Effective Change Agent
Being an Effective Change Agent in Portland Each of you will have the opportunity to create meaningful relationships with your specific community organization/partner and effect positive change within their working environment. Through class discussions, practices, reading, and self-observations, we will explore the meaning your work has for both yourself and for the community. During the course, you will be supported and challenged to develop skills in speaking, listening, building relationships, and coordinating action. As a class, we will take the time to recognize and explore the four University Studies Goals (communication, critical thinking, appreciation and diversity, and social responsibility) and make meaning of how they apply to your community relationships and your everyday lives.
Course Objectives:
- To enhance learning by enabling you to practice skills and test classroom knowledge through related service experiences in the local community.
- To identify the skills needed to effect change in your community and to enable you to provide needed assistance to community agencies and to the people and/or communityenvironment served by the agencies.
- To articulate, promote, and collaborate on a group vision for effective change.
This class project is an opportunity for us to pool our unique talents and skills in a way that will benefit both ourselves and our community. Each of you will be responsible for collectively developing a community based project that will lead to effecting positive change for the community in which we serve.
*There will be time given in class for brainstorming and discussions. It is expected that each of you will be present and fully engaged in this process.
Goals for community project:
- Understanding the concept of community and service learning
- Needs assessment and project selection
- Planning the project
- Completion of project
- Documentation
- Reflection and Evaluation
Individual Responsibility
Initial brainstorm idea: You will hand in a short paper addressing your project idea and bring it to class as a tool to start the brainstorming process of this project. You should thoroughly think through your decision and include the answers to the how, why, what, where and when of your idea. (We will have limited if any resources to accompany this project so please think about the overall feasibility of your idea as well).
Group Responsibility
Project Teams: It is expected that this project will be multi-faceted and will require smaller groups to take on certain responsibilities. To that end, each of you will be assigned to a group that will work towards completing one or two of these components.
Points will be awarded on the basis of attendance (being on time included), showing evidence of being prepared, overall contribution and completed assignments.
