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Cincinnati Student Helps Coordinate Service Learning for Xavier Students

Summer Service Internship Program focusing on social justice

05/29/08

Summer break is time for most college students to earn some extra cash, travel or just relax. But for 20 Xavier University students it is a time to learn and become involved in the Greater Cincinnati community.

 

The students are part of Xavier University’s Summer Service Internship Program, in its fourteenth year. The mission of the program is to develop “people for others” and the interns do service work at non-profits and community agencies. Xavier’s program is unique in that it offers stipends to the interns and free housing in Xavier’s Husman Residence Hall. The students live service 24 hours a day and it becomes an integral part of their lives.

 

This year, Xavier student interns spend ten weeks working at 19 different agencies for 35 hours each week. The work sites include such agencies as Healthy Moms and Babes, United Cerebral Palsy, Drop Inn Center, Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education and Clovernook Center.

 

Students keep journals to reflect on their work and attend weekly dinner and community reflection sessions. The students will spend May 31-June 4 preparing themselves for their experience. They will travel to Camp Kern to do the ropes course and spend time learning about diversity, service, safety, and sense of place and purpose.

 

Matthew Mellon, 21, of Green Township (45233), serves as the 2008 Summer Service Student Program Coordinator. A Cincinnati resident, he is a senior double majoring in history and economics at Xavier with a minor in peace studies. 

 

“The Summer Service Internship is a unique program because it utilizes reflection of the service performed and encourages interns to ask questions in regards to social justice in order to understand the issue with more clarity,” says Mellon.

 

As this year’s student coordinator, Mellon works directly with the program’s executive director to plan events and visit the work sites. They visit each work site at least once during the ten-week program and talk regularly with the agency directors as well as the students.

 

Mellon is a 2005 graduate who was home-schooled from kindergarten until 12^th grade by his mother, who is a teacher. He is the son of Paul and Barbara Mellon and has a younger brother, David.

 

“The Summer Service Internship Program is making a positive impact on the lives of our students and on the people in the agencies served by the program,” says Michael J. Graham, S.J., president of Xavier University.  “We greatly appreciate the support of our funders and look forward to continuing this service to our community in the future.”

 

Supporters of the program have included The Charles H. Dater Foundation, The Richard D. Reis Family Foundation, John & Francie Pepper, Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Inc. and Philip and Jeanne Busch.