THE ISSUE: Course could teach practical management skills WHAT WE THINK: Such a program would be relevant at BC
Boston College is home to some of the largest college service programs in the country. These organizations, which include the Appalachia Volunteers, the Arrupe International Program, 4Boston, and many others, have become an integral part of the campus fabric and offer an extremely valuable resource for the University, which seeks to graduate aware and well-adjusted students ready to live out the Jesuit ideals it holds dear. But is the University getting the most out of these resources? Could it do more to help these groups and the students interested in them?
Last month, we talked of creating a service trip endowment - a fund that could help defray the high costs of these trips. But the school could also do more to bring the trips back into the classroom. Faculty and administrators have already begun to take an interest in studying the systems of injustice and power that are revealed on the trips through classes like those in the Pulse Program, Religion and Politics in Latin America, or Church and Society in El Salvador (a requirement for the El Salvador Arrupe trip). These philosophical reflections on the service are important and help locate the experience within the larger lives of students.
But the school could also offer courses that teach the practical skills needed for nonprofit work beyond the service organizations on campus. Many students involved in these programs (especially the leaders) learn how to fundraise, manage big budgets, and deal with liability firsthand. The chance to learn these techniques in a systematic classroom setting could afford benefits both to the students and to the programs they lead.
The popularity of programs like Jesuit Volunteer Corps, Ignatian Volunteer Corps, the Peace Corps, and AmeriCorps for BC graduates demonstrates that students here are interested in working for nonprofits after graduation. And with the explosion of nonprofit hospitals and charities, these skills are more in demand than ever. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the number of charity groups in the United States has tripled over the past 20 years, and philanthropies will need to fill 640,000 senior-management jobs left vacant by retiring baby boomers. Programs that equip undergraduates with practical skills in nonprofit management, which have popped up in multiple universities across the country, seem particularly appropriate to the BC experience.
As it stands now, options for learning about the management of nonprofits are limited. The Carroll School of Management offers almost no courses on the structures and issues particular to nonprofits. The one course offering on this topic is a graduate level course.
But undergraduates have proved themselves to be both interested and able to work within the nonprofit structure. Graduates Laura Hopps, BC '07, and Christine Ruppert, BC '07, even started their own nonprofit, the Batahola Volunteers, last year to bring volunteers to Nicaragua. By expanding the opportunities for students like Hopps and Ruppert to learn the mechanics of nonprofits, BC can mix the theoretical classroom learning with the praxis available through leadership positions in BC service groups and beyond.
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