Being a teacher already means serving your community by teaching those that will come after you. But for Merrillville native Professor Carrie Higgins, it means going above and beyond what most would call her duty to her students. Higgins currently lives in Valparaiso and is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Communications Department at Purdue University Northwest’s Westville campus.
Higgins’ experience with helping others started early in her career. After graduating from Purdue University’s West Lafayette campus with a degree in Community Health Education, getting her Master’s Degree in Education and Instructional Design at Purdue Northwest’s Hammond Campus, and getting her certification as a Health Education Specialist, she went into the public wellness field and worked for Lake County’s Health Department as a Health Educator, teaching kids and school about the dangers of communicable diseases. During this time, she also became one of Lake County’s first ever AIDS educators, providing a valuable and much-needed service to children in Northwest Indiana.
“That was when nobody was talking about it,” said Higgins. “It was taboo.”
Her work providing aid to the community continued into her career teaching and coordinating wellness programs as the Wellness Director for Valparaiso University and Valpo Public Schools as their employee Wellness Coordinator.
Eventually, an acquaintance of Higgins tipped her off to a part-time communications position at Valpo’s SELF (Special Education Learning Facility) school. This is where she discovered her love of teaching.
“I actually taught a Purdue class in that building,” said Higgins, “and it was really close to where I was working. So, I taught one class and loved it; I just loved it.”
With Professor Higgins, teaching her students at PNW is about giving back to the community with much-needed services while incorporating her lessons into that service, in something called “Service-Learning.”
What separates Service-Learning from your average community service, something Higgins refers to as “volunteerism,” is that the students reap a unique benefit from the service they provide.
“There’s a big difference that people don’t understand between volunteerism - community engagement - versus Service-Learning,” said Higgins. “The difference is that with volunteerism you can just go and put in your time. You can pick up garbage, you can go file papers, whatever. But with Service-Learning, my students are providing a needed service to a community organization while they’re learning the course content and applying it to what they do.”
Professor Higgins teaches her students how to work in groups, handle conflict and lead so they can be more effective not just in their roles in the workforce, but to aid them in their roles as volunteers through their coursework.
For the Fall 2017 semester, Higgins’ students are working on two group projects; one group is creating public relations and publicity materials for Jacob’s Ladder Pediatric Rehabilitation Center’s “Murder Mystery Extravaganza!” event at Sand Creek Country Club on October 26th, and a supply drive to provide Jacob’s Ladder to provide them with much needed supplies such as disposable wipes, Kleenex and paper towels, which are all items that Jacob’s Ladder spends a lot of money on. The Supply Drive frees up funds for the organization to use on things like summer camps, preschools and other services that Jacob’s Ladder provides.
The Supply Drive came about through Higgins’ students analyzing why attendance at these Jacob’s Ladder services were down and determining that it was the cost people had to pay to enroll their children. To get the cost down, the students sourced the supplies that Jacob’s Ladder spends the most on so that the organization doesn’t need to, driving down the price of enrollment.
Higgins’ other set of students is working with Guardians of the Green Mile, an Animal rescue in Northwest Indiana. That group of students is working on improving GotGM’s website and integrating their social media so the volunteers, who all have full-time jobs, don’t have to.
Professor Higgins emphasizes that the work her students are doing is vital. While they could be interns for for-profit companies, the vital work her students do through Service-Learning is important not just for their own experience, but for the community as well.
“I feel like corporations can afford to hire students as interns and public relations staff,” said Higgins. “But, I think the not-for-profit agencies typically don’t have the funds, and they also typically have a greater need for hands, just people to help get things done.”
Higgins also feels like her students benefit on a personal level: “What I find is that my students benefit personally and grow as people when they give back to the community.”
The work that Professor Higgins has done for her community could fill at least two articles. She’s the Faculty Advisor for PNW Westville’s Circle K student organization, personally volunteers for the Valpo Police Department K9 Unit’s “5-K9” walk/run, has worked with over 41 organizations over her community service career and was nominated by her students for a 2017 Influential Woman Award from Influential Women of Northwest Indiana.
“Being nominated by my students for such a prestigious award is extremely humbling,” said Higgins. “Having students nominate me meant more to me than anything because it made me feel like the experiences I had created for them in classes and projects were appreciated.”
But for why she creates those experiences, take it from her:
“I’ve found from doing this for so many years that I have many examples of students who will come back to me later, and their path in life was definitely altered in a positive way by the experiences they had giving back to people.”