Rush Interdisciplinary Service Experience (RISE)

RISE is an Interdisciplinary Service-Learning Experience with a structured curriculum and scholarly focus:

Student Expectations:

• Work in collaboration with the community and their peers to complete a labor intensive service project
  • Have good team spirit
  • Be prepared for physical labor outside their daily practices (ability to lift 30 pounds)

  • Be prepared for a setting and daily living that may be outside their comfort zone

• Participate in brief didactic and curricular exposure to cultural competency and ethics prior to the service trips (approximately 10 hours)
• Complete a assigned write-up post experience

Community service project- will be multi-factorial in partnership with community members in a select city in the Dominican Republic. Details of what participants will do are to be determined.

2023 Experience:

With local masons and cement workers and community volunteers, students cemented floors for five local families in Villa Verda, Dominican Republic. The community council chose the five families considering age, health, income, and opportunity for alternate aid. Working with Community Empowerment local representatives, students stirred cement, filled buckets, carried, poured and completed floors in five homes. Through this experience, students gained a deeper understanding of the perseverance of Dominican communities, multi-dimensional poverty and were able to impact the lives of multiple families. 

Where is it?

• Villa Verde, an established community outside of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic or a new partner community in the Dominican Republic

When is it?

• University Spring Break: Feb. 24- March 2, 2024

Who can participate?

Open to Rush Students 

Cost of experience?

The service trip costs approximately $1700, which includes flights, trip logistics, travel insurance and food. 

Rush students and local community members line up in single file fashion to transport buckets of cement to pour upon the floors of community members’ houses.  Two lines are set up:  buckets going in and those going out.  This structure greatly expedited the process to fully cement floors and distributed the work amongst members.