At Bluffton University, there are core classes set up within the Bluffton Blueprint and Enduring Values General Education curriculum that students must take in order to graduate. One of those courses is the Learning in Community (LiC) course, which students are expected to take their sophomore year. Due to the COVID-19, this course is being taught in a way where students can’t get involved in a community like it was initially intended.
The LiC class is a course where students are able to leave campus and have opportunities to learn about the city of Lima’s history and help out with 12 participating organizations. Participating locations include YMCA, the local food bank, tutoring programs, etc.
Randy Keeler. Wit file photo by Aubrey Bartel
“The intent for this class [is] to be very experiential,” said Randy Keeler, professor of religion and associate dean of Academic Affairs. “To actually see and experience some of the issues that urban settings go through.”
When taking the LiC course, students are meant to be exposed to different people and think about different situations of which they might not be aware of. The city of Lima is a similar environment to where students attending the university have come from, which helps those in the class consider how they are helping and if they could help in their own community.
Walt Paquin is the director of social work, professor of social work and is the coordinator of the LiC course. Paquin has been the coordinator for three years and is the connector between the university and the Lima community.
Due to the pandemic, it is not feasible for the university to bring the students to and from Lima. In place of going to Lima, students in the course this year meet various speakers who are from Lima Lima speakers on Zoom and interact with their separate, socially distanced classrooms.
“When you are in a place, you are able to see with your own eyes the kind of things we are talking about in class,” said Paquin, “It’s a disconnect not being able to go to Lima in person.”
Walt Paquin, professor of social work and director of the social work program, Wit file photo by Aubrey Bartel
LiC is meant to be a connection between the freshmen course Becoming a Scholar and the junior cross-cultural experience. When students have the chance to go to Lima, they are able to learn through doing service which is very important to the university.
“It gives students a chance to, in a classroom, experience a different community but to not do it in the same kind of intense way that they are doing in a cross cultural,” said Paquin, “It also helps students to see how they could have an impact in their own communities using Lima as a model so we have a shared and common experience together.”
By next fall, Keeler and Paquin hope to teach the course the way it was intended to be taught. They intend to have the students go to Lima at least once a week with their class and help rebuild Lima due to job losses because of the pandemic.
Paquin is going to meet with the organization partners to figure out in what ways students will be able to help and participate post COVID-19.
“I am sad and I think that the faculty are sad or disappointed that we have not been able to go to Lima,” said Paquin, “We continue to be excited about the course itself and being able to make those connections again. Most of the Lima organizations that we work with are really excited about Bluffton students coming and participating and contribute to Lima.”
