Registering for Classes Fall Term of My First Year of College, I Had the Usual Worries

Shepherd Program for the Interdisciplinary Study of Poverty and Human Capability

Harlan Beckley, Founder and Director of the Shepherd Program and Stacy McGlauglin-Taylor, Participant in and former Acting Director of the Shepherd Program

Registering for classes fall term of my first year of college, I had the usual worries: completing general education requirements, continuing my study of Spanish, and finding exciting classes, unlike those offered at my public high school. My interest in volunteer work and community service led me to “Poverty 101,” an interdisciplinary study of poverty and human capability. At the time, I did not realize that though the discipline-based course work, and the volunteer opportunities the Shepherd program offered, could be found at other institutions of higher learning. The program’s integration of co curricular work and interdisciplinary study of poverty and human capability created a unique and significant opportunity. As the first undergraduate institution to offer a transcript recognition (much like a minor) in Poverty and Human Capability Studies, Washington & Lee was a perfect arena for me.

In the course, “Poverty 101” we began the course by reading Alex Kolowitz’s book There are No Children Here, a heart-wrenching portrayal of two young boys growing up in Chicago public housing struggling to survive. We moved on to read texts in public policy, philosophy, sociology and theology. The course forced me to ask questions I never asked before such as: “What is Poverty? How do we measure poverty? Is poverty more than income deprivation? Is government obligated to do something about poverty? Am I, as an individual? What causes poverty?” I was shocked to learn that nearly one in five children in the U.S. reside in households that are official “poor.” The percentage is much higher if we consider children who live in poverty at some point prior to their eighteenth birthday. Even more telling, the United States ranks as the world’s most impoverished developed nation according to the Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Program. These details were eye-opening.

Midway through the semester, I had more unanswered questions, than answered ones, and felt compelled to continue my service work to deepen and broaden my new understanding of these issues. The Shepherd Poverty Program connected me with a local family, the Wilson’s, a family of eight living in two run-down trailers in the foothills of the Appalachians.

During the four years I visited the Wilson’s their sole breadwinner, the father of the family died, one of the children was taken by Child Protective Services, and the youngest of the family who was six-years-old, continued to speak in monosyllables. Many days were heartbreaking, but the Wilson’s became my second family. The Shepherd Program introduced me to the Wilson’s and gave me the opportunity to think more deeply about the causes and potential remedies for their hardships. The service gave meaning to my studies, and the academic work deepened my commitment to the Wilson’s and to others in poverty for different reasons. Today, the Shepherd Program, due to the urging of one of my classmates, offers a fieldwork course for students to further explore questions raised in “Poverty 101.”

After completing the introductory course, I was eligible to apply for an eight-week internship to continue my co-curricular education in poverty. The Shepherd Alliance places undergraduates from Washington and Lee University, Bonner Schools, Spelman, Morehouse, Middlebury, and Berea Colleges, with nonprofit agencies providing direct service to disadvantaged communities. Because of my interest in community development and public policy, I was placed in the community organizing department of Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation in Boston, MA. In addition to my work in the local community, a significant part of the experience was working and living with my roommates: a Spelman College Business major who packaged small business loans, a Berea College Child and Family Studies major worked as a camp counselor and helped write a curriculum, and a fellow Washington and Lee pre-medical student who served a community health clinic.

Returning to W&L the following fall, my work at DBEDC led me to the Shepherd Capstone class. This class, open to juniors, seniors and law students, operates like a graduate school class. The seminar and research paper afforded the opportunity, to step back from introductory studies and first-hand experience in order to examine pervasive issues of poverty in an highly focused academic setting. I wrote a paper on community development corporations and social capital, which evolved into my senior honors thesis.

My studies and internship were tailored to my developing interests, and that match is purposeful for the Shepherd Program.From my own experience, and working with students as Coordinator of Cocurricular Education and Acting Director of the program, I believe deeply that interdisciplinary study deepens commitments, generates new ideas, and inspires new approaches and practices that engage many citizens. As a student, service learning coordinator and now a teacher, I learned that most students do not suffer from apathy, instead, like me, they do not know enough about poverty and the capability most humans can gain to overcome it. The Shepherd Program affords us the opportunity to stop, step back and think deeply and carefully about an issue that many vague sense but few give their focused attention. It forces us to reevaluate our opinions. Once students learn thatone in five children live in official poverty and that the U.S. infant mortality rate stands above that of all other developed nations, they respond. More than 17% of Washington and Lee’s students take the introductory course on poverty and human capability before they graduate.

For example, when Emily Vander Schaaf, a Neuroscience major, first enrolled at Washington and Lee, her goals were to study hard, get good grades, and get into medical school. Before enrolling in Interdepartmental 101: Introduction to Poverty and Human Capability, she assumed that poverty was a necessary evil that could not be altered. In the first few days of the course she learned that the U.S. infant mortality is higher than Slovenia’s and South Korea’s, and the percentage of U.S. citizens expected to live past 65 is lower than in Costa Rica. She learned that poverty meant more than not having enough money. Her experiences in Interdepartmental 101 changed how she understood and approached the world. She engaged in the local community by volunteering at Rockbridge Area Hospice and with the Nabors Service League Literacy Campaign. The following summer, she participated in the Shepherd Alliance summer internship. Emily explored her interest in medicine within a community-based health clinic. During her internship with the Codman Square Health Center in Boston she observed what she came to see as the “necessity of holistic services for the poor.” She worked to help provide affordable healthcare and educational, vocational, and technological opportunities to local residents. She writes, “Codman Square’s mission and leadership taught me that while poverty issues are frustrating, it is possible for even one person to effect significant change. If more people believed they could make a difference, poverty issues would be surmountable. It just takes knowing oneself and a willingness to know others.” Upon returning to Washington and Lee, she wrote her Shepherd Capstone paper on “Asthma and the Impoverished: How Poor Children’s Environments Impair their Health.” She is currently working with a community health clinic before beginning medical school in the fall.

The Shepherd Program offers a different path for every student. Instead of training social workers, this Program educates students in all academic majors and career trajectories to be better informed about poverty as they prepare to become physicians, businesspersons, lawyers, educators, ministers, and politicians. If we are to diminish the disproportionate poverty in the US, we will need informed professionals and civic leaders in many different vocations and with diverse political perspectives. We need engaged leaders who understand the severity and complexity of the problem and can inject new initiatives to address it.

Undergraduate education addresses other significant social problems: the environment, national security and peace, women’s issues, and race and ethnic relations. Why are there not more interdisciplinary programs for the sustained study of poverty? Engaged and informed citizens can make a difference for disenfranchised and disadvantaged persons. Those who supervise hands-on engagement in the community have a special role in helping students make connections between their community service and their academic studies. This combination, which students must ultimately forge for themselves, enables the fresh perspectives and new thinking that Emily and I have experienced during our education at Washington and Lee.

As for me, I am currently on a Rotary Fellowship in Istanbul, Turkey, with my husband, Claiborne Taylor, who is also a graduate of the Shepherd Program and is deeply interested in a career in education. My experiences as a student in the Shepherd Program, as its Coordinator for Cocurricular Education for two years, and as Acting Director for a year while the Director, Harlan Beckley, served as Washington and Lee’s Acting President have helped me to consider a graduate degree in public policy. My graduate studies will combine the social sciences and normative studies and focus on how societies can expand capabilities for their disadvantaged citizens to flourish. My career, whether in an academic institution or in community development agencies, will have been profoundly shaped and focused by my work in the Shepherd Program at Washington and Lee.

Next Steps

The combined interdisciplinary coursework and co-curricular hands on work offers a breadth of knowledge inaccessible from either in isolation. All participants share the goal of alleviating poverty and developing human capability. We intend that as these students continue work in their chosen vocation and as citizens, their cultivated and broad-based knowledge will make a real difference in the woeful statistics symptomatic of American poverty. This possibility for informing future professionals in every field—from business, to healthcare, to law—has attracted David Bradley, Executive Director of the National Community Action Foundation to the Shepherd Program. He says of the Program, “I have been working to diminish poverty for nearly three decades. We need new and innovative approaches to [this problem]. People from all walks of life should be concerned about the poor and engaged in actively working to eliminate poverty. The Shepherd Program, if duplicated by institutions of higher education, could bring the talents of the next generation of leaders together as a key element in dramatic programs to alleviate poverty.”

To some extent, W&L stumbled upon this idea, without realizing its significance for future generations. Other colleges and universities have expressed an interest in developing similar programs. These schools will adopt methods suitable to their own institutions to achieve a common educational mission: integration of curricular and co-curricular interdisciplinary and discipline-based study sustained over at least two years focusing on poverty and human capability. Students at each institution will be able to supplement their different majors with course work and internships focused on poverty. They will learn how we can eliminate obstacles to functioning, whether lodged in social and economic structures, limited capability for functioning, or cultural and behavioral barriers to flourishing. Increasing widespread attention to volunteer service and civic engagement on numerous colleges campuses provides an auspicious context for many students to combine these interests with a focused study of poverty. This sustained educational focus can reorient graduates as future citizens and professionals. Graduates on many different career paths will gain a life-long interest in diminishing poverty along with the sophisticated knowledge needed for fresh thinking about innovative remedies to poverty. We can envision that a sustained and coherent study of poverty and human development will take its place alongside other interdisciplinary studies programs.

These programs should not seek a single answer to poverty in the U.S. or the developing world. We need diverse and fresh ideas. The programs will heighten awareness and, even more important, facilitate a more profound comprehension of the problem among a variety students with different social and political perspectives. No single approach will itself eradicate poverty, but citizens and professionals who understand poverty and care about reducing it can make a real difference. As these graduates increase participation in post-graduate service opportunities, adjust their career choices and professional practices, and act more effectively as citizens, they will constitute a new approach to diminishing poverty, as the veteran anti-poverty advocate, David Bradley, envisions.

Shepherd Student Reflections

Norman Senior is an Economics and Spanish double major from Old Braeton, St. Catherine,Jamaica who is Interested in Business, Management, and Global Issues. He has taken courses such as: Intro to Poverty and Human Capability, Poverty Capstone, Economics: Development Economics, Spanish: Conversational Spanish - Service-Learning. His capstone paper was entitled, “Implications of U.S. Sugar and Dairy Income Support Programs for Poverty in the United States, Costa Rica and Jamaica.” Norman was a Shepherd Alliance Intern with Affording Housing Department, Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation in Boston, Massachusetts, Roots and Shoots Waddell Elementary School Garden, English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), One in Four: Men Against Violence. Norman plans to become a Spanish teacher and coach at the Pomfort School in Connecticut, eventually work in business field.

While reflecting on the Shepherd Program, Norman explains:

I’ve arrived at an understanding of some of the philosophical conundrums at the base of poverty alleviation policy in the United States. I now realize that social policies are usually formed based on fundamental assumptions that policy makers make about the nature of their target audience. This realization helped me to understand how social policy intended to help can in fact repress and trap individuals in unfortunate circumstances. Hence the Shepherd Program has taught me how to better evaluate social policy. Furthermore, I am more conscious of the need to avoid stereotypes and narrow-minded judgments when trying to give assistance. Regarding my internship at the Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation, I learned it is most effective and beneficial to recruit and supplement existing community resources in the resolution of existing problems. All communities have resources that can be harnessed. Policy and change should provide support of a missing need rather than attempt to heroically recreate paradise.

Matthew Null is an English major w/concentration in the Study of Poverty and Human Capability, who is interested in English Literature and Rural Poverty. He is from New Martinsville, West Virginia and has taken course work such as: Introduction to Poverty and Human Capability, Poverty Research Seminar, English: Literary Approaches to Poverty, English: Medieval Justice and Poverty, Politics: Rural Poverty in America, Philosophy: Social Inequality and Fair Opportunity. Matthew has interned with Rockbridge Area Department of Social Services, Lexington, VA. His capstone final paper was entitled, “Mississippi’s ‘Third Class’: Representations of Poor Whites in the Works of William Faulkner.” He had a Service

Shepherd Alliance Internship with Rockbridge Area Department of Social Services, is a

Member of the Shepherd Student-Faculty Advisory Committee, a Past editor of the Shepherd Poverty Program newsletter, worked on Nabors Service Day, and the Career Center at Rockbridge Area Department of Social Services. Matthew plans on continuing to serve as a

Teach for America fellow in Helena, Arkansas.

While reflecting on the Shepherd Program, Matthew explains:

I can honestly say that the Shepherd Program has been one of the best aspects of my college experience, introducing me to like-minded people—students, professors, and local residents alike—who are concerned with the problem of persistent poverty in America. I’m especially interested in issues of Appalachian poverty and the special challenges it presents policy-makers, and my Shepherd placement right here in Rockbridge County introduced me to another side of the area that most students never get to see. My fellow intern Jess Good and I helped start a Career Center at RADSS with zero funding, simply by asking local businesses to donate computers, printers, phones, furniture, and literature. The staff just wanted to give the clients (mostly young mothers with hectic lives) a quiet, orderly place where they could conduct job searches, write resumes, and practice their interview skills. While we pulled it all together just as the internship ended, we’re optimistic that the next batch of interns can take over and help clients get ahead in Virginia’s welfare-to-work programs. I want to bring these experiences back to West Virginia, where, I think, certain pockets of rural poverty are so severe that most Americans would be shocked to know that such places still existed in their country.