Office of the Registrar Compassionate Action

The Compassionate Action graduation requirement can be met one of two ways:

A. SERVING SOCIETY

 The Serving Society option can be fulfilled by courses involving active student participation in a course with a service project, or an activity or an internship that includes significant involvement in responding to social issues. A course, activity, or internship fulfilling this requirement should invite students to examine their own presuppositions and to develop their skills in their exercise of charity and compassion. The service project, which is to be explicitly integrated into the academic content of the course, should, when possible, be performed for a non-profit organization.

Activities designed to fulfill the Serving Society option of the Compassionate Action graduation requirement should substantially conform to the following criteria.

  1. The service component should ideally include an orientation and debrief which provides students with an opportunity to reflect on:
    1.  Serving well within the context in which the work will be done.
    2. The specific goals of the activity.
  2. The service courses or activity should expose the student to one or more of the following:
    1. Issues of economic disparity and class.
    2. Issues of gender and ethnicity.
    3. Issues of environmental stewardship/ remediation.
    4. Issues of social or political disenfranchisement.
    5. Issues of community identity, infrastructure and safety.
    6. Issues related to aging.
    7. Issues of disability.
    8. Issues related to the logistics of or structures for serving society and/or enacting justice.
  3. At least 12 hours of service should be performed.

Praxis:

Students may meet this requirement by completing a Westmont course approved as meeting the serving society requirement or through service with a Westmont sponsored, student-run, or external ministry or service organization. Students completing this requirement through Westmont-sponsored activities will receive credit through special sections of APP-191SS associated with each ministry.

Consequently, successful completion of APP-191SS with a grade of Pass is contingent on completion of the service activity.

Approved activities must meet the following expectations:

1. Participation in Westmont-sponsored ministries (e.g. Potters Clay, Emmaus Road, Urban Initiative) counts towards fulfilling this requirement.

2. Participation in student-run or externally-run ministries and service organizations may be counted towards fulfilling this requirement provided they have been certified to meet the following expectations.

  • There must be reasonable confidence the ministry is stable, organized, and effective.
  • The service should give students at least 12 hours contact with the communities being served or practical efforts to steward the environment.

B. COMMUNICATING CROSS-CULTURALLY

The Communicating Cross-Culturally option can be fulfilled by courses that explicitly integrate a cross-cultural setting into the course goals and content. In practice, this includes

  1. Any off-campus program that involves encounters with people from other cultures, that are designed to facilitate mutual understanding, dialogue, and appreciation.
  2. On-campus courses that provide opportunities for encounters with people from other cultures in a context designed to facilitate mutual understanding and appreciation.
  3. International and hire culture students receive credit for this requirement by virtue of completing the senior residency requirement.

The academic realm of “cross-cultural” is recognized as a distinctive aspect of formal study with its own body of literature, methods, and practices that instructors must be aware of, and incorporate into the course content.

The practicum/internship segment of Westmont in San Francisco is acceptable providing that it meets the requirement/goal of significant encounters with people from other cultures as approved by the Director of Westmont in San Francisco. Some types of pre-professional or occupational exposure in certain internships would not qualify.

Most Westmont study abroad programs would qualify provided they are not merely travel based programs. Study abroad programs must provide substantive and programmatic pedagogy, interaction, and dialogue with people from “other” cultures. Courses must clearly demonstrate how students will actively engage other cultures and language, beyond the minimal contact experienced by a typical tourist.

Off-Campus Programs: Off-campus programs involving a home stay of 6 weeks or more are approved for fulfilling the Communicating Cross Culturally option. A reintegration seminar is strongly encouraged where possible. At this time such a seminar is not required.

An off-campus program without a home stay may be approved for communicating Cross-Culturally based on the program’s situated nature even though the specific activities of interaction as outlined in the syllabus may not rise to a level that would be approved for an on campus course. In this case, the required activities are to be understood as formal markers for more general and pervasive interactions that would characterize the general living situation.