Winter 2021

This capstone course introduces oral history as a method for documenting, preserving, and amplifying the diverse histories and voices of LGBTQ+ community leaders and activists regionally and nationally utilizing an intersectional framework. Through listening to interviews, exploring related primary source materials, and learning from guests to our course, we will learn about local and regional LGBTQ+ history as situated within the larger context of this history in the U.S. Topics will include exploration of movements for LGBTQ+ rights as they intersect with racial justice in Oregon and the U.S. Simultaneously, we will develop and practice our listening and interviewing skills, edit oral history interview transcripts, and work in teams to develop teach-ins and public-facing educational materials in partnership with the Gay Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest (GLAPN).

Community Psychology Capstone - Dancis

This two-term capstone will explore a core community psychology framework--Participatory Action Research (PAR). In the spirit of learning by doing, students will partner with groups on campus to design action research projects around the course theme: Disrupting Systemic Racism at PSU. These projects will involve collecting data and using those data to inform social action. The course will culminate with group reflections on the projects and on Participatory Action Research as a Community Psychology competency.

Anti-Bias K12 Education (online)

The Black Lives Matter at School week of action and call to anti-racist curriculum year round was initiated by Seattle educators in 2016 in response to bomb threats by white supremacists toward students and teachers wearing Black Lives Matter/We Stand Together t-shirts at John Muir Elementary School.  Inequity in curriculum, curricular violence, bias in textbooks, lack of access to diverse authors and representation in school libraries all contribute to the “achievement gaps” that both federal and state education departments often focus on in their initiatives and data tracking.

Criminal Justice Reform

This in-person course will explore issues of social justice in criminal justice.  Students will focus on a community-based approach in collaboration with the community partner  to learn about reducing barriers to exiting the criminal justice system.  These include clemency, parole, prison litigation, immigration and refugee status, mental illness and incarceration, non-unanimous juries and removing the criminal related barriers that keep individuals in poverty.   Specifically, the Capstone students will partner with the Oregon Department of Corrections Division of Research and Evaluation, https://www.oregon.gov/doc/research-and-requests/Pages/research-and-statistics.aspx to work on a community-based research project. Students enrolling in this course will need to pass the security volunteer background check administered by the Oregon Department of Corrections prior to the course starting.  Students should contact the professor immediately after registering to begin this process.

Curriculum and Material Development for Heritage/Indigenous Language (INDIGENOUS LANG ACTIVISM) 

The goal of this course is to give students a solid background in historical and societal issues that influence language diversity through hands-on collaboration with current language sustainability efforts. This capstone partners with endangered language communities in the Northwest (tribal language programs in general and the Warm Springs Tribal Language Program, specifically) to work together to support those programs by giving students “on-the-ground” skills to accompany class studies. Capstone students will develop language and/or pedagogical materials that will support the endangered language programs/teachers in their work to offer language classes in their communities. General class instruction will be exclusively online or hybrid and those students who can meet at the PSU campus may be able to participate in a visit to the language communities to increase students’ practical understanding of the language and community issues for their final work. All students who are interested in Indigenous and/or language activism are welcome to this capstone (regardless of any prior familiarity with Indigenous languages or history), and especially those who are interested in supporting our community partner’s fund-raising efforts and curriculum/teaching activities.  Students in this capstone are strongly encouraged, as a class goal, to foster a healthy online community and collaborate with peers through group work. Members from our community partner and other guest speakers will also join online (likely using Zoom), and other online meeting times will be determined by class and community participants’ availability and schedule.

Learning Gardens, Community Engagement and Sustainability at the PSU Learning Gardens Lab

This course will explore the concepts of sustainability, growing food, and personal connection to land/nature through community engagement with the PSU Learning Gardens Lab (LGL). This course focuses on community building, group discussion, and personal reflection and will involve working on projects that support the mission of LGL. For Spring Term 2022, this course will include face-to-face meetings at LGL (depending on PSU and Oregon's Covid policies) and Zoom meetings. LGL is located at 6745 SE 60th Ave, Portland, OR 97206.

Food Insecurity: PSU, Portland, and Beyond

Higher Education in Prison

Drawing on poetry, political theory, sociological texts, film, and personal narratives, this course offers an introduction to prison and its critiques, as well as the power of education to transform individuals and societies. This hybrid course meets once a week at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility (CCCF); Capstone students will study together with women enrolled in higher education at the women’s prison, about 20 minutes south of PSU in Wilsonville. Successful background clearances are required in order to participate.

Black Civil Rights/Black Liberation

This six credit course combines applied critical race theory, historical and contemporary Black Liberation narratives, and community-based learning to address pressing social issues affecting Black communities across the state of Oregon. Using critical dialogic pedagogy, the Black Civil Rights/Black Liberation class seeks to create collaborative learning spaces where students and Black-led initiatives can engage in prescient conversations about race and racism. The capstone class contributes to the Black Liberation in Education Teach-in event, as well as the design and implementation of sustained programming redressing anti-Blackness, and supporting Black Liberation as a central tenet of any social justice movement. The course runs in both winter and spring term and is designed to support ongoing community engagement programming.

Trans Oral History Project

This fully-online Capstone will examine the issues relevant to the lived experiences of transgender and nonbinary individuals and the associated socio-political climate for this population in the U.S.  Students will collaborate digitally with the Trans Oral History Project at the New York Public Library to transcribe recorded oral histories to increase access to the archives as well as deepen awareness and solidarity with those who are transgender and/or nonbinary.