TaR leads the way
community leaders.
The University
in training the ne
Y GOLDSMITH Sta
KRISTA HUSA Photographer
r.
n the final day last semester, the aromas
of French roast and banana bread filled
the classroom in the Frieze Building in
Ann Arbor, home of the University of
Michigan's School of Social Work.
By appearances, the scene wasn't strict-
ly academic. Students pulled their desks
together in groups of three, discussing
issues that a casual observer would not take
to be vital to the future of the Jewish community.
The closeness of its students sets apart the
Project STaR program from the general School of
Social Work and other Jewish communal pro-
grams, says Katherine Sholder, program adminis-
trator.
"In the regular School of Social Work, students
see their adviser twice a year, and they are one of
600 students," she said. "In STaR (Service,
Training, and Research in Jewish Communal
Development), students see the staff daily. They
also confer with each other regularly."
Since the two-year master's program got started
seven years ago, enrollment has grown from two
students in 1990 to 15 students today. The seventh
class will graduate in May with seven students.
Sholder says similar programs in the United
States — the Hornstein Program for Jewish
Communal Services at Brandeis University and a
program at Hebrew Union College/University of
Southern California — have about 20 students
each.
"We are very selective and only take half the
students who apply," she said. "We are looking for
students who have the potential to be real leaders
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in the Jewish community. We could take more,
but we want our students to achieve the most they
can and to help us maintain the high reputation
that the program has garnered in a relatively short
time." Last year, two-thirds of graduating STaR
students had job offers before graduation.
Armand Lauffer, founder and director of Project
STaR, would like to see the program double in
size, through a fellowship program.
"There is a shortage of well-trained, Jewishly
committed young professionals in the field," he
said.
Nine years ago, the Council of Jewish
Federations conducted a study that showed a grad-
ual, growing scarcity of Jewish communal profes-
sionals. At the time, only two graduate programs,
Hebrew Union/USC and Hornstein, were
designed to train such professionals.
The University of Michigan wanted to put its
name on this map, and with the help of Lauffer, a
social work professor, started Project STaR in
1990.
"I figured I had 10 or 15 years before I retired,"
said Lauffer, 64. "I wanted to see if we could put
together something that would be meaningful, and
could cause a long-term impact on Jewish commu-
nal life. I wanted to bring my Jewish background
and my professional background together."
Born in Belgium, Lauffer was 5 years old when
he came to the United States with his family, just
before 1938. He began teaching at U-M in 1968
after getting his master's degree at Wayne State
University and his Ph.D. at Brandeis.
In the early '80s, Lauffer began exploring the