Nursing instructor brings service learning to students through Boys and Girls Club partnership

Clinical Instructor Laurel Marek will never forget the comment one student made to her at the end of a semester of service learning.

"She said it was the first time she really felt like a nurse," Marek recalls.

It seems at first to be an odd feeling, given that her course, "Health Promotion Across the Lifespan," doesn't take place in a hospital or involve direct care to patients. The course instead focuses on health promotion and what nurse educators can do to inform members of the public about making healthy choices. Marek wanted students to see what that looked like in practice, which led her to partner with the Boys & Girls Club of Kenosha.

Each week, students in the class visit Kenosha-area children to talk about everything from physical activity to meal planning. These future nurses get much more than just an education in public health - they also get a glimpse at what it's like to be a teacher. Marek says students are always surprised when "they plan an activity for 20 people, and show up to find just five, and three of them might be leaving."

"You come in with this great plan that you're going to engage a bunch of people and everyone's going to be answering questions, then you actually walk in and you're all of a sudden having to think on your feet," Marek says. "That happens in nursing pretty frequently."

"There is no better way to learn about a community than to get out into it."

This is the fifth year of Marquette's partnership with BGC Kenosha. Nicole Washpun, director of teen services, has been around for all of them and seen firsthand the transformational impact Marquette students can have.

"At first the kids are shy, but once they start getting warmed up to the volunteers, they really open up," Washpun says. "It's always a really positive thing when they come in."

BGC serves over 12,000 young people in the Kenosha area, with many of them coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. "A lot of our kids are in group homes or foster care," Washpun says. Many of them receive necessary hygienic supplies through BGC along with education on how to use them. For many of them, it may be the first time they received either.

Marek's future nurses often sit with the kids, teaching them how to wash their clothes and how to use the products from the "hygiene baskets" they've put together, such as shampoo and laundry detergent. It's in line with Marek's hands-on approach to education, which is one of the other reasons why there's a service-learning component to the class. "There's no way to learn something unless you do it, and nursing is a very hands-on topic," Marek says.

Over the course of the semester, students learn about the neighborhood as part of a class project looking at social determinants of health. Students who choose nutrition might map the number and location of grocery stores in the area, while those interested in stress management may talk with students about the stressors in their lives. These fact-finding missions inform the development of lesson plans for students to present to the BGC kids.

"There is no better way to learn about a community than to get out into it," Marek says. "There are a lot of assumptions that people make about people's health behaviors, but when you are on the ground you see where a lot of those behaviors come from."

"A lot of the kids are so excited to be learning about community health because they've never really had access to this kind of education," Washpun adds.

The Princeton Review has ranked Marquette first in the country for community service two years in a row, with nearly 20,000 service hours logged in the 2024-25 academic year. Courses like Marek's do more than just prepare future nurses - they support and extend a culture of care across the entire university. This is one of many ways that Marquette students are living up to the institution's calling to Be The Difference.