Uniservitate in Poland
The Uniservitate Coordination together with members of the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland, who carry out the service-learning projects.
The spirit of service-learning is spreading at the university where Karol Wojtyla lectured for almost a quarter of a century in Poland. During a visit to the John Paul II Catholic University in Lublin (KUL) in recent days, Maria Rosa Tapia and Candelaria Ferrara from the Uniservitate coordination and Christiane Hoth de Olano and Olha Mykhailyshyn from the Central and Eastern Europe and Middle East hub confirmed this engagement.
KUL recently produced a service-learning (SL) handbook available in Polish and English and a yearbook documenting SL actions. In addition, an institutional link was initiated with the European Association for Service-Learning in Higher Education (EASLHE).
Ewa Trzaskowska, Vice Rector for Education at the university, shared her engagement with SL and highlighted the interest in strengthening the training on this pedagogy already offered to other regional universities. The Vice Rector also expressed the intention to include research more vigorously, to favour alliances for new projects with parishes and secondary schools, and to generate an online space to make the initiatives underway visible to interconnect them with others developed in similar contexts or as inspirational examples for educators.
Maria Rosa Tapia, Uniservitate Coordinator and Ewa Trzaskowska, Vice Rector of Education at John Paul II Catholic University
During the two-day visit with a full agenda, the Uniservitate delegation met the team that manages the Teaching and Learning Centre and promotes the SL approach: professors Anna Hałas, Anna Łukasiewicz, Paulina Liszka and Iwona Pietrzak. In a room of the Centre, which has a « sensitive » wall designed by landscape architecture students, the visitors talked with Jan Kamiński, professor at the Faculty of Natural and Technical Sciences, Landscape Architecture course, an expert in SL and coordinator of the Uniservitate project at KUL, alongside professors Krystyna Chałas and Dariusz Staszczak, from the Faculty of Social Sciences, and Father Andrzej Pietrzak, from the Faculty of Theology.
Chaas, a Pedagogy professor for two decades, underlined the transformative power of service and regarded the connection between service and spirituality as fundamental. Building on the experience of Poland’s history, when service was an obligation with no deeper meaning during the communist regime, the professor advocated that service-learning initiatives should not just be about moving from information to action but should include comprehensive training and guidance. For example, she presented two publications jointly produced with the KUL Pedagogy students on « Education through projects: Signs of faith and memory » and « Axiological stories and fables », which compile the work carried out by the student groups.
Meeting with members of the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland, who carry out the service-learning projects.
Afterwards, the guests visited three teacher-initiated projects designed and implemented with strong student leadership; one is from the Department of Literary Theory and Anthropology, implemented at the « Baobab Community Centre », which cares for Ukrainian refugees and has won the Uniservitate Small Research Grant. Professor Viktoria Durkalevych introduced service-learning to her students, and together they followed the steps to carry out a project based on the CLAYSS materials. Seven first-year students of Coaching and Career Counselling took the initiative, and one of them, a Ukrainian student, proposed to develop the project in the Baobab Centre, unknown to others. « It was good for my soul to help people from Ukraine, » she said; her classmates added that it was also a rewarding experience for them to meet these people.
The project by Landscape Design and Modelling and Environmental Protection students at the « Kalina » old people’s home is another one that stems from a professor’s interest in the SL, with Uniservitate support. Along with professors Katarzyna Karczmarz and Ewa Mackoś-Iwaszko, the young people provide the elderly with « horticultural therapy », which also promotes intergenerational exchange.
« Terapia hortícola », un proyecto de los alumnos de Diseño y Modelado del Paisaje y Protección del Medio Ambiente en la residencia de ancianos « Kalina »
The delegation visited the third experience carried out by Professor Sylwia Gwiazdowska-Stańczak with students from the Department of Educational Psychology and Family in a neuropsychiatric hospital. Forty students take turns to accompany hospitalized children daily, helping them with their after-school work, playing with them, or just being with them. Doctors and professors value and appreciate this for its positive effect on children’s health.
In addition, two groups of Psychology students shared their experiences with the visitors. One of them is « Help Young », an initiative to provide psychological support to foreign students that continues. About thirty near-graduates offer the « friendly advice » initiative: friendly counselling among peers under the guidance and engagement of their teacher Małgorzata Łysiak. In a conversation with the Uniservitate coordinators, the students highlighted the importance of their training to have contact with real-life cases in a protected space, given that they have the permanent support and guidance of the professor. They also appreciated the personal touch of these experiences. One of the young people said that learning about the difficulties that other people of the same age and university go through made him more compassionate and empathetic.
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Meeting with students from the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland, who carry out service-learning projects.
The delegation also met with the Department of Occupational, Organizational and Rehabilitation Psychology students led by Milena Rózylo. They run an emotion management activity for young people with disabilities in a hospital. The third-year Psychology students emphasized the importance of working with projects and real situations while thanking their professors and the hospital professionals for their trust, saying they were proud to have been able to conduct the meetings. They all agreed it was a significant experience from planning to implementation.
During a tour around the KUL premises guided by Ewa Kula from the Academy for Modern Media and Communications, the visitors learned that this university was established in 1918. It is the first one in Lublin based on the values of the Catholic faith and was closed down during the Second World War. However, they kept providing lessons clandestinely.
The Uniservitate Coordination attended to meetings in which the students from KUL presented their service-learning projects.
KUL has participated in Uniservitate since 2020, and this was the first visit of the programme coordination. Maria Rosa Tapia found the two-day stay in Lublin an intense and enriching experience: « It was rewarding to observe the enthusiasm of the professors and the progress of projects developed even without identifying them with the service-learning approach, as well as others initiated from this programme implementing innovative pedagogical proposals with interesting results ».
Candelaria Ferrara affirmed that « ideas for new exchanges between different university departments arose from this visit, and the Center for Teaching and Learning acknowledged that students do much more than what they had perceived until now ». The Polish professors commented that the visit of the Uniservitate delegation was an opportunity to acknowledge what they had done with a broader perspective.
