‘A Teacher & Researcher with Passions for Justice and Education’

CSC News & Reflections
Summer 2004

When the Center for Social Concerns created the Rodney F. Ganey Award three years ago, the goal was to support and encourage collaboration between Notre Dame, its students and the South Bend community.

In a room full of these partners last April, the Center again recognized the efforts of Notre Dame students and faculty to engage their local community.

For many in the community, this year’s Ganey Faculty Community-Based Research Award winner is well known for extending educational initiatives beyond the University’s grounds. F. Clark Power, Ph.D, professor in Notre Dame’s Program for Liberal Studies (PLS), was recognized as the driving force behind several innovative educational initiatives.

The first, Your Educational Success (YES), developed learning strategies for at-risk youth at Adams High School, South Bend.

“The results were remarkable,” explained Stephen M. Fallon, Ph.D, associate professor in PLS. “Students who had been in danger of falling off the radar were energized and newly involved in school.

“Their combined absentee rate, which had been alarmingly high when they entered the program, dropped to well below the average absentee rate for the school.”

In an effort that garnered Power significant recognition in the New York Times and USA Today, he was the driving force in developing the World Masterpiece Seminar at the South Bend Center for the Homeless.

In the five years it has been in place, the World Masterpiece Seminar has exposed hundreds of guests of the Center to great works of philosophy and literature.

“From the beginning of the program, Clark insisted that we involve students,” noted Fallon. “Through this experience, students have seen first hand, and been surprised by, the often formidable intellectual skills of  homeless students.”

Not surprisingly, Power isn’t sitting on his laurels. He is currently hard at work on a new project to bring together the University, and local and national communities. In a project called “ministry through sport,” a cooperative venture between researchers at Notre Dame and at Philadelphia’s Neumann College, Power hopes to explore character development in parish sports programs.

For much of his career, Power has been an active researcher on the connection between self-awareness, moral development and democratic education.

However, as his colleague, Stephen Fallon notes, community- based initiatives have long taken center-stage in Clark’s research profile and professional life.

“He is a teacher and researcher with passions for justice and education.”