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Spirituality, Public Health, and Religious Studies

Michele Desmarais, Ph.D., is one of the founders Spirituality, Public Health, and Religious Studies (SPHRS).

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Spirituality, Public Health, and Religious Studies (SPHRS)

In 2014, Associate Professor, Michele Desmarais, Ph.D, along with Assistant Professor, Dr. Curtis Hutt, and UNO Religious Studies Department Chair, Dr. Paul Williams, founded SPHRS. With the UNO Barbara Weitz Community Engagement Center (Weitz CEC) opening, it was the perfect opportunity to pull together an array of fractured community engagement activities and events. ''The goal was to create and support a broad understanding of spirituality and wellness," with core values of service, partnership, healing, respect, and sustainability. Whether someone is talking about spirituality or wellness, Desmarais believes that "it is all about having meaning in life and expressing that meaning, and what gives us meaning is being in partnership and community with other people as we are social beings."

One of the things that has made SPHRS different is we go into application with a commitment to deep listening and compassion.

 Michele Desmarais, Ph.D.

Desmarais has built successful partnerships with the Sienna Francis House and Omaha Healing Arts by offering her expertise. These partnerships give experts in the human rights field, like Desmarais, the opportunity to offer their expertise in the form of workshops, meditation, service learning projects, or other forms of ongoing support. The organization is focused on the education and teaching of compassion for different forms of spirituality, religion, and wellness.

Through her research and SPHRS, Desmarais has found that compassion is more critical than self-esteem. As such, the organization uses compassion in all they do. In fact, Desmarais teaches a UNO service-learning course on compassion. The service-learning course, Finding a Voice at the Sienna House, connected students with clients at the Sienna Francis House, encouraging each person to write a message of hope, passion, and intent with personal meaning. This project was called Beads of Intention.

"One amazing part of the service-learning compassion class is that students who helped in the Fall course turned up in the Spring to help SPHRS at the UNO library's De-Stress Fest. They helped with the same Beads of Intention project, but this time, of course, the participants were other students. While learning about compassion, the students displayed compassion at the Sienna Francis House for clients in need, and for UNO students. Other activities to educate and promote spirituality and wellness have included morning meditations and poetry reading as a guest with the Native American Prime-time Family Reading Series.

"Compassion is value, bridging the gap between different cultures and religions."

Community engagement and service are fundamental components of UNO's identity. This commitment to engagement is reflected in UNO's academics, student body, partnerships, and institutional framework. Share your community engagement story or visit the campus commitment to community engagement initiative website.

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Unless otherwise clearly stated, any views or opinions expressed as part of events at the Barbara Weitz Community Engagement Center (Weitz CEC) should not be viewed as endorsements by the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) and do not reflect the official position of UNO or the University of Nebraska system. Please also be aware, the responsibility for any changes to events held at the Weitz CEC, including cancellation, lie solely with the event organizer and not UNO or the Weitz CEC.