This is the second in a series of profiles of researchers who were awarded a 2025 Lasallian Research Grant by the Lasallian Region of North America (RELAN).
Dr. Katie Dunleavy is an associate professor and graduate director at La Salle University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Awarded a research grant, Dr. Dunleavy will focus on Lasallian pedagogy through a project titled “Lasallian Teaching Virtues: Informing Service-Learning and Student Civility.”
Using quantitative and qualitative methods, the project will explore the link between two Lasallian pedagogical principles: service and community, Dr. Dunleavy said. “Specifically, the research will explore how service-based educational experiences (i.e., service-learning trips and service-learning courses) influence student civility within their classrooms, on campus and across their communities,” she said.
In the following Q&A, Dr. Dunleavy responded to a few questions from Christian Brothers Conference.
What inspired you to take on this project?
When I first joined La Salle University in 2007, our chair, Dr. Lynne Texter, began each department meeting focused on a different Lasallian teaching virtue. So I began my career thinking about these virtues often. Later, I traveled on four different service trips (we call them Lasallian Immersive Volunteer Experiences) with students, and we had reflections every night about the communities we were working with, their needs and strengths, and our own contributions and challenges. I thought then about the teaching virtues and how they could be threaded into these structured reflections, but I didn’t do so.
Just after the pandemic, I joined the university’s Community Engaged Learning committee, which was intended to centralize the service and experiential learning opportunities around campus. Hearing how many different faculty were implementing service in their classrooms and guiding their students through those experiences helped me reconsider my strategies. I decided to research this from an objective standpoint, which led me to this project.
How do you see your research benefiting the wider Lasallian community?
Similar to the work on our own campus, I want to bridge the ways in which instructors are using Lasallian virtues in applied settings. I would like to give some objective data demonstrating that these virtues have measurable outcomes that can help different types of students obtain knowledge and become better citizens. I would also like this to provide a foundation for instructors who are interested in service learning, so that they don’t feel overwhelmed in how to begin.
How will your research enhance or connect to the Lasallian mission?
As service, and social justice, is foundational in the mission, I think this clearly connects. However, many organizations and institutions place these words in their mission statements without follow through — I would like to highlight how Lasallian virtues emphasize the importance of this follow through. How education of vulnerable populations is necessary prior to service to prevent stereotypes. How reflection after the fact is necessary to provide humility.