Public Lectures

 

The Bellarmine Forum

The Bellarmine Forum is a week-long symposium that is the signature event for the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts. Each year, the forum focuses on a particular topic of international importance that is explored through panel discussions, speaker presentations, documentaries, artistic expression and human interaction.

The Bookwork Project

The Bookworm Project is a community literacy program where LMU student tutors are paired with needy children in local schools and after-school programs to work on developing early literacy skills. LMU students also work with the families of these children to help make literacy an important part of their home environment.

Street Read

Street Read is a service learning course allowing literature students to lead their own literacy workshops and book clubs in local Boy’s and Girl’s Clubs, convalescent centers, inner-city schools and other communities. The program takes place within a structured classroom environment.

The Urban Institute

The program offers students the opportunity to work alongside professionals addressing important problems in today’s cities and conduct original research on important urban problems. All Urban Studies students complete a supervised internship in either public administration, social service, urban planning, law enforcement or related urban topic.

Department of Theological Studies

One of the most successful and prominent outreach efforts the department carries out is the Pastoral Training program, which trains individuals to serve in pastoral ministry. The program includes individuals from the Diocese of Orange and the Los Angeles area.

Research, Study Abroad Programs and Fellowships

The Bellarmine College focuses on two funding opportunities to conduct research domestically and internationally, the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship grant program and the Escallier Foreign Study Awards program. In conjunction with the Center for Service and Action, the college arranges Alternative Break trips for students to conduct service and experience cultural immersion and the Fitzgerald Fellowships for students who wish to take on internships and other jobs in the political field during the summer or school year.

Notable professors:

Matt Dillon: In Africa, the Roots of Language and Civilization

Professor Dillon authored a new-textbook named, “In Africa: The Roots of Language and Civilization,” in order to more effectively address the students in his Latin course who were predominately African American. The book teaches the same Latin material but from an African perspective.

Jodi Finkel: The Latin Connection

Through her passion for politics and Latin American culture, Finkel has placed her students in internships, fellowships and other service opportunities, domestically and internationally. Collectively, the students have contributed approximately 5,000 hours of community service and saved non-profit organizations more than $40,000 in labor costs.

Michael Genovese: Political Awareness

Political Science Professor Genovese created the LMU Institute for Leadership Studies which promotes the study and advancement of leadership through the Oxford Scholars Program, Dilemmas of Democracy Conference and White House internships.

Deena Gonzalez: Education for All and Santa Monica Youth Center’s LGBTQI

As the chair of LMU’s Department of Chicano/Chicana Studies and director of the American Culture Studies Program, Gonzalez works to uncover the untold stories of people in "the borderlands" and delineate the contours of racial and ethnic conflict in these areas. Also, Professor Gonzalez volunteers as a tutor and counselor at the Santa Monica Youth Center’s LGBTQI, which focuses on providing services for gay and lesbian adolescents in the City of Santa Monica.

Holli Levitsky: 1939 Club

Students in Levitsky’s “Tolerance in the Arts” undergraduate course and the “Trauma, Narrative, History” graduate courses are assigned Holocaust survivors from the “1939 Club” in Los Angeles to interview about their “survival stories,” then write biographies of each survivor to accompany a portrait gallery of them at Chapman University.

Kelly Younger: Art of Monologue, Unheard Voices

Through a series of interviews, students in Younger’s “Art of Monologue” course create dramatic monologues based upon life experiences. The students discover, through listening, reading and writing, the value of identity; of walking in someone else’s shoes; and of dramatizing the true stories in order for those stories to be heard.

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