Jeremy Salucka

Trinity Fellow Class of 2003-2005

Graduate Program:

Communication Studies

Service Experience:

Peace Corps, Bulgaria, 1997-1999
Undergraduate:

Loras College, Major: English Literature and Secondary Education

Trinity Nonprofit Agency:

Meta House

Full-time Service Experience:

As a Peace Corps volunteer I taught high-school English and coached baseball in Smolyan, a Bulgarian city located in the Rhodopi Mountains just north of Greece. I moved through these two years as more of a student than a teacher and remain grateful for the lessons. After my Peace Corps service I craved more of the international classroom I came to know in Smolyan and moved to Cairo, Egypt, to continue teaching and learning.

Trinity Fellowship Experience :

My work in Bulgaria and Cairo ignited my interest in non-profit organizing. I moved to Milwaukee in 2001, drawn mostly by the prospect of joining Marquette's Trinity Fellows Program. I spent two years working with the Milwaukee Boys & Girls Clubs to learn about the city and its non-profit sector, applying to and joining the Trinity Program in 2003.

The Trinity Fellows Program put my non-profit passion to work by connecting me to Meta House, a women's substance-use-disorder treatment agency. In my two years as Meta House's part-time manager of marketing and public relations I learned much about treating substance-use disorders. I also worked to surmount the challenges of sharing the agency's remarkable results with the Milwaukee community. My time at Meta House was complemented and informed by a strong academic program in organizational and intercultural communication.

Together, these components of the Trinity Fellowship grew my understanding of social service as a vocation and added to my toolbox of professional and academic skills. The program helped me become a better non-profit advocate, spokesperson and media liaison. My studies intimately acquainted me the value of solid research and how to plan, carry out and use that research. These two years were by no means easy-but then again, anything worth having rarely is.