Jeffrey Rathlef

Director of Community Service and Service Learning

Community Service

As Director of the Community Service Center, Mr. Rathlef oversees a robust portfolio of on-going co-curricular community service programs and facilitates and supports faculty in curricular service-learning. In addition, Jeffrey facilitates the development of meaningful campus/community partnerships in support of civic engagement between Gustavus Adolphus College and the local St. Peter community and broader southern Minnesota region.

A native of Kansas, Jeffrey holdsa B.S. in Horticulture and B.A. in History from Kansas State University where he also coordinated the university's S.A.V.E. (Students Assisting Volunteer Efforts) for the university community service center. upon graduation from Kansas State, Mr. Rathlef entered the Ecuadorian branch of the U.S. Peace Corps where he assisted rural community development efforts en a small community in the Andean highlands. Jeffrey conducted his graduate work(M.A. Latin American Studies and M.A. in Cultural Studies in Education) at Ohio University where he worked as the on-site coordinator for one of the university's study abroad programs based in Cuenca, Ecuador. At Ohio University Jeffrey taught the university's survey Latin American Studies courses as a graduate associate, and conducted research on transformative learning in Havana, Cuba. Jeffrey comes to Gustavus after an extensive tenure at World Learning's School for International Training's Study Abroad division where he directed and managed a comprehensive portfolio of overseas study abroad programs throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. At SIT, Mr. Rathlef developed numerous overseas programs that encompassed international service-learning approaches, and led and contributed to various institutional initiatives including overseas legal compliance, student re-entry, diversity, universal curriculum design, curriculum development, and additional research in transformative learning and critical pedagogy.