Thirteen students from various disciplines stepped out of their comfort zones through the return of an Intersession tradition: a global opportunity in Uganda initiated nearly two decades ago by Charles Pinches, Ph.D., professor in the Theology and Religious Studies Department.
In its first run since a pandemic-related hiatus, travel course T/RS 295: Christianity in Africa, was led by Dr. Pinches and Cyrus P. Olsen III, D.Phil. (Oxon.), associate professor of theology/religious studies.
Gain insights from recent participants, including faculty, and three students with majors in occupational therapy, kinesiology and history who spent Jan. 6-20 in the eastern African nation. Also, get details from Dr. Olsen about a travel course scheduled to run this summer from July 7-22.
Shown, University of Scranton faculty and students at the Bethany Land Institute in Uganda.
Dr. Olsen extends an invitation to students outside of theology/religious studies major.
"The course is for everyone and anyone...which is why it carries with it General Education requirement designations for Theology (P) and Diversity (D)," said Dr. Olsen.
"Let me repeat that the course is for anyone moving through their degree who can ensure they maximize their opportunities to become global citizens mindful of their solidarity with people who seem to be in far-off places; we are interdependent, and the course brings us together, shrinking distances and creating joy through interactions, like lots of dancing!"
Jennifer K. Whittaker, Ph.D, assistant professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy affirms that concept from her own perspective and discusses vital learnings for occupational therapy, physical therapy and pre-physical therapy students.
“Five out of the 13 students on the trip were therapy majors. I think one of the most important lessons for these students was seeing people who we do not traditionally think of as healthcare professionals, including students, priests, teachers, elders and other community leaders, be directly involved in the health of their communities. Healthcare professionals certainly have a role to play, but achieving health and health justice for communities in the U.S. and around the world requires collaboration with others and with sectors outside the traditional healthcare arena," said Dr. Whittaker, a first-time participant in the intersession travel course, T/RS 295: Christianity in Africa.
“It is also important for therapy students to have encounters with cultures and languages other than their own and to be in a position of not being an expert and not being able to communicate well. It helps us to understand the lenses through which we see the world and consider ways that these lenses can limit and expand our understanding of others and ourselves.”
What To Expect From the Summer 2025 Course
Dr. Olsen, shown, explains the "pilgrimage for intellectual and personal enrichment" -- and a few bonuses -- of the course.
"The immersion course builds global awareness and solidarity with people we come to know in Uganda; as we grow our social networks in the global south, we share in the lives of our newfound friends at sites for (a) ecological renewal, (b) health sciences research, (c) faith-based initiatives, and (d) hospitals engaged in social missions beyond profit. Our journey is conceived as a pilgrimage for intellectual and personal enrichment through challenging accompaniment," said Olsen.
"Bonuses include up-close time with hippos (always), elephants (always), and (sometimes) lions, and (even more rarely) leopards; occasionally we’ll also run into a mountain gorilla walking beside us with their progeny too. Many consider the highlight to be time in the Bwindi where we learn of those tensions between ecological preservation and community life affecting indigenous communities like the Batwa, the forest-dwellers kicked out of their home in the rainforest with neither rights nor legal recognition as persons, an all-too-familiar story across human generations, one which we aim to heal by being together more radically in accompaniment."
T/RS 295: Christianity in Africa is scheduled to run this summer from July 7 - 22. Interested students should contact Dr. Cyrus Olsen at cyrus.olsen@scranton.edu or Dr. Jennifer Whittaker at jennifer.whittaker@scranton.edu.
Considering the Course? Hear Firsthand From Three Royals Who Stepped Out of Their Comfort Zones
Sophia Madzy ’27, an occupational therapy major from Lawrenceville, New Jersey, fulfilled a personal goal for the trip by learning about healthcare in third-world countries, including the quality of and access to care.
A visit to St. Vincent Pollotti’s Transitory Nursing Home for People with Disabilities stands out in her memories.
“They took in kids with disabilities full time and provided therapy services for nearby townspeople. It was amazing to me that only the four caretakers were able to care for over 20 children, as well as their own families. Their work with the community and children in their care was amazing!” said Madzy, who previously attended a service trip to Honduras.
She hopes to share knowledge with her classmates at the University, and her advice extends beyond clinical information.
“Step outside of your comfort zone, because it’s when you will make the best memories. One of my favorite memories is dancing with the locals, and I had to step outside of my comfort zone when doing it.”
Ella Alvarez ’27, shown, a kinesiology major from Warwick, New York, was all-in from the first moment she learned about the trip from her roommate.
“It immediately intrigued me, as she had told me it would involve theology and health, and both occupational therapy and kinesiology majors. As a kinesiology/ pre-PT major, I went into this experience with the goal of broadening my horizons. I have traveled all my life, and more recently to other countries, but never to a place quite like this one…. I was extremely drawn to the culture and community in Uganda, how they care for one another and how those relationships carry through in their work, especially in the health fields.”
Alvarez said that one patient at Kitovu Hospital helped her realize the importance of the opportunity to give back.
“We packed grocery bags with things like soap, rice, sugar and bread and made a trip to every room of the hospital, giving each patient and staff member their own gift bag and seeing the happiness on their faces from doing so.
“An elderly woman immediately invited me into the room she was sharing with a few others. When I had handed her one of the gift bags, she signaled to me to come closer, reached out and held my hand. Regardless of the language barrier, the emotion on her face told me everything. She began crying, and she hugged me. At that moment I felt beyond grateful that I was given the opportunity to be there,” said Alvarez.
“I was, of course, nervous to leave my hometown and travel around the world for a few weeks. After the first day I was able almost immediately to fully immerse myself in the trip and the community. We were welcomed with open arms everywhere we went, and it felt like I was visiting a place I had been before where no one was a stranger. With all the friends our professors have made during their travels over the past years, it felt like I was right at home.”
Theodore O. Krokus ’25, a history major from Scranton, said he hoped to familiarize himself with a culture and people about which he previously knew very little.
“I find the complex colonial history of Sub-Saharan Africa fascinating and wanted to see firsthand how it impacted the region.”
Krokus accomplished that, and more.
“Getting to know and becoming friends with Ugandans was a life-changing experience and I will never forget what it’s like to be invited to dance with complete strangers and feel so welcome. Another highlight is the landscape; the rainforests and savannah were breathtaking, especially when hippos and elephants were just walking by. … The monkeys are very funny.
“I was most surprised with how dense, bustling and interconnected the rural communities were, especially in the forest near Kampala."
His advice to others considering the trip: “I would say to do it. It was such an incredible experience, and not a single student had a bad time from what I could tell. You will come back a different person.”
"I was invited to join by Drs. Cyrus Olsen and Charlie Pinches, two theology faculty members who had developed and were leading the course. I was also supported by the university’s Ethics Across the Curriculum Initiative. I joined as a health-professions faculty member to explore future opportunities in Uganda for students preparing for careers in health," said Dr. Whittaker, shown.
She explained that the course covered the history and role of Christianity in Ugandan culture, especially related to education, justice and medicine.
"The focus on medicine included learning about healthcare in medical settings, but also the many ways that culture; the social, built, and natural environments; poverty; geography; language; and education influence people’s opportunities to be healthy.
"As an occupational therapist and public health professional, I know that health is a product of complex relationships between people, their environments, and the things they do every day, so I was excited to experience this in a new setting and learn from the Ugandan people."
She shared insights on the care of the Earth and its people, communication and embracing the unfamiliar.
On Communication:
“Communication is such an important part of social and healthcare interactions. Learning basic greetings and phrases in Luganda and Rukiga, two of the languages spoken in Uganda, reminded me of how hard it is to learn a new language and how humbling it is to have limited communication skills,” said Dr. Whittaker.
“One of the things that surprised me about language was that even when our hosts were speaking English, words and phrases we knew in common weren’t always used in the same way. ‘You are welcome,’ shown below, was a greeting, where here we usually reserve it for a reflexive response after someone says, ‘thank you.’ I am not sure I ever thought much about what ‘you are welcome’ should really mean. We were truly welcomed in Uganda.”
On Care of the Earth and Its People:
“The course in Uganda complements our university’s Laudato Si’ initiative. The community partners who were our guides and teachers in Uganda showed us the meaning of integral ecology and how care of the Earth and care of people, especially the poor, cannot be thought of as separate endeavors.
“Occupational therapy practitioners have always been concerned with their clients’ environments because we know that contexts can support or be a barrier to participation in everyday health-giving occupations. However, we often focused only on micro- rather than macro-level environments. We don’t always think about how preserving the natural environment is important for ensuring everyone has access to meaningful occupations.
“Arguably, we split our time in Uganda between people and nature through visiting medical clinics, hospitals, women’s cooperatives, churches and schools, and then going on safari, hiking in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, shown, and swimming in waterfalls and rivers. People’s impact on nature and vice versa was ever-present.”
On Embracing the Unfamiliar:
“Be open to all of the new opportunities and experiences that will be offered to you in Uganda. This trip is a great privilege and time to learn from others, so don’t close yourself off to something because it is different or unfamiliar to you. Eat the matooke, use the latrines and be ready to dance!”
How It All Began
According to Dr. Olsen, the invitation from Dr. Pinches, shown inset, to lead the trip to Uganda with the T/RS 295: Christianity in Africa course changed his life and renewed his sense of purpose.
"We owe the course to Dr. Charles Pinches, now in his final semester at The University of Scranton. Dr. Pinches is a celebrated American ethicist who co-published with his mentor and friend, Stanley Hauerwas. So, Dr. Pinches is a big deal, and he approached me about 10 years ago to begin learning alongside him to take over leadership of the course, which I am now fulfilling in notes of gratitude and lament—he will be missed, but the relationships and work would be unavailable without his inspiration and hard-won creation of one of the most impactful global opportunities available to our students.
The invitation to join changed my life and renewed my sense of purpose; I was on the verge of leaving academic life and The University of Scranton, but a new gift was offered and it reinvigorated my sense of well-being and purpose. I joined the African Studies Association to gain legitimacy academically, which led to my $500,000 grant with the Templeton World Charity Foundation and Harvard Medical School through my colleague Ian Marcus Corbin, Ph.D. and Amar Dhand, D.Phil, M.D.; we built the grant application on the relationships offered by Dr. Pinches and won an internationally prestigious grant because of the offer of hope and friendship extended to me.
My career and life would be drastically different without the joy I find in my accompaniment with colleagues, friends, and loved ones in Uganda with whom I now partner in research as well. Our dear Ugandan friend Emmanuel Katongole, Ph.D., a renowned professor now at Notre Dame, reminds us always to respond to the call to go and to become one with the people and the soil so that African earth once again enters into our lives.
I never anticipated my life would lead to Uganda in this way, nor that my career would take a different and deeply enriching path to collaborate with computational neuroscientists, philosophers and sociologists for a multi-country project to impact the lives of local Ugandans, perhaps for generations.
Join us! Let’s dance together in joy as we grow intellectually, personally and spiritually for creating a world where we truly belong to one another."
Meet: Shown, clockwise from top left: 
I read that you are co-sponsoring a few events this month on campus.
Bekzat Kulbayev is a visiting research scholar from al-Farabi Kazakh National University, or The Farabi University, Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Shown from left at the Jan. 31 Student Activities Fair are E
Gabrielle Bingener ‘25, from Barto, is a neuroscience major with minors in philosophy and biochemistry and a concentration in health humanities. She is a member of the University Honors program and the MAGIS Honors Program in STEM. Inspired by what the University has taught her about the importance of health humanities in providing compassionate healthcare, her project will focus on continuing the Health Humanities Community Series, in collaboration with the Wright Center for Community Health. This series will provide workshops to engage community members in health humanities educational workshops. While they will be open to all community members, the workshops will be aimed mostly at students in healthcare and pre-health disciplines within local colleges, as well as current medical providers. Her faculty mentor is Dr. Paul Sampson, an assistant professor in the history department.
Doujuan Jourden '25, a business analytics major with a minor in finance from the Bronx, New York, will partner with Northeast Pennsylvania Pan-African Coalition (NEPA PAC) and NuWave Studios, specifically focusing on improving their after-school program through direct involvement. His project will work on engaging with youth, with a particular emphasis on arranging community service activities, all with the aim of empowering the students served within the program. His faculty mentor is Dr. Will Cohen, a professor in the Theology/Religious Studies department.
Sarah Lyons '26, a nursing major from Moosic, will engage in student leadership within the nursing department’s Period Poverty Project. She will collaborate with the Catherine McAuley Center as the main community partner, and hopes to expand the reach of the existing project both on campus and within the wider Scranton community. Expansions that she intends on leading include an increase in period product donation drives, youth educational workshops, the creation of educational resources, and civic engagement, all with the aim of decreasing period poverty within the community and increasing health literacy. Her faculty mentor is Dr. Kelly Filchner, an assistant professor in the nursing department.
Faith Montagnino '26, from Morganville, New Jersey, is an English major with minors in philosophy and writing. She is a member of the University Honors Program, the Special Jesuit Liberal Arts Honors Program and the Faculty Student Research Program. She plans to research and review best practices to improve reading and writing instruction in order to address literacy gaps within Scranton area public schools. She intends to present her research to local public school administrators, so that it could improve student outcomes. Her faculty mentor is Dr. Madeline Ganges, an assistant professor in the English department.
Theresa Pham ‘25, from Philadelphia, is a biology and philosophy double major with a minor in biochemistry. She is a member of the Special Jesuit Liberal Arts Honors Program and the MAGIS Honors Program in STEM. She will partner with the United Neighborhood Center (UNC) and their English as a Second Language (ESL) program to pursue oral history research about their client’s experiences with medical providers. She aims to understand the barriers that local English-learning immigrant communities face in accessing and utilizing healthcare services and gather potential solutions to these barriers. This research would help UNC both understand and address the needs of their ESL clients. Her faculty mentor is Dr. Jinqing Lu, an assistant professor in the Education department.
Q: When did you join the dance team? And why? 
