IPS students present their research in San Diego!

This past week I accompanied 9 of our students from the MA in Social Justice and Community Development program as we attended the 10th Annual Action Research Conference at the University of San Diego. Our students were asked to come and present their research that they completed during their spring Applied Research course. This course is an integration project for MASJCD students where they put what they’ve learned about social justice and community development into action through a community-based, collaborative, Participatory Action Research project. This semester we partnered with Catholic Charities to evaluate their Celebration of Giving program. Students in the class first learned how to do qualitative research and then created a research design and implemented it during the semester. Students divided themselves into five groups, working with clients of Catholic Charities, children who received gifts, volunteers and leaders at Catholic Charities, people from Loyola who gave to the program, and leaders of Christmas giving programs that employ alternative giving models.

In San Diego, students presented their findings by sharing stories from the field and the generative themes that emerged in the project. They integrated their research with Catholic Social Teachings and focused particularly on the relation between charity and justice and the role of human dignity and reciprocity in Christmas giving programs.

The research will be published soon on the IPS website, so stay tuned to the IPS blog in order to read more once the student papers are published!

And a huge congratulations to our student presenters – Madeline Anderson, Aaron Carpenter, Daniel Darmanin, Scott Donovan, Kaela Geschke, Connie Johnson, Lindsey Peletier, Virginia Rivera, Veronica Sims! We’d also like to thank Northwestern Ph.D. candidate, Lynn B.E. Jencks, who was part of our class this semester and presented with us this weekend.