We are pleased to announce that the 2013 Donald O. Schoonmaker Faculty Prize for Community Service has been awarded to Professor of Religion & American Ethnic Studies, Dr. Ulrike Wiethaus. Dr. Wiethaus’ commitment of service to   Wake Forest and the Winston-Salem community at large is to be commended.

Professor Wiethaus has been deeply involved with students, staff, and faculty colleagues on the campus and with a wide array of partners locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. Her exemplary work continually brings members of the campus community into productive and mutually beneficial relationships with those beyond our walls. Dr. Wiethaus will be formally recognized during the Founder’s Day program next spring.

We appreciate the nominations we received this year. They were all very deserving candidates, and the process of reviewing them was both a pleasure and a challenge.

We extend our sincere thanks and a hearty congratulations to Dr. Wiethaus for her outstanding contributions!

Dr. Van Doorn-Harder gave a great interview on the PRI program “Interfaith Voices.”

Download Podcast here…

The JustVision team has won the prestigious Peabody Award for their film, “My Neighbourhood” for which Jessica Devaney was co-producer. 

Here is the link to the film’s webpage:  http://www.justvision.org/myneighbourhood

And here is the list of winners of the Peabody this year:  http://peabodyawards.com/2013/03/72nd-annual-peabody-awards-complete-list-of-winners/

“RPE has expanded my mind by expanding my boundaries; rather than analyzing people’s religious or cultural backgrounds, I experienced them.”

“I decided to declare a concentration in RPE because it provides an arena where any religious belief can speak freely without the fear of being persecuted.  Those of us involved have all connected on a deep level and by doing so we have understood each other and our beliefs at a more spiritual level.  This intrinsic connection has allowed for us to realize what we want to see changed throughout the communities we live in and to have a large base of skills and resources to create such change.

My involvement with RPE (classes, internships, conversations) has made me feel as if I was making a difference in this world.  Many people only read and write about changing society but many do not continue with these goals.  With RPE involvement I am not only alleviating some of the problems with people’s lives and society, but I am growing spiritually and feeling happier as I do.”

Paolo matriculated Fall 2012 in a Master of Theology degree at Barry University, Miami Shores, FL. He is a Graduate Assistant & Administrative Liaison for Service-Learning. His responsibilities include: facilitating on-site group service learning programs, training work-study students, coordinating transportation for service learning placement sites,  maintaining a new system for tracking service-learning hours, and researching information on service learning impact areas (homelessness, poverty, elderly, children, environment)

He writes, “Barry University is a private Catholic school and because it is, undergraduates are required to take a religion class. That class has a required 10 hours of ‘service learning’ which is different from volunteering. It is similar to the RPE class where students take classroom readings and put them into practice with their internships.” Among

“I chose to have a concentration in Religion and Public Engagement because it was a perfect medium to feed my hunger for both intellectual and spiritual growth. Throughout my RPE journey, I loved how many opportunities I was given to interact with students from diverse spiritual and racial backgrounds in a setting where we all felt comfortable sharing our experiences and beliefs to better ourselves and the Wake Forest community. The amount of academic freedom and creativity that we were granted fostered innovative projects and internships that will have a lasting impact on the various organizations we interned with.

Overall the RPE program is amazing because I was engaged both inside and outside of the classroom with the Pro Humanitate spirit that made me fall in love with Wake Forest University.”

“The RPE concentration has given me a new set of lenses through which I can view the world. In order to engage successfully with those around us, we must seek to know and understand them deeply.  Such knowledge and understanding is found by learning about their worldview, or as the Mapuche of south-central Chile would say, cosmovision, which is deeply sewn into their being. When this great task is accomplished we can truly religiously engage with the public successfully, in an interfaith manner, and accomplish more together than we could ever imagine doing on our own.”

“I declared a concentration in Religion and Public Engagement because I am interested in seeing communities heal and flourish, and have seen outreach attempted in problematic ways throughout my life. RPE provided a way to learn about and discuss real community problems, and work towards positive change alongside my peers, professors, and other community leaders.

My courses in RPE have helped me realize how religion can be grounds for mutual understanding and cooperation to pursue justice in the world. My professors have challenged my own assumptions, and allowed for me to actually get involved in the community and get my hands dirty, so to speak. “