Mount Welcomes Benedictine College Students

Benedictine College students have been actively involved with the Mount during the 2024-2025 school year through nursing clinicals, volunteer projects, the Prayer Partner Program, and Mass Communications service learning. These collaborations include assisting with daily needs, organizing events, and promoting spiritual and environmental initiatives at Mount St. Scholastica.

The Benedictine College Liturgical Choir sings at Vespers.

Many students from Benedictine College (BC) have joined sisters at the Mount for a variety of activities during the 2024-2025 school year. Here are some of the classes and projects that brought them to the Mount:

• Dooley Center hosted 12 BC nursing students for their foundations level clinical rotation in October and November of 2024. The students provided help with sisters’ everyday needs and were able to practice their assessment skills. Students visited one-on-one with sisters, attended prayers and Mass with them, and participated in other daily activities, such as an afternoon card game.

“I was blessed with the opportunity to spend my semester doing clinicals at Dooley Center! It was fulfilling not only academically but also spiritually. I was able to help care for the sisters while also getting to go to Mass and vespers alongside them. My time at Dooley Center has taught me the true meaning of holistic care and helped shape me not only as a future nurse but as an individual!”
Natalie Graves, Benedictine College nursing student

• Volunteer Coordinator Sister Loretta McGuire welcomed the assistance of numerous students during the fall months as they gathered black walnuts and pecans, vacuumed cars, washed windows, weeded gardens, and planted spring bulbs. Dr. Mark Schramp and Dr. Janet Paper brought some of their biology students to help bake bread and prepare packages of peanut brittle and peanut clusters for the Night of Dreams. Dr. Jad Ziolkowska also sent some of her economics students to work with Sister Loretta.

• On November 2, 2024, the Benedictine College Liturgical Choir, directed by Annija Veitnere, attended Vespers at Mount St. Scholastica for the Commemoration of All Souls. After Vespers, they sang Gabriel Fauré’s “In Paradisum,” accompanied on organ by Sister Susan Barber.  

• A number of BC students participate in the Mount’s Prayer Partner Program. Sisters and students are matched up and are able to visit when the students come for Evening Prayer and supper on a regular basis. Grace Bevitt and Natalie Graves, prayer partners of Sister Micaela Randolph, planned a game night for sisters in the Dooley Center dining room on November 8, 2024.

• Mass Communications senior students regularly do service learning projects. This semester, the two students assigned to the Mount are preparing advertising materials for a new environmental internship program at Sophia Spirituality Center.