Overall Rating Reporter - expired
Overall Score
Liaison Denice Koljonen
Submission Date March 2, 2018
Executive Letter Download

STARS v2.1

Boston College
AC-5: Immersive Experience

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete Reporter Tara Pisani
Assistant Professor
Earth and Envronment
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution offer at least one immersive, sustainability-focused educational study program that is one week or more in length?:
Yes

A brief description of the sustainability-focused immersive program(s) offered by the institution, including how each program addresses the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainability:

I. Sustainability Living Learning Community (on BC Campus): A residential community dedicated to rising sophomores interested in exploring the broad topic of sustainability, engaging in service, and being part of a new opportunity to promote environmental awareness. While no prior experience is necessary, an interest in and commitment to living in an intentional community around the issues of sustainability is necessary. A limited number of spaces are available on lower campus in Reservoir Apartments. Students must apply at the time of their housing intent.

II. The Arrupe International Immersion Program empowers Boston College students to build intentional life- and faith-sharing communities through which they are able to:
(1) Learn about the complex realities of people from another country who struggle in poverty from a historical, social, economic, political and religious perspective.
Humbly encounter, hear, and respect the stories of people from this country in their own words.
(2) Develop a sense of compassion and responsibility for those who suffer, both in the country visited and all throughout the world.
(3) Deepen their faith — by tapping the wisdom of Catholic Social Teaching and Ignatian Spirituality, especially as it relates to engaging the world in agapic love through service and social justice — and in the process, deepen their understanding of themselves and discern their life’s vocation(s).
(4) Translate their learning into action by developing a commitment, a capacity, and the accountability necessary to freely and authentically give their passions, talents, and abilities joyfully to a world in need.

III. The Appalachia Volunteers Program – more commonly called “Appa” – committed to working with the poor and marginalized in the United States. The heart of Appa's work is spent in community, when students travel to 40 different cities and towns during spring break, living in solidarity alongside the families that they serve. What started with one van to Kentucky is now the University’s largest service-immersion program. More than 500 students travel coast-to-coast with Appa each year, encountering community and service in both urban areas (New Orleans, Detroit, etc.) and rural areas (throughout the South and the Appalachian regions).

Appa students meet biweekly throughout the school year to learn about the structural and social realities that leave some people marginalized, and draw on Boston College’s Jesuit tradition in considering how faith might ask us to respond to social injustices.

The Arrupe and Appa immersion programs address and examine poverty using a sustainability lens, while the BC Sustainability Living Learning Community deals with the full range of topics on sustainability and service projects related to sustainability.


The website URL where information about the programs or initiatives is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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