KM
Karri Makinen
  • Class of 2012
  • Walpole, NH

Walpole resident is one of 25 Saint Michael's College student leaders to participate in social justice retreat

2009 Sep 9

Karri Makinen, daughter of Ronald Makinen and Tammy Vittum of Walpole, is one of 25 Saint Michael's College student leaders who participated in a social justice retreat to start the school year. Faculty and staff led the three-day retreat, followed by a volunteer service activity, Aug. 21 to Aug. 23, at beautiful Saint Anne's Shrine on Isle LaMotte in the middle of Lake Champlain.

The Shrine is a spiritual and historical preserve, where Mass is held in the summer, that has been maintained for over 100 years by the priests of the Society of St. Edmund, the founders also of Saint Michael's College.

Makinen graduated from Fall Mountain Regional High School before coming to Saint Michael's College, a liberal arts residential college located in the Burlington area of Vermont.

Moise St. Louis, assistant dean and director of multicultural student affairs, and Dr. Patricia Siplon, professor of political science, coordinated the training sessions, with support from Laurie Gagne, director of the Edmundite Center for Peace and Justice; Chris Clary, co-director of the Student Resource Center; Dr. Patricia Delaney, assistant professor of anthropology; Dr. Michael Bosia, assistant professor of political science, and Derek Souza '09.

"The retreat helped students draw the connections between social justice issues-from diversity and inclusion to global poverty to the environment-in order to work effectively and collaboratively in the coming academic year," Dr. Siplon said. "It also provided a hands-on opportunity for skills and relationship building," she said.

The group practiced their skills on Aug. 25 doing a community service gardening project at the Shelburne Museum, and again on Thursday, Aug. 27, when they collectively created a work plan and timeline for achieving their shared goals in the coming school year.

Workshops

The sessions students took part in at Isle LaMotte included Catholic Social Teaching (Gagne); Myers-Briggs self-knowledge testing (Clary); Skills Building (Siplon); Diversity Training (Delaney); Working Collaboratively across Social Justice Issues (Bosia), and Post-College Activism (Souza).

Saint Michael's College, www.smcvt.edu, is a distinctive Catholic liberal arts college that provides an education with a social conscience, producing graduates with the intellectual tools they need to lead a successful, purposeful life that will contribute to peace and justice in our world. Founded in 1904 by the Society of St. Edmund and headed by President John J. Neuhauser, Saint Michael's is identified by the Princeton Review as one of the nation's Best 371 Colleges, ranking 9th among institutions in Quality of Life and 2nd in Town-Gown Relations. It is one of 270 colleges and universities nationwide, and one of only 20 Catholic colleges, with a Phi Beta Kappa chapter on campus. Saint Michael's has 1,900 undergraduate students, some 250 graduate students and 100 international students. In recent years, Saint Michael's students and professors have received Rhodes, Woodrow Wilson, Pickering, Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Science Foundation and other grants, and its professors have been named Vermont Professor of the Year in four of the last nine years. The college is listed as one of the nation's Best Liberal Arts Colleges in the 2009 U.S. News & World Report rankings. Saint Michael's is located just outside of Burlington, Vermont, one of America's top college towns.

-30-