By Rebekah Markillie |
Lindie Burgess, a University of Portland grad, has made The Bluff her home again. To fill the positions left open this year by the director and assistant director of the Moreau Center for Service and Leadership Fr. John Donato created two temporary positions. The temporary positions were created until they can review the mission and goals for the Moreau Center. The interim director position was filled by David Houglum and the interim program manager was filled by Burgess.
“Community is what drew me here,” she said. “It’s why I’m back.”
Burgess returns to UP from St. André Bessette Catholic Church (the downtown chapel). She worked as the main coordinator for evening hospitality, a dinner service that provides hot meals for the homeless and people-in-need on Thursdays and Fridays. While working at St. André’s, Burgess partnered with the Moreau Center to make volunteering connections with St. André’s and UP and was able to get Bon Appetit to donate one meal a month to evening hospitality.
The Moreau Center’s Assistant Director for Leadership Development, Pat Ell, believes Burgess’ work with St. André’s will help her in her position as program manager.
“She has a very strong knowledge of Portland and local (volunteer) needs and also good experience coordinating volunteers,” he said.
Burgess graduated in 2011 with a major in mechanical engineering and was heavily involved with the Moreau Center during her time as a student. She participated in the rural plunge and participated in and coordinated the Collegiate Challenge, which builds houses with Habitat for Humanity over spring break.
Coming from a small town in Montana, Burgess had little experience with homelessness. Her first time seeing a homeless person in Portland was “total culture shock,” she said.
“St. André’s gave (me) the opportunity to interact with them,” she said, “in a safe way.”
The social cues from other people around her were to ignore the homeless, but Burgess didn’t feel like ignoring them was the right thing to do. She wanted to help them.
“It has been ingrained in the way that I look at the world to look out for the people around me,” she said.
As a student, Burgess wanted to find a way to integrate her passion for helping others into her engineering work. Her senior design project did exactly that.
“We had to create a ‘thing’ that made prosthetics more attainable,” she said.
Her group used a myoelectric prosthetic hand that moves when tiny electrical signals are are released from user contracting muscles in the forearm. They combined video games and this prosthetic to create an engaging way for people to learn how to use their prosthetic.
Now that she’s back on campus, Burgess is excited to work with the Moreau Center again and network with people from UP and the surrounding community.
"I get asked a lot whether I will end up back in engineering. For me, Engineering and the work I am doing right now are two sides of the same life puzzle,” she said, “My current position at the Moreau Center is an important stop on my journey to filling the spaces in between"
