Community Connections Count: An Interview with Elizabeth Weiss Ozorak
By Bethany Ozorak ’13, Davies & Fahrner Assistant Director for Community-Based Projects
A professor of psychology for the past 30 years at Allegheny College and Meadville Market House Authority board member, Elizabeth Weiss Ozorak has always been invested in the community and community-based learning for her students. Historically, her teaching and leadership connected with community initiatives and scholarship. I had the opportunity to speak with Elizabeth about why she felt community connections were important and how she engaged her students to connect beyond Allegheny.
4 ENGAGED | Fall 2019
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Tell us how you became involved with and are currently engaged in the community? I grew up in a small town where everyone was pretty much involved with everything, so it seems normal to me to be involved where you live. If you want something to happen, you talk to people, you find out what’s already going on and what
still needs to happen, and you put your shoulder to the wheel. When I moved to Meadville, I found a community that already had a great deal going on, and a lot of Allegheny students were already involved in the community through service, work, and other kinds of participation. What we didn’t have, at that point, was a curricular entry point or a way of connecting classroom learning with community-based learning. I started by involving my first-year seminar students in the
