Finding balance: St. John's program gets students out of the classroom and into the community

Anne Constable | The New Mexican

8/4/2008 - 8/1/08

In Plato's Meno, a young man from Thessaly and the philosopher Socrates are engaged in a dialogue about the nature of virtue. Can it be taught? Is it the same as knowledge?

Those are the sorts of questions students ponder at St. John's College, where the heady undergraduate curriculum is based on reading and discussion of the great books.

For Abigail Petry, of Lafayette, Ind., the answer to "what is virtue?" is "always community outreach, supporting the people around you."

This summer, Petry has a $4,000 stipend from the college to work with Adelante, the public schools' program for homeless students and families.

A May graduate of St. John's, Petry is one of 24 students who were awarded summer stipends through the college's Ariel program, or Award for Relating Intense Education to Life. The students received a total of $84,000 to pay living expenses while working as unpaid interns for organizations in Santa Fe and elsewhere. Two students are doing biomedical research at the City of Hope in Duarte, Calif. (Dr. Stephen Forman, a 1970 graduate of St. John's in Annapolis, is a cancer specialist there and is funding five internships focusing on medicine and health.) Another student is working with the U.S. State Department in Nicosia, Cyprus. Others are pursing interests in international business, community development, Latin translation and literary Chinese.

The purpose of the program is to give students an opportunity to balance the St. John's academic experience with work in the community.

"It's amazing how many St. John's students are community-minded," Petry said, but the intensity of the academics and lack of transportation make it "hard to get involved."

The Ariel program, she said, "is a great way of pushing us off the mountain and into the lives of people."

Margaret Odell, Ariel coordinator, said many employers look for internships on applications; employers want to offer them but don't have the money. At the same time, students usually need to work in the summer. "Our idea was to let them have the experience and make it financially feasible," Odell said.

"The college feels strongly that it needs to come up with the money to support the program, and we hope it grows each year," she added.

Ariel began in 2005 with 22 applications for nine funded spots. The program expanded in each of the following three years. This year, the stipends range from $1,500 to $4,000.

Odell said a portion of the endowment at St. John's is earmarked for the program, and "we are always trying to find more donors."

Petry spent previous summer breaks working as a counselor at Camp Tecumseh near Brookston, Ind. But on Thursday, she was setting up for Adelante's regular weekly Juntos dinner. From six to 25 families regularly share a meal (Sam's Club lasagna and salad) before parents adjourn for English lessons and children participate in arts activities led by Fine Arts for Children and Teens. Bags of groceries, including some fresh food, are distributed each evening and families can pick up secondhand clothes.

There are 977 registered children and youth in the program, Petry said.

In addition to her administrative duties, Petry is helping to raise money for the services. She solicited donations of winter coats and is coordinating a school-supply drive. CVS and the Walgreens drug stores in Santa Fe are selling discounted bags of grade-appropriate school supplies to registered members of the program. Adelante will pick up the bags and put the notebook paper, pencils and erasers into free backpacks. Thursday evening, Petry also helped collect donations of food for Adelante's pantry at a benefit salsa dance at Warehouse 21. The pantry is open to registered families whenever they need a little help putting food on the table.

The internship is a way to "step into a role and see if it fits."

Many new St. John's graduates are "jaded and tired," she admitted. They are "eager to run away as fast as possible from a place that has been both painful and nourishing and stop answering questions and find their own answers," she said.

But she decided to stick around Santa Fe. In addition to her internship at Adelante, Petry is taking a course to prepare herself for law-school entrance exams and a possible career in child advocacy. But she doesn't intend to apply until next year. She wants time off to travel, learn Spanish and work in the Santa Fe community. "I want to prove I can exist as an adult in the world before I go back to being a student," she explained.

While St. John's is known for preparing minds, Petry said, "At the end, it's not the thoughts you think, but the actions you do."

Contact Anne Constable at 986-3022 or aconstable@sfnewmexican.com.

WHO THEY ARE

2008 Ariel recipients working in Santa Fe:

Jessica Bloom, Santa Fe Children's Museum

Caitlin Cass, Making Art Safely

Elizabeth Harball, Creativity for Peace

Lauren Oberlin, Breakthrough

Josiah Stephens, Santa Fe Reporter

Austin Voltz, St. John's College