This is a service-learning course. Students are required to provide community service to our neighboring immigrant community—Philadelphia’s Chinatown—through an internship with the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation (PCDC) in order to gain a deeper understanding of the Asian American diaspora and their social issues in the context of contemporary global migration. Besides the mandatory community-based service (a minimum of 3 hours per week, excluding transportation time), students will also read academic literature, keep an internship journal and write reflection papers to integrate their learning experience both inside and outside the classroom. The outcome project for this course is to build a digital archive, with the help from our college librarians and ITS staff, to document the community, individual immigrants and residents, social activities and changes round Philadelphia Chinatown. The working language in PCDC office is English, but knowledge of Mandarin or regional dialects is a plus for working with the Chinese American community.
- Teacher: Jiajia Wang