Professor in the two fields Religion and Environmental Studies, Dr. Laura Hobgood actively works with the Georgetown community outside of her full schedule at Southwestern. Dr. Hobgood is famously known around campus for bringing baby squirrels or puppies to class, as her community work revolves around fostering young animals. She volunteers and works with local animal shelters and one of SU’s Community Partners, All Things Wild.

For the past 20 years, Dr. Hobgood team-taught a First Year Seminar (FYS) and Advanced Entry Seminar (AES) titled “Going to the Dogs” with Dr. Jimmy Smith, a now retired kinesiology professor. The course discussed the history, culture, science, and even religion about dogs, and Dr. Hobgood covered the humanities aspect while Dr. Smith covered the science factors.

Last semester (Fall ’25), Dr. Hobgood took a step outside of the “usual” classroom to try something new. She taught her “Going to the Dogs” course to a unique group off-campus, called Lifelong Learners GTX. Lifelong Learners is a program for adults in the local community, typically 55 or older and in retirement, who join the group to not simply take classes but become a “lifelong learner” and keep their minds active. Classes are held in various locations around Georgetown, but do have a direct connection to Southwestern itself. In the past, they were called Senior University and actually had offices in Prothro, and hosted lectures for the program in campus classrooms.

Dr. Hobgood became involved with this local active group of neighbors by someone reaching out to her, she assumes from a Brown Symposium lecture. She pitched her course, and committed to teaching her passion area for an hour a week for six weeks last semester.

When asked the difference between Southwestern students versus Lifelong Learners students, she said that there was a noticeable dichotomy. This was a retired community of people who genuinely want to go to classes and make time out of their lives to do so. Not that college students don’t do the same, but the purposeful intention is different. Laughing and joking that they were “old schooled”, Dr. Hobgood said that they were still taking handwritten notes in their notebooks and by doing so were simply more engaged in the class. She also noted that the life experience these retired folks brought to the classroom setting almost changed the course completely. By this time in their life, most already owned several dogs independently at points in their lives, and therefore had a different perspective.

As a course itself, “Going to the Dogs” used to have a direct community engaged component that has since been lost in recent years due to increased regulations at animal shelters. Students were able to volunteer at local shelters and walk dogs to gain hands-on experience with the animals, but now there are more rules and safety measures, and people have to train to volunteer. The half semester course does not accommodate for that time. If there is interest in volunteer work, however, Dr. Hobgood highly encourages all who are interested to volunteer at All Things Wild. Learn more about their volunteer opportunities here.

Dr. Hobgood cherishes this course and hopes the general public will learn more and understand more about dogs. In fact, the course has significantly changed since she started teaching it in the early 2000s as we learn more about dogs every day. She gestured toward her recently written book titled A Dog’s History of the World and said that she would write it quite differently now. Dogs are a significant part of daily life, in and outside of the classroom, so teaching others about these animals is something Dr. Hobgood is especially passionate about.

She said “if we didn’t have dogs, we would be a completely different species because we have lived with them for 30,000 years.” This isn’t just a course about a domesticated pet, it’s a course about human history and why we are the way we are because of them. By maintaining and creating connections with the local community, Dr. Hogood takes her work that could have been limited to the walls of Southwestern and activates a community of lifelong learners–showcasing the potential of Public Engagement to move scholarship to everyday life.