Course Offerings

Youth Violence Seminar and Outreach: PSYC 387-487 – Fall 2009 (Chicago)

Faculty: Steven Meyers

Students will learn about the critical issue of youth violence, its causes, and ways to reduce its prevalence. The class has a skill-building and applied focus: Students will participate in community exploration and political action to improve the lives of children who experience risk and adversity in Chicago. Students will interview and consult with neighborhood organizations and community members, explore effective policies and programs that reduce youth violence, and advocate for strategies that prevent and minimize youth violence to their elected officials and the broader public.

 

Cancer Biology:  BIO 350-450 -  Spring 2010 (Chicago)

Faculty: Kelly Wentz-Hunter

Cancer Biology is an upper level undergraduate and graduate course.  This course provides students with knowledge of the fundamental principles of the molecular and cellular biology of cancer cells.  Cancer biology is designed to illustrate basic aspects of cancer development and to discuss how approaches can be used to reveal fundamental processes of carcinogenesis.  Discussion also includes determination of risk factors and healthy lifestyle choices to decrease cancer incidence.  This course will have three components: content, creative writing, and a service-learning project in partnership with the American Cancer Society and grade school classes in the Chicago Public Schools. 

 

Drugs Alcohol and Society: SOC 381-481 – Spring 2010  (Chicago)

Faculty: Kathie Kane-Willis

This service-learning class views drug use as a social phenomenon.  It analyses the relationships between drug use and how race, class and gender have influenced drug policies.  This class will evaluate drug policies and their impact on society at the national and state level. Students will work with community based organizations on criminal justice reform and will travel to Springfield to learn how these policies and reforms are enacted.

 

Writing Social Justice:  Environmental Justice:  LIBS 201  (Chicago)

Faculty: Kimberly Ruffin

This section of Writing Social Justice, LIBS 201, will focus on Environmental Justice as a form of social justice.  Students focus on Environmental Justice (EJ) as the subject of assigned readings, service-learning, and the culminating student-authored research essay.  Students in the class advance their analytical and writing skills through a study of EJ both within and outside the classroom.  Service-learning is a key opportunity to bridge these two realms because it allows students to experience how language and academic knowledge are employed inside and outside the academy.

 

Art and Activism:  ART 360  - Spring 2010   (Chicago)

Faculty: Maggie Leininger

Art and Activism explores alternative methods of creating and engaging community dialogue around such social issues as health care, affordable housing, urban sustainability, and affordable high quality education.  Students will learn how the five art disciplines of dance, music, theater, writing and visual art can stimulate community involvement, gain valuable trust, and procure pertinent information for affecting positive impact upon struggling communities  This is ideal for anyone seeking non-traditional approaches in applying their crafts as well as those in public policy, social justice or other service-oriented sectors looking to gain hands-on experiences in working within the community of non-profit structure.  Students will work directly with members of  La Casa Norte, a Chicago-based non-profit serving the Humboldt Park neighborhood. 

 

Writing Social Justice: The Politics of Literacy:   LIBS 201 Fall 2009 (Chicago)

Faculty: Carrie Brecke

This advanced writing course carries a service-learning component of tutoring in the Writing Center and tutoring at the Social Justice High School. Through tutoring and writing experiences students investigate and expand their critical and technical writing abilities. In addition, they explore central questions around writing and literacy: What is "good" writing?; Who decides?; What is literacy?;  How do we become literate?; How is literacy a political issue?  We will discuss the larger context of tutoring, balancing a variety of competing agendas among writers, instructors, the university and social demands. In tutoring, students will move beyond quick-fix solutions in order to foster long-term growth for the writers we tutor and for ourselves.

Human Neuropsychology: PSYCH 350-450-01 Fall 2009 

Faculty: Prof. Lu

The Human Neuropsychology course introduces several neurological disorders and behavioral phenomena that accompany brain compromise. Through brain-behavior relationships, we understand the organization of neural systems that subserve cognitive functions such as attention, language, and memory. Students participate in a service-learning component and volunteer 20 hours at a community organization to gain better appreciation of effects of brain compromise on individual's lives.

Qualitative Methods: SOC 408

Faculty: Stephanie Farmer

This course is intended to provide students with the basic skills needed to do qualitative research.  We will focus primarily on participant-observation, interviews and forming questions, writing field notes and reporting qualitative research findings.  We will also spend time on critically evaluating these techniques.  In order for students to gain hands-on experience with various types of qualitative methods and techniques, students will conduct a group research project for a social justice organization.  The course is intended to provide students with the skills needed to complete their master’s thesis.

Social Justice Summer Institute: SOC 381-481

Faculty: Erik Gellman

The Social Justice Summer Institute features a unique nexus of theoretical and practical approaches to social justice, giving students access to scholar-activists from across the university.  This year, this two-week course offered students an unprecedented opportunity to meet progressive students and faculty from around the country at the Labor and Working Class History Association Conference. The conference comprehensively introduced students to social justice challenges and opportunities in Chicago through the lens of a national dialogue. Students then gain a solid foundation in the study and practice of social justice, followed by one-day intensives in three focus issues led by carefully selected scholar-activists drawn from Roosevelt’s faculty.   Each student will also complete three days of transformational-learning at an organization working in one of the focus areas.  Through this dialectic of theory and practice, students will learn to develop their own principles and practical approaches to social justice.

 

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Dedicated to the enlightenment of the human spirit Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt