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What has seminary campus life to do with disaster survival, water critters, and light-emitting diodes (LEDs)?
“Community,” according to The Very Rev. Chad Hatfield, Chancellor at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, and the administrator charged with assuring that the seminary environment coincides with the values expressed in the chapel worship and the theological education of the classroom.
New York City firefighter Bobby Kitson (left) trains Fr. Steven Belonick, Associate Dean for Student Affairs at St. Vladimir's Seminary (center), to evacuate disaster victims, as other seminary employees look on. Seminary employees are earning certification as Community Emergency Response Team members.
“There is no split between the spiritual and material life,” Fr. Chad stated. “One of our saints, Symeon the New Theologian, poetically writes that God enters our hands and feet, so that we might become his body, working in the world.”
He noted three areas in which the seminary is reaching out to the wider community and involving itself in safety concerns and ecological studies on city, county, state, and federal levels, connecting with the larger society in a manner consistent with the holistic theological approach that has marked the seminary since its inception.
Currently, seven seminary employees are training with the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), a program developed by the City of Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) and subsequently, under the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), made available to all communities nationwide. The City of Yonkers began CERT training in 2003, and has trained response teams in diverse venues — from Home Depot to the Boy Scouts of America to employees and students at public schools.
Following twenty hours of training during the month of July 2008, the seminary employees will be certified in basic self-help and mutual aid functions such as disaster preparedness, fire safety, disaster medical operations and psychology, light search and rescue, CERT organization, and the recognition and handling of terrorist incidents. Another group of employees will receive the same training and certification in October 2008. The Rev. Protodeacon Kirill Sokolov, Associate Chancellor for Systems at St. Vladimir’s, arranged for the cooperative effort between the city and the seminary.
“Having a certified team ready to help their brothers and sisters on campus or in the neighborhood, in the event of either a small emergency or a major disaster, is crucial to our common well being,” said the Associate Dean for Student Affairs, The Very Rev. Steven Belonick. Especially important in the training so far, he said, was the emphasis on team organization and the distribution of responsibilities, as well as on the importance of the team to continually process their emotions and performance following an emergency situation.
As a further example of community involvement, second-year seminarian Daniel Talley has volunteered to monitor the water quality of “Troublesome Brook,” which flows through the seminary campus, as part of the Westchester County Citizen Volunteer Monitoring Program (WCCVMP).
Seminarian Talley and his team of campus residents will be testing water in the stream weekly, from July through October 2008, by conducting chemical analyses and collecting macroinvertabrate samples (water critters without backbones), as well assessing the quality of the stream bank — tasks well suited to Mr. Talley’s background in ornamental horticulture and landscape design. The raw data they collect will help create a comprehensive database of water quality for the watersheds of Westchester County, since Troublesome Brook flows through the Bronx River Watershed.
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