"Students often feel tremendously alienated from what's going on in this country. The community-based research they do in my courses can help them to see the impact of national policy on local organizations and the impact of intervention at an individual level. They see that they can have a real impact on people's lives and futures. . . . I've learned from my work in Mexico that one doesn't always need money to launch a project; bodies and sheer will can make things happen."
Anyone who has been in the energized presence of sociology professor Kate O'Donnell has seen "sheer will" in action. Professor O'Donnell was one of three recipients of the 2006 Ernest A. Lynton Award for Faculty Professional Service and Academic Outreach, a prestigious national award recognizing outstanding professors who connect their expertise and scholarship to community outreach by integrating socially responsive teaching, research, and community service.
That's quite a mouthful, but here's the point: O'Donnell is an activist feminist professor who connected students' heads and hearts--and lived to tell the tale. In speaking of the impact of community-based learning on her students, O'Donnell emphasizes how important it is for students to think critically about whose agenda matters and who makes decisions in a community.
Among the outcomes of O'Donnell's efforts was the establishment of Hartwick's Women's Center and Women's Studies Program, now the Women's and Gender Studies Program. She soon began incorporating community-based research into her classes, starting with "Women and Social Change." Early on, she focused on women in rural poverty and worked with The Migrant Tutorial Outreach Program and Planned Parenthood and Project REACH, a local youth group aimed at preventing early parenthood. Her involvement in these projects sensitized her to issues involving children and teenagers, which led to her found OCAY-Oneonta Community Alliance for Youth--with area parents and teens.
Over a period of years, O'Donnell has taken students to Chiapas, Mexico during J Term to foster social change through grassroots projects, including developing fundraising and service programs to assist schools and clinics, building a natural dye production facility, and creating an organic garden in San Cristobal. Her economic solidarity work with the Mayan women's weaving cooperative Jolom Mayaetik has resulted in fair trade and human rights education workshops, lectures, and exhibitions across the U.S. O'Donnell also teaches courses for the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Minor.
