Thomas Ehrlich award for service learning, Catherine Ludlum Foos

"Revolutions start small and grow slowly in the academy, and we are certainly different and better because of her efforts at revolutionizing our thinking."

—George T. Blakey Jr., IUE professor of history

Catherine Foos launches her Personal and Social Ethics course with an invitation from Mohandas K. Gandhi: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” She immerses students in current ethical issues through a service learning model, asking them to go beyond the textbook and classroom debates and take their learning to the community.

Foos first wed service learning to her curriculum at John Carroll University, but when she joined the IU East faculty in 1993, there were no resources to support the development of service learning. So she immediately began building a network. She researched service learning pedagogy, established ties to community organizations, implemented service learning projects in her courses, served as a faculty representative on the Indiana Campus Compact Advisory Board and received a research fellowship that led to the publication of her article, “Fluid Boundaries: Service Learning and the Experience of Community,” in the book Beyond the Tower: Concepts and Models for Service-Learning in Philosophy (2000).

Foos has preached the benefits of service learning through workshops and seminars on campuses across the nation. In collaboration with Julie A. Hatcher, Foos co-edited a Service Learning Workshop Curriculum Guide in 1999 and is currently writing a book on service learning foundational theories and their effects on practice.