Service and Community-Engaged Learning Intercollegiate Virtual Panel

For the third year, the Service-Learning Intercollegiate Collaborative of San Antonio, invites you to a series of panels over the 2025-26 academic year. 

The February 9th Service & Community-Engaged Learning Panel considering dimensions of health and wellness features: 

Mary Gentry, Ed.D, is an Associate Professor in Kinesiology at St. Philip’s College. She was recently a 2026 Excellence Award recipient from the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD). She has served as Interim Department Chair for Health Sciences and Histology.

Alfredo Ortiz Aragón, Ph.D - is a community-based action researcher and professor at the University of the Incarnate Word (UIW) where my goal is to bring the community into the “classroom” and take the “classroom” into the community. I try to work with and elevate people’s knowledge—our “senti-cuerpo-pensante” (thinking, feeling, embodied) ways of knowing, acting and being—as the highest and most valid form of knowledge that has sustained us from the beginning of time. I spend a lot of my time thinking about how to help people share their stories in ways in which they can see the expertise in their experience and use it themselves and with others to try to change their worlds, without it getting damaged or away after abstracted along the way. I enjoy learning about new ways to do this important work, even in the adverse territories in which many of us work to contribute to equity and change.

JP Peters - Assistant Director for Student Outreach and Service at Georgia Gwinnett College. JP Peters is responsible for developing, implementing, and evaluating volunteer programs at local, regional, and national levels. He collaborates with faculty, staff, and community partners to incorporate service and community needs into academic and co-curricular activities.

Moderator, Heriberto Garcia - Program Manager/Coordinator for the Center for Community Engagement at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), where he leads institution-wide initiatives that connect students, staff, faculty, and community partners through high-impact, community-engaged learning. In this role, he oversees programs such as the Community Work-Study Mentorship & Internship Program, community engaged coursework, large-scale days of service including Project MOVE, and campus civic engagement efforts related to voter education and democratic participation. His work emphasizes equitable access to experiential learning opportunities, particularly for first-generation, commuter, and Latinx students in the U.S.–Mexico border region.

Co-hosted by SLIC-SA Members: Sr. Martha Ann Kirk (UIW) and Maria Alejandro (UT San Antonio)

The Service-Learning Intercollegiate Collaborative San Antonio (SLIC) fosters partnerships among colleges and universities in the San Antonio area to center community partners and, together, advance experiential education.

The group was started in 2001 by Our Lady of the Lake and St. Mary's University. The collaborative consists of staff and faculty from the Alamo Colleges, Our Lady of the Lake University, St. Mary's University, Texas A&M San Antonio University, Texas Lutheran University, Trinity University, University of the Incarnate Word, and University of Texas at San Antonio which now includes UT Health and UT School of Public Health.

The goal of these gatherings is to create an intercollegiate space to support the cross-pollination and collaboration of community-engaged partnerships and the Sustainable Development Goals.

San Antonio is also growing as a "City of Compassion" and colleges and universities are essential parts of this.