Community Health

Adelante Mujeres, a non-profit based in Forest Grove, is commited to the education and empowerment of Latina women immigrants.  Students will work with staff to prepare Latina women for public advocacy.  Students and the women will organize public presentations, including with state legislators.  Some travel to Forest Grove and Salem is involved.

This course is taught on the model of the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, which brings together college students living in prison (in this case, Coffee Creek Women’s Correctional Facility) with students on the outside. In this unique classroom environment we will focus on the question, “What Is Justice?” The premise of the course is that living a just existence means living imaginatively. “Justice” is not a thing, but an abstract ideal that we must constantly re-envision as we attempt to put it into practice.

Voters Rights and Registration: Registration, History and Activism  This Capstone will engage students in the activism and history of voting rights during the 2012 election season. It partners with the Bus Project Foundation, a non-partisan, community-based organization dedicated to creating a vibrant democracy by engaging Oregonians in civic and political life.  Students will learn the history of voting rights in the US while working with the Bus Project Foundation to register and conduct outreach to voters.

How do I transform my own life? How do I transform my community and the world?

This class will involve students in monitoring the ecological impacts of backyard habitats that are near Portland parks. Students will work in teams in particular targeted neighborhoods. They will monitor some of the following: native and non-native plants, birds, and insects. They will learn about the ecology behind backyard restoration, the procedure for establishing backyard habitats, and assist as residents implement new habitats.

Effective Change Agent

There are various community partners for this Capstone. The cooperative learning environment set forth for this class will help students create the ‘learning community’ necessary to achieve the course objectives. This cooperative approach (group activities, assignments and projects) will rely heavily on active participation and will therefore be dependent upon the level of responsibility that the student chooses to take for themself and for their classmates.

Asset mapping methods combined with geographic information systems (GIS) technology have proven to be effective ways to help citizens and organizations identify, analyze, describe, and mobilize around assets and issues of concern to them.

The Community Geography Project of the Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies has a history of training PSU students, community groups, and middle and high school students in asset mapping and GIS technology to enable them to ask new questions and better strategize and promote community agendas.

Course Description: Students will work alongside the Family Preservation Project to examine pregnancy, birth, and postpartum support while incarcerated.  Students will discuss perspectives, resources and policies that impact the physical and emotional experience of parenthood while in custody.  Additionally, support services available to families, and children of incarcerated parents will be explored.

Service Coordination Team is multi-agency, multi-faceted program to manage what have been identified as chronic offenders in Multnomah County, Oregon. The purpose of this Capstone is to develop and undertake an evaluation of this program from both a process and outcome perspective. Students will work with all stakeholders in this program at various sites in the community.

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