Seth Katz, an associate English professor at Bradley University and long-time volunteer executive director of Bradley University Hillel, received the university’s Mergen Award for Public Service last month.

Since he started with Hillel in 1998, Katz has put in countless hours managing all aspects of the organization. For the first several years, He was the only staff the organization had (following on the pattern established at and maintained since BU Hillel’s founding in 1947). He was program director, outreach intern, building manager, fundraiser, book-keeper, clerk, secretary, custodian and sometimes even the cook. He led Shabbat services when the students didn’t, taught challah baking, and led holiday programs.

In his impromptu remarks after receiving the reward, Katz mentioned specifically that he valued the opportunity to serve in that, as the ancient Stoics held, the good life is achieved through virtue; virtue is achieved through service to others.

“The opportunity to serve is something for which I am deeply grateful: in serving others, we participate in partnership with God in the work of completing the universe,” Katz said. “I have been deeply humbled by this honor, and am deeply grateful for all the opportunities my life, my family and my job have given me to serve others and so to become a richer person.”

Katz developed and maintained relationships with the Bradley offices, as well as with parents of current students, the Peoria Jewish community, area congregations, the Jewish Federations in Peoria, Chicago, Springfield and the Quad Cities and, as they developed, Hillels of Illinois and the Schusterman International Center. He also formed a community board, and with their help, after 10 years of work, negotiated with the university to facilitate the construction of a new, dedicated Hillel building, which they have now been in for over four years.

Over the length of his tenure at Bradley University Hillel, they have tripled their budget and annual fundraising. BU Hillel now employs a part-time rabbi (who handles most of the programming), part-time cook and building manager, and has just hired a part-time director who is gradually taking on some of the administrative and business work of the organization. Katz has routinely met with Jewish prospective students and their parents, and served as the facilitator and spokesperson for Jewish life on campus at BU. Katz also routinely meets with and trains admissions staff, campus tour guides, and campus police to address the specific concerns of Jewish students and parents.

Along with Hillel work, for many years, Katz and his wife taught the confirmation class, and later the 7th-8th grades in the local Reform congregation’s Sunday school. He has volunteered in a range of capacities in the local Jewish community, supervising sukkah building, leading services for adults and children, serving on the Federation board and various committees, and reading at the annual community Yom HaShoah observance.

In his day job as an associate professor in the Department of English, He has served on numerous department, college and university committees. He has served as interim chair of the department several times and is now associate chair. He has also been coordinator of Bradley’s composition program. He has also been deeply involved with the design, preparation, and now the implementation of the school’s new “Core Curriculum”; specifically in teaching colleagues how to teach writing in the new writing intensive (WI) courses, as well as in the processes of helping faculty prepare proposals for WI courses and of vetting and approving those proposals.