at Notre Dame who are all working with Matriculate, and so that's really nice to see that there's a whole group of students here who are helping to mitigate educational inequality in higher ed. 

00:03:31:27 - 00:04:03:23

Yeah, I know. I remember even for me as a senior, navigating the high school to college application process was so stressful. So that was such a cool opportunity that you guys are doing and I feel like that definitely does go to show that there are students who can pursue their own passions and ways to involve themselves in the community and give back, but Notre Dame also does a great job of connecting students with those opportunities as well. 

00:04:04:09 - 00:04:50:09

And I think one of the main ways that they do that is through the Center for Social Concerns, which is just a center on campus with the goal of connecting students with community service opportunities, there's so many ways that you can get involved with. We call it the CSC. Whether that's participating in one of the ISSLP's, which is the International Summer Service Learning Programs, which I think are the coolest things ever, you can go anywhere in the world. People I know have gone to like South Africa, even like places in South America as well. And you can do community service there, spend the summer doing research and connecting with people in those communities. 

00:04:51:06 - 00:05:39:23

But the CSC also does sponsor other courses like community engagement courses and Social Concern Seminars, which I actually participated in my sophomore year. So one of the most famous social concern seminars, which are semester long classes (I think it's one credit) where you meet once a week prior to a I think it's called an immersion. It's like a week-long immersion during fall break. And leading up to that, you're you meet with your group, you learn about the environment and the community in the place where you're going to serve. And then what my experience was that we went to the region of Appalachia. 

00:05:39:25 - 00:06:17:05

We all piled into a bus. It was so fun. And these are people that I didn't really know before. Like it wasn't like my friends or anything. It was also a cool opportunity to meet new people. And we went to a little town in West Virginia and helped people build homes there. It was so rewarding, so interesting, and I really, really learned a lot. And, you know, I had a very fulfilling fall break after that experience. Have you ever taken any of those classes or done anything like involved in the community that way? 

00:06:17:18 - 00:06:49:00

Yeah, I think another thing that the Center for Social Concerns does really well is even within the South Bend community making connections and being involved not just globally but really within this area that we are in thinking about Notre Dame's presence here. And I've gotten to take classes where I've been able to volunteer nonprofits in the area; my sophomore year I took a class called Immigrant America, and part of the class was what we call a community-based learning component. 

00:06:49:14 - 00:07:26:18

Once a week we would volunteer at La Casa de Amistad at their immigration courses. And we got to, you know, learn about things in the classroom, about the immigration system, but then see how it affected real people's lives. I think that's honestly some of the most important learning experiences that I've had here and really vital to having a well-rounded education that is actually going to make change. You can't just stay in the classroom. So it was really great to get to have that component of the course and then to have that sustained engagement within the South Bend community. 

00:07:27:12 - 00:07:58:19

And another course that I had was called Data Feminism. I was able to continue my relationship with La Casa and we had a final project that we had a lot of creative freedom over. And I decided that I wanted to use my newfound coding skills and R, which I never thought I would gain, to help them reorganize their sign in sheet and do some data visualizations for them so that they could see who was accessing what services. They could break it down by gender, by when people were coming in. 

00:07:59:00 - 00:08:15:15

And so I think there's a lot of different ways across courses in many different departments where you can engage with the South Bend community through community based learning projects. Have you ever taken a class similar to that or have any experiences with the South Bend community? 

00:08:15:25 - 00:08:22:18

Yeah. Wow. Well, first of all, I cannot believe that there was a class called Data Feminism. That is so cool. 

00:08:23:09 - 00:08:24:14

I highly recommend it. Yeah. 

00:08:24:16 - 00:09:08:24

Wow. I when I come back to Notre Dame, I'll be an American Studies major. Yes. So I actually did take a class like that. It was in the fall of my senior year, so just like a few months ago. But it was called Consulting and Development. And this was one of my favorite classes I've ever taken, I think, because like you said, it was very much involved in the South Bend community and something that I think does a really good job of doing is making sure that there are opportunities for us to, you know, know how bad the situation is in South Bend and really doing our part to help with that. 

00:09:08:26 - 00:09:44:15

We learned in our in this class that 25% of South Bend residents are living below the poverty line. And I mean, that is not really something that we encounter every day at Notre Dame. We kind of live in a bubble. I get Starbucks and Modern Market every day, and walking around our beautiful campus, sometimes you lose sight of that or that perspective. But through this class, I think we were really introduced to and were able to make a positive impact on those on a few of those impoverished individuals. 

00:09:44:17 - 00:10:17:14

In this class, we were paired up with entrepreneurs in South Bend who had participated in this program. And we it was like you and a partner were assigned to entrepreneurs, so you were working on two businesses. And we were consultants for them, you know, figuring out what they needed to succeed, figuring out the competitive landscape, figuring out what was going to be feasible for them in the future. 

00:10:18:01 - 00:10:34:06

And I thought it was so, so meaningful to be able to go downtown. We met in class on Tuesdays, and then every Thursday we would drive downtown, and from 6 to 8 p.m. we would have an hour with each of our entrepreneurs. 

00:10:35:24 - 00:11:13:00

And so, yeah, it was just so cool. And I loved being able to really, you know, make a meaningful change in their lives. One of the entrepreneurs in another group, his name was because it was literally just Joe, and he owned a coffee company called Importin' Joe's. And he wasn't really making very much money. He was kind of disorganized, didn't really have his finances put together, which is difficult when you're running a business, and one of the groups was able to really, really help him get off the ground, solidify his business, and he got the account of Notre Dame. 

00:11:13:15 - 00:11:42:27

So his Importin' Joe's coffee is now being served in North and South Dining Halls. I think he has an account with one of the grocery stores in South Bend, too. And he's making, you know, significantly more money than he was before the class. I think that's an amazing example of just how classes like Consulting and Development and the community-based learning ones that you participated in daily, like really do contribute and make a difference. 

00:11:44:23 - 00:12:21:05

And just, you know, on that note, I think one of the other ways we can see how Notre Dame is making positive change is through the "What would you fight for?" series. And this is a video series of like two-minute long videos that are every football game in there. One of my favorite parts honestly about the football games, which I guess is so lame to say, but you know, sometimes you're just looking for some more entertainment, there are two-minute long videos that show how Notre Dame graduates have gone on to make real, meaningful change. 

00:12:21:21 - 00:12:50:14

I think some of the I mean, obviously we are the Fighting Irish, so we're kind of like continuing that theme, like asking people who have graduated from Notre Dame, but what would you fight for? And so I think past episodes have been "Fighting for Fair Housing," "Fighting for better Cancer Detection," "Fighting for the Environment," "Fighting against the Odds," you know? Yeah, I just I love watching those videos. It's so cool to see Notre Dame graduates really making a difference. 

00:12:50:16 - 00:13:20:20

And it also reminds us, you know, in these moments of football, you know, everyone's having so much fun. It really reminds us how lucky we are to go here and to go to a school with this mission of doing good in the world. Because that is, like you said, Hailey, one of the reasons why I chose Notre Dame and I think it reminds like every student, every alum in the stands as well, like how lucky we are to go to university with that mission. 

00:13:20:27 - 00:13:55:24

I think something that I've really appreciated as I've been here too, is sometimes service can take on this like savior complex type of feel. But a lot of my community-based learning classes, professors have really been combating that idea and really contextualizing what we're doing in the community and recognizing that like we have a joint responsibility with South Bend, with everyone living in this world that we're in together and not kind of removing ourselves from the structures and systems that have allowed us to be students here. 

00:13:56:08 - 00:14:21:00

So I think there's a lot of good conversations happening too, about like how we're in this position to be a force for good, why we're here, and then what we can do about that to make it so that we don't always have to be in this position of us being the servers. So I've really appreciated like the deeper discussions that have started to happen on this campus too. And I think that's making all of the engagement that we've talked about this episode even more meaningful. 

00:14:21:11 - 00:14:43:21

That's such a great point. I know I definitely remember, you know, during my Appalachia seminar and in my community development class that it was very much about helping them get to a point where we didn't need to be there anymore and really respecting the leaders and structures that were already there. So that's a great point and a great final takeaway point. 

00:14:44:06 - 00:15:05:27

If you are someone who is interested in learning more about Notre Dame and our mission, we've had previous episodes on that in previous seasons that are all uploaded on our website, if you would like to go peruse those and we are going to continue to talk about important parts about the Notre Dame experience on College Bound this season. 

00:15:06:14 - 00:15:24:11

In the meantime, you can connect with us on our social platforms here @NDAdmissions on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Thank you guys so much for joining us this week on College Bound. Thank you, Hayley, for sharing your insight. And we look forward to sharing more about Notre Dame with you soon.