Religious Studies Major and Minor

Some students and faculty recently traveled to Poland to visit sites associated with the Holocaust as part of Albion College’s Holocaust Studies Service Learning project.

Cameron Voss ’20, chose Albion in order to participate in the Holocaust Studies Service-Learning Project, which for her was a “life changing” week of service restoring a Jewish cemetery in Poland.

The last member of the ‘Holy Trinity’ is remembered for devotion to the well-being of students, colleagues and the greater community of Albion.

The ‘go-to’ resource is used in religious studies courses and classrooms at colleges and universities around the world.

A recent book on global Catholicism does a deep dive into the late Albion professor’s study of Christianity in India.

Albion students in these two majors can begin graduate study as much as two full semesters faster thanks to the College’s new “4+1” agreement with WMU launching in Fall 2021.

Dr. Ron Mourad, who has taught in Albion College’s Religious Studies Department since 2001, has been named interim provost effective July 1. “I like thinking about new programs and how they attract new and different types of students,” he said. “We want to enliven a student’s imagination.”

In an effort to bring the dead back to history, Albion’s 10th biennial trip to Poland, capping the College’s Holocaust Studies Service-Learning Project, is a chance for students to uncover and restore graves of Holocaust victims as well as learn about Polish Jewry in an experience many students have called unforgettable.

“Earlier this summer, while chatting with a group of Albion churchgoers, I made a remark about religious diversity and immediately regretted it,” writes Tyler Eyster, ’20. “I worried that these older people might be offended by the idea that one could embrace people of different faiths. Later, a woman in the group told me, ‘If you think we think we’re the only ones going to heaven, you’re wrong. These people are my family and I love them, but if I had to stay with just them for all eternity, I’d probably walk right out those Pearly Gates.'”

The best place to study post-genocide restoration and peace building is to do it where people are still in the process and have come through many difficulties. In spring 2018 Cameron Voss studied abroad in Rwanda, and the experiential learning process was emphasized through constant site visits and learning from people with firsthand experience.