Bellarmine Interviews: Campus Life

By: Elisabeth Goodin, Ellie McGowan, and Jacob Millay

As the journalists for GSP Bellarmine, we became interested in the unique culture and feel of the university. It is a community in which we, as scholars, have been immersed for roughly five weeks. In an effort to showcase the unique feel of life here at Bellarmine, we reached out to Sarah Rohleder.

Rohleder is employed by the student activities center and she is affiliated with the AmeriCorps organization. Her main goals in her career are pursuing matters or higher education, leadership, and social justice, and she explained to us that her values align very well with the work she does in her department. The student activities center works diligently to holistically support the needs of students; the department is partnered with the league of women voters, and Bellarmine’s own office of identity and inclusion. The center helps foster what is known by students as “the Bellarmine difference.” The Bellarmine difference is a philosophy in place here at the university where student conversations are meaningful work, people are known not by their positions but by their names, and there is an active open door policy between faculty and students. The student activities center connects students with non profits, and allows them opportunities to both join and create registered student organizations.

According to Rohleder, the reason that Bellarmine is so unique is because of the small class size and involved administration; these attributes enable the creation and kindling of genuine connections between virtually anyone on campus. Professors get more one-on-one time with students, and more time and resources can be spent to ensure that each student is achieving highly. When asked, Rohleder stated that Bellarmine gives students the means necessary to find themselves, and more often than not Bellarmine becomes their home.