Saint Mary's Newsroom / Campus Notes

Looking at the group photo, the members’ smiles are almost as bright as the orange vests they wear. 

Those gathered in the Central Business District of Freetown, Sierra Leone, are all part of a service organization that has been handing out meals every Sunday to the area’s homeless for two years. 

“I provided all of those from the purchases I made,” said Sylvester Amara Lamin, Ph.D., looking at the photo. 

Sylvester Amara Lamin (middle) poses with two workers from Social Workers Sierra Leone. Lamin spent a Sunday handing out food to the homeless and mentally ill who live on the streets of Freetown, Sierra Leone, on a recent trip back to his native country.

Lamin serves as a core associate professor for the newly started Master of Social Work (MSW) online program at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, which will host its first MSW Field Fair on Wednesday, March 25, from 3 to 5 p.m. at the University Center on the Twin Cities Campus. The program, which welcomed its first students in fall 2019, had the largest initial enrollment of any online program in the history of Saint Mary’s University.

“With the expertise of our professors, we focus on more of the clinical component, which is unique, especially when it comes to an online program,” said Dr. Lamin, who joined the Saint Mary’s community in January 2019.

Dr. Lamin makes an annual pilgrimage to his home country every year during winter break. On his most recent trip, he was invited to give a lecture at his undergraduate alma mater, Fourah Bay College (FBC), and take care part in the service group’s ministry on Jan. 5.

Many volunteers come every Sunday. Thanks to Dr. Lamin buying them at the hunting season’s conclusion, the regulars have their own personal vests embroidered with the group’s name, Social Workers Sierra Leone. Dr. Lamin also sends monetary donations to support the group’s mission. In addition, the group was able to hand out small toiletries such as toothpaste and toothbrushes, after Dr. Lamin’s wife gathered up the supplies to disperse.

The organization was founded in 2018 by Hassan Koroma after he witnessed a food vendor refusing to sell food to a homeless woman. Koroma gave the woman the food he was eating.

Sylvester Amara Lamin in his office.

“That was what motivated him to start feeding the homeless. He knew that her situation was not unique to her alone in the Central Business District of Freetown,” Dr. Lamin said.

Through donations, the group is able to hire a cook who makes meals — usually consisting of rice with various sauces — and then hand them out to people on the streets.

The organization also provides meals for those dealing with mental health issues who have nowhere to go given that the city’s own psychiatric center — one of the oldest in Africa, having been established in 1820 — is over capacity. 

“Many of them are on the streets because not all of them can go to the hospital,” Dr. Lamin said.

This is the reality of Sierra Leone, a West African country that has approximately 7.5 million citizens, with over a million of whom live in the Freetown area. As such, there is a significant resource issue, given that there is a large imbalance of social services in Freetown compared to the rest of the country — in spite of the fact that a majority of people work for the country’s government in various capacities, Dr. Lamin said. 

“There is some form of decentralization going on, but not at the speed you really want,” he said.

Establishing a foundation

Sylvester Amara Lamin with Patrick Walker, head of the Department of Sociology and Social Work at Fourah Bay College, on the college campus in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Patrick Walker, head of the Department of Sociology and Social Work at FBC, invited Dr. Lamin to give the Jan. 7 lecture. The talk provided an overview of the history and current trends of social work practices and education in the U.S., as well as lessons that could be learned and models emulated by Sierra Leone.

As Dr. Lamin explained in his lecture, the concept of modern-day social work largely came from the criticism of an American educator named Abraham Flexner, who in 1915 stated in an essay titled, “Is Social Work a Profession?” that social workers needed professional qualities and classifications.  

Flexner’s comments, in part, led to the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) being founded in 1952, for accrediting social work education programs in the U.S. Three years later, the National Association of Social Workers began as a professional resource. In 1979, the American Association of State Social Workers (later called the Association of Social Work Boards) started  providing accreditation exams. All of these institutions have created structure within the profession, Dr. Lamin said.

It is the hope of those at FBC, which is a part of the University of Sierra Leone system, to create a master’s level social work program similar to the ones that have been established in the U.S.  

Based on the crowded, large room full of teachers and faculty where he spoke, the interest is certainly there — but the structure and the resources needed are not.

On the day of his lecture at Fourah Bay College, Sylvester Amara Lamin took time for photos with students from the college. Patrick Walker is on the far left.

As opposed to the specialized, clinical focus of the MSW program at Saint Mary’s, the greatest need in Sierra Leone, Dr. Lamin said, is to have a master’s program with a generalist focus, allowing graduates to work anywhere they are needed.

Perhaps the greatest issue is what Dr. Lamin referred to as title protection, meaning that someone in a certain field, such as social work, has the proper credentials to back up the claim of their title, harkening back to Flexner’s sentiments from 105 years ago. 

In 2016, a group that included Koroma took the initial steps to establish a Sierra Leone chapter of the International Federation of Social Workers, but that effort is still very much in its infancy. 

“You can’t just call yourself a social worker. You have to have the requisite educational training backed by your licensure,” Dr. Lamin said. “The professional title needs protection.”

Featured image: Members of Social Workers Sierra Leone take a group photo clad in their bright orange gifts, which were donated from Sylvester Amara Lamin, associate professor of the MSW program.

When it comes to his work for Alexandria Public Schools, Lukas Gotto M’17 has a phrase that sums up his teaching philosophy: Cool is exciting. Exciting is engaging. Engaging leads to learning.

“That slipped out of my mouth one day when I was explaining it to somebody, and I’m like, ‘Oh, that sounded better than I intended,’” added Gotto, with his typical self-deprecating humor. 

Lukas Gotto M’17 stands with the 2019 Technology Leader of the Year award at the Impact Education Conference in December in Minneapolis. Above, Gotto stands with Chad Coauette, executive director/CEO of Sourcewell Technology, after being presented with the award.

In December, Gotto was named the 2019 Technology Leader of the Year (watch a video made for the award ceremony) at the statewide Impact Education Conference, sponsored by Sourcewell Technology, two years after he earned his M.Ed. in Learning Design and Technology (LDT) from Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota and became Alexandria Public Schools’ first instructional design technologist.

What was one of his immediate thoughts when he heard the news?

“What? Really? Who messed up?,” Gotto said with a laugh. “I was just shocked and very humbled and honored.” 

What cannot be downplayed, though, is the impact on the school district’s students, faculty, and staff both within the classroom space and outside of it. 

“His disposition, zeal, and accomplishments are illustrations of one of the goals of the LDT program, which is to help students develop skills, mindsets, and capacities so they can be change agents in their schools, organizations, and communities,” said Nancy Van Erp, Ph.D., the LDT program director.

Setting a new course

Gotto first arrived in Alexandria in 2014 as an eighth-grade social studies teacher, a position he served for three years. In 2016, Gotto decided he wanted to pursue a master’s degree but had to find one that was completely online given his coaching commitments with football, baseball, and boys’ and girls’ basketball teams. He came across information about the LDT program, which piqued his interest, given that it merged his passion for social studies with educational technology.

Looking back at his time in the program, Gotto was impressed with the attention that was being paid to design thinking. Although the concept is now found in educational settings everywhere, that was not the case when Van Erp first presented it to Gotto and his classmates, he said.

Lukas Gotto M’17 works with staff members of Alexandria Public Schools during a professional development session. Gotto has created a “Technology Champions” program within the district in which he teaches faculty and staff members throughout the school year about the latest technology so they can, in turn, introduce it to their students.

“It was fun because I was sending articles and books to our assistant superintendent and people several years ago before they were talking about it and now it’s such a big thing,” Gotto said.

As he was finishing up his degree at Saint Mary’s, talk surfaced of creating an instructional technologist within the school district, based out of Discovery Middle School. Eventually he was offered the position, a decision that was tough given his love of teaching in a traditional classroom setting.

“I do miss it, but there’s something about this job that’s always new and different,” Gotto said. “I really enjoy that aspect of it.”

For his capstone project, Gotto created a professional development model for what would become known as “Technology Champions.” Given that he is the only person of his position within the entire district, that model would turn into a program in which faculty spend four half-days being taught by Gotto about the latest educational technology devices using a motto he picked up in the LDT program: I do. We do. You do.

He uses the same practice when working with students by getting in front of the class for the first class period, then standing next to the teachers as they provide instruction.  

“So that way, if they have questions, I’m still right there,” Gotto explained. “And then by the last hour of the day, I’m typically out of the classroom. They’ve done it by themselves.”

With the assistance of the local Alexandria Education Foundation, Gotto has been able to secure more than $10,000 in grants to introduce students to a variety of educational-based technology including drones, augmented reality headsets, and little robotic balls known as Spheros, which students work with through mathematical, scientific, and coding platforms to program their movement (read an article that Gotto wrote about them for EdTechTeam).

The importance of unplugging

Lukas Gotto M’17 works with second grader Archer Swaggert with a large saw during the recent construction of a bridge/boardwalk behind Discovery Middle School in Alexandria this past summer.

Gotto grew up as the oldest of three brothers in Windom, Minn., a 90-minute drive east of Sioux Falls, S.D. Interestingly enough, his parents would set hard limits on video games or other types of technology for their children, which often involved competitions of “Guitar Hero” on PlayStation 2.

“We grew up on an acreage with horses, so there was always something that needed to be done outside,” Gotto said. “That was their mindset, ‘You don’t need that. You can just go outside.’”

As a result, Gotto held a fascination for technology, while maintaining a love to be outside and work with his hands. 

Gotto’s love for the outdoors led to an idea to build a bridge/boardwalk structure that would extend a trail beyond some marshy lands in the back of the middle school. He had worked on previous projects for other school districts during the summers, so it was only fitting that he would help construct one for his own school, which sits on more than 100 acres of land. 

Gotto met with members of the community who agreed to donate either time, money, expertise, or equipment to make the project a reality this past summer. In total, six different businesses stepped forward, including a bridge company that donated four 30-foot steel beams.

Fourth grader Nate Fuglestad, left, and third grader Avery Olson help construct part of the bridge/boardwalk behind Discovery Middle School. They were just two of the students Lukas Gotto M’17 enlisted to help with the project.

“We installed those without the kids because that’s some heavy metal going around, but then they did the rest of it,” Gotto said of the numerous students who worked side-by-side with their teacher’s assistance.

“The kids absolutely rocked it,” Gotto said. “It was fun to see them use a saw or a screw gun for the first time.”

Given how busy his life is — he and his wife, Alicia, have a one-year-old daughter — Gotto appreciated how seamlessly his degree from Saint Mary’s fit into this life. He has encouraged fellow educators who are thinking about pursuing a master’s degree to look into the program.

“I really enjoyed not having to meet in person. That was really high on my list,” he said. “And so if that’s really high on your list — whether you’re doing it during the Vikings game on Sunday, or you’re trying to get it all done on Thursday so you don’t have to miss the Vikings game  — it’s nice to have that option.”

The Minneapolis Saint Paul Business Journal reported that, per federal data from the U.S. Department of Education, Minnesota’s highest first-year earners are certified registered nurse anesthetists who earned their master’s degrees from Saint Mary’s University.

Leah Gordon, director of the Saint Mary’s M.S. in Nurse Anesthesia Program, said it’s a specialization that can bill independently for services, which contributes to its high earnings. She also said Saint Mary’s graduates are in demand right now.

Saint Mary’s B.S. in Nursing is also at the top of the list, and many other Saint Mary’s programs rank high in comparable first-year earning lists. Read more about these rankings.

George Diaz M’10 claims that he has plenty of time for hobbies. They include taking a joy ride on his motorcycle and enjoying outdoor culinary arts such as grilling.

Given his daily lists of responsibilities, though, one could assume he might not get as much downtime as he would like. Not only does Diaz teach classes in the M.A. in Organizational Leadership program at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities Campus, but he is also currently finishing up his Ed.D. in Leadership here.

George Diaz M’10 stands next to one of the Hanover Fire Department trucks with his daughter, Nora.

He also serves as a firefighter in his adopted town of Hanover, Minn. He’s one of 26 volunteers who are on call at various parts of the week to watch after the people and buildings of Hanover and three neighboring communities in the far west of the Twin Cities metro area. Oh, and after completing advanced technical rescue training, he is also a member of the Wright County Special Response Unit based out of nearby Monticello — and he and his wife, Heather, have two children under the age of five.

Still, the man who had studied to be a police officer 19 years ago would not have it any other way.

When Diaz and his wife moved to Hanover in 2014, he quickly heard about the need to recruit more volunteer firefighters to the local operation. That same year, he began working at Saint Mary’s as an assistant professor. He could never imagine how much his academic and pedagogical pursuits would fall in line with his call to public service. 

“When I left the law enforcement world, I always had some kind of urgency or want or need to go back to that field. My career path changed significantly, but I missed it,” Diaz said. “It was a decision that I didn’t know how much was going to change my life and my family’s life for the better.”

A higher cause

George Diaz M’10 shows his son, Sam, how to use the fire hose. Says Diaz: “When we’re out in the community, the kids will remember that we were at their schools and come talk to us.”

Perhaps there is no more defined correlation between Diaz’s two worlds as educator and civic protector than his involvement with the Minnesota Firefighters Foundation (MNFFF), a nonprofit organization that provides educational services for cancer prevention and raises funds for fire departments throughout the state. 

As a member, Diaz has been part of a team to raise money for new hoods for rural fire departments with old and ineffective equipment. In 2019, as part of its “Hoods4Heroes” campaign, the foundation was able to purchase 500 hoods, valued at $100 each. As Diaz will tell you, the cancer-causing carcinogens largely enter the body through the neck and ear areas, making updated equipment a necessity. 

Most fire departments run as both government agencies and nonprofits, Diaz said. 

“The bridge between both the nonprofit and the government aspect is something you’ll see a lot in regular nonprofit and government contracts, where one relies upon the other, but that relationship alone has not been studied very well,” he said. “And there aren’t many degrees that look into it.”

To address dynamics such as these, Diaz helped develop the online M.A. in Public Administration program at Saint Mary’s, which started in 2018. The program had its first two graduates finish this past fall. 

“When we teach people to be leaders, they’re going to be answering questions that have no answers. They just have to find the best next solution. That answer may not be the same tomorrow, because that answer is based on what we know right now and who we are with.”

 

—George Diaz

Diaz is proud of the partnership the MNFFF has formed with the University of Minnesota Masonic Cancer Center to conduct cancer research on firefighters in the Twin Cities metro area. As part of the study this spring, a group of firefighters will have their carcinogen levels monitored over extended periods of time to get more insight into the exposure to certain harmful cancer-causing chemicals they may encounter when putting out fires.

Based on the results, the foundation will work with the center to provide new recommendations to mitigate that exposure for firefighters. 

When it comes to handling an actual fire, Diaz and his colleagues often resort to a tactic that he stresses to his students: Find your next best right answer.

“When we teach people to be leaders, they’re going to be answering questions that have no answers,” he said. “They just have to find the best next solution. That answer may not be the same tomorrow, because that answer is based on what we know right now and who we are with.”

The path of discovery

George Diaz M’10 poses with his family, from left: daughter, Nora; wife, Heather; and son, Sam.

Diaz moved from the South Side of Chicago to Rochester, Minn., during his last year of junior high school. 

After graduating from high school in 1999, his first inclination was to become a police officer. He  pursed his associate’s degree in law enforcement at the local community college. During the last year of the program, though, his interest in a four-year degree began to grow. He enrolled at the University of Minnesota-Duluth on his way to a bachelor’s degree in criminology in 2005, before deciding to earn a history degree at The College of St. Scholastica in 2007 with the intention of applying to law school.

Diaz was accepted to the William Mitchell College of Law, but decided not to enroll. Around the same time in 2008, he was offered a position as a paralegal in the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office on its felony property unit before helping run a K-12 truancy prevention program. 

During 2008, Diaz also began his relationship with the Twin Cities Campus at Saint Mary’s by starting to take classes for an M.A. in Counseling and Psychological Services. 

“It was the course offerings that drew me into Saint Mary’s,” Diaz says. “It was really the culture that kept me here.”

Before earning his degree in 2010, though, he spent his last year taking human development courses — one of which was an elective course taught by Susan Hines, Ed.D. 

George Diaz M’10 (top right) poses with the members of the  M.A. in Organizational Leadership program at a recent graduation. 

“I can still picture George in my class,” Hines said. “He was a good student who was curious and always engaged in the classroom learning. This, along with his easy-going attitude and unflappable nature, really stood out to me and his classmates.”

Initially, he took the course simply because it fit his schedule before earning an M.A. in Human Development. Yet, a side conversation about his post-graduation plans with Hines would help compel him to start the Ed.D. program the next semester.

“She said, ‘Why don’t you work in education if you like it so much?’ And that’s where it really started,” Diaz said. “The aha! moment came about.”

Diaz always tells his students to ask as many questions as they can during their educational journey, given the insight those answers can possess to questioning minds — just like his own.

“If you don’t know the reasoning behind it, then you’re never going to remember it and it’s not worth your time learning it,” Diaz said. “Yes, some things will resonate with you; others won’t. But always understand why something does or does not.”

For Saint Mary’s University student Aimee Boggs ’20, hearing that her hometown school was in need of help was heartbreaking. Largely because of her ongoing fundraising efforts for the school, a tragic turn of events has turned into an uplifting story of generosity.

On Jan. 5, a trailer used for offices and storage at the De La Salle Blackfeet School in Browning, Mont., was vandalized and set on fire. This act of violence was especially tough for the Lasallian school, which Boggs said depends largely on volunteers and philanthropic gifts.

“I was upset because the school has been such a blessing to the Blackfeet community,” Boggs said. “Everybody from my siblings to my nephews have gone to this school, so to hear that someone would cause that type of damage to a school that not only runs on donations, but has been a light to our community, is devastating.”

Within just one day, Boggs, a 2012 graduate of De La Salle Blackfeet School, started a Facebook Fundraiser, with the hope of raising $20,000, to help the school purchase another trailer and replace its contents.

In less than a month, she has raised over $9,330. Additionally, she helped promote an ice-skating fundraiser for De La Salle, sponsored by the Office of Campus Ministry, and a hockey jersey raffle, made possible by the Athletics Department, both held Jan. 26 on the Winona Campus. Also that day, a collection was taken at Mass. About 75 people attended the ice-skating event, and these combined efforts raised just over $507.

“It’s great to see how quickly we have raised the money, and it’s cool to see how many people have shared the post,” Boggs said. “It just shows how supportive the Lasallian community is and how tight knit we actually are. To see the outpouring of love and support for our community has been heartwarming.”

Boggs hopes to keep her fundraiser going until her goal is met. Donations to the De La Salle Blackfeet School can also be sent directly to P.O. Box 1489, Browning, MT, 59417

 This spring student volunteers with S.O.U.L. (Serving Others United in Love) will be completing a service trip to the school as well. Boggs serves as president of S.O.U.L., and her best friend and roommate will be leading this trip.

Boggs said the school serves about 75 students in grades four through eight. But she describes it as more than a school: “It is kind of like Saint Mary’s in the sense that we had so much individualized attention from our teachers,” she said. “And the Brothers made that school what it is. I felt safe and supported, and I looked forward to going every single day. I don’t think I ever missed school. Without De La Salle I wouldn’t be at Saint Mary’s. I probably wouldn’t be in college. It was literally my second home.”

Student-driven cause is part of larger campus initiative that launched in 2019

This semester, the Winona Campus at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota may look a little greener than usual.  

That’s because 55 student-athletes will have specialized lime green bandanas on their backpacks as part of what has become a national movement called the Green Bandana Project. 

Anyone with the bandana indicates to passersby that they are a safe individual to approach with mental health-related issues and can provide cards containing additional resources, such as those listed on this PDF, located inside their accompanying mental health resource tags.

“It’s a sign that someone is always there for you,” said Justine Schultz, a junior from Winona who has helped spearhead the movement at Saint Mary’s, of the bandanas and tags. “You might not think someone will be open to talk to you, but someone will always be there to listen.”

Those who receive the certified training will receive a lime green mental health resource tag along with a matching bandana that will be tied to their backpacks.

What began in 2016 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a first-year student handing bandanas to fellow students has blossomed into a large initiative to raise awareness of mental health on college campuses. Participating campuses include the University of Minnesota; Minnesota State University, Mankato; St. Olaf University; and Winona State University.

When Karen Hemker M’04, director of Access Services in the Student Success Center, heard that a group of student-athletes from Winona State had started a chapter on their campus, she decided the initiative would be a perfect way to help reinforce an ongoing commitment to mental health awareness made in the university’s strategic plan that began with the formation of the Mental Health Task Force in spring 2019. 

As fate would have it, Schultz is a student worker in Hemker’s office. Given that Schultz is not only a psychology major but also a catcher on the softball team, Hemker asked if she would be interested in drumming up support from fellow student-athletes on campus, as Hemker was aware of Schultz’s passion for supporting students with mental health issues on campus. Schultz quickly got on board, as did Samantha Borawski ’15, M’17, an assistant coach on the softball team who also serves as an advisor to the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC).

The green mental health resource tags feature both the Green Bandana Project logo as well as the university’s logo.

“We said, ‘If we are starting this chapter at Saint Mary’s, we want students to be proud to be a part of the project.’ We thought that personalizing the resource items would be a nice little touch for those who do choose to complete the training,” Borawski said of the specialized tags and bandanas. 

In her research, Hemker noticed that different chapters required different amounts of involvement. On some campuses, students only had to take an oath to get the green bandana or tag.

The digital depiction of what the new green bananas will look like, featuring both the Saint Mary’s logo and the Green Bandana Project logo.

“We wanted to participate, but we also wanted to support our students by giving them additional training in mental health, rather than just have them sign a pledge,” Hemker said. “It was important to us to have a more structured program so students were using the correct language and had some training.”  

To receive a tag, students have to complete a two-hour training session. The first was conducted on Jan. 12 with 55 student-athletes led by Connie Mettille, a professor at Winona State, who is heavily involved in making students, faculty, and staff at Winona State aware of mental health issues. — Karen Hemker

Mettille also led the training sessions of an eight-hour Mental Health First Aid class based on material from the National Council for Behavioral Health that was initially offered to faculty and staff at Saint Mary’s and later to resident assistants and other student leaders. Hemker, Borawski, and Schultz had all undergone this training in the spring.

“We wanted to participate, but we also wanted to support our students by giving them additional training in mental health, rather than just have them sign a pledge.”

 

–Karen Hemker

The trio was pleased with the level of engagement the student-athletes displayed for the inaugural training session; several teams have expressed interest in going through the eight-hour training together. They hope to offer more training sessions later this spring, as the overall goal is to train anyone who is interested in serving as a resource to support mental health issues within the university community, Hemker said.

Borawski and Hemker expressed their gratitude to the administration for supporting this initiative. Faculty and staff members who have been through the Mental Health First Aid training will also be provided green bandanas to make students aware of the support among the faculty and staff as well. 

Featured image: The inaugural training for the Saint Mary’s chapter of the Green Bandana Project on the Winona Campus took place on Jan. 12. Fifty-five student-athletes took part. Those in charge hope to have another training session for all students later in the spring.