Spring 2020

Story, Portraits, and Civic Action

This online course explores how civic action, and the process of story finding and telling through the medium of digital portraiture, as inspired by Humans of New York, can effect change in our community. Each student is expected to volunteer thirty hours with a community organization of their choice over the duration of the term. Positions must be arranged before the term begins.

Over the course of the term, students will be expected to photograph and interview three to four people with whom they come in contact while volunteering at their respective sites. Students will submit a portfolio of their favorite portraits, paired with compelling excerpts of their interviews, as inspired by Brandon Stanton’s ongoing Humans of New York project. These will then be published on a course Instagram account, and made available to our community and the public at large. Not only will the project showcase the great spectrum of volunteer work and civic action that our students are participating in and contributing to, but importantly, this work will be humanized with particular stories, voices, and faces. 

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

Strengthening the Head Start Legacy: Growth, Health and Justice (HEADSTART)

Strengthening Headstart: Health, Growth And Justice Head Start is this nation's largest investment in young children to date.  It is also one of the few remaining efforts from the 1960's "War on Poverty".  
Students will:

review data and documentation of the historical successes and challenges of Head Start;

analyze and reflect on the impact it has had in communities;

engage in a qualitative/participatory research project;

design a collective action project in conjunction with Head Start community participants that will enhance or improve the health, growth or justice in that Head Start Community.

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.

Reporting Live

Forests, Narratives and Social Movements

Social movements have shaped the world we live in and are one of the most important sources of social change. They often organize to address issues of inequity, oppression or prejudice in local, regional, national and transnational spheres. They arise to address factual situations: the number of people without health care, levels of air pollution, racial profiling, unemployment, deaths in war or the destruction of the environment. However, facts alone are not sufficient to create social change.

Tryon Creek: Cultural And Ecological Education. Students will participate in interpretive programs facilitated within the Tryon Creek State Natural Area.

Cultivating Leadership Capacity and Promoting Educational Equity