F21 - ENVS007.01 - ChesterSemester Fellowship
Topic outline
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Mark Wallace, mwallac1@swarthmore.edu, 610-328-7829 (office); Pearson 216; office hrs.: Tues. 4.00-5.30 pm or by email appointment
Ashley Henry, ahenry1@swarthmore.edu, 215-287-2520 (cell)
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ENVS 007: ChesterSemester, Fall 2021
The ChesterSemester Program is a transcript-notated interdisciplinary course on social change with an engaged scholarship internship component. Housed within Swarthmore College’s Environmental Studies Program and also earning credit in Black Studies, and generously supported by the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility and the Office of Sustainability, ChesterSemester consists of a weekly one-hour class on Mondays 4-5 pm facilitated by engaged faculty, staff, and community partners; a 4-5 hours per week supervised internship in the nearby city of Chester; and a final public-facing research project.
As an Environmental Studies exercise, ChesterSemester focuses on the social, economic, and political interactions of residents with the food systems, waste management and related infrastructure needs of Chester city. As a Black Studies offering, the course and internship studies the challenges and contributions of Black Chesterites in relation to historic white privilege within Delaware County and the Philadelphia region. Both areas of study provide the academic backbone for enabling students to address the intersectional disadvantages and harms communities of color face in the wider society.
The goal of the ChesterSemester program is to expand the College’s educational mission through long-term partnerships with our neighbors in Chester. True to the civic mission of the College – reenvisioning undergraduate education as an exercise in “ethical intelligence” (Al Bloom) or “transformational power” (Valerie Smith) – this program pioneers a fully embedded learning experience for students, faculty, staff, and community partners growing together to realize a better world in the face of decades-old obstacles. All of us count or none of us count. This simple truth – that the welfare of each of us depends upon the welfare of all of us – has been lost on much of the wider society today, including the academy. Its continued enactment through this program will go a long way to empowering Swarthmore students, staff, and faculty, and partners and friends in Chester, to actualize together our common goals, our common dreams, and our common humanity.
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A note about learning journals. To facilitate this part of your journey in this class and internship, the teaching team provides prompts each week. No need to respond to all (or any) of the questions in your written journal assignment posed if they don't speak to you. Make use of them only if they are useful to you. If you do choose to write about a prompt, we recommend that you select *one* to write about. We expect you to submit your journal by NOON each Monday. These assignments will not be graded per se; rather they are considered to be one of the ways you participate in class -- in fact, your responses to the questions will frame our in-class conversations. It is to your own and to the class’s benefit to give the prompts some thought, even if you choose not to write about them.
- Class attendance & participation (25%)
- Weekly integrative learning journals (25%)
- Final assignment (50%)
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NOTE: This text is available for free through JSTOR. In order to access the book chapters, you will need to login via Swarthmore College when prompted.
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Please read this article prior to the Council session (7-10 minutes)
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Skim article, but focus mostly on the impact of climate migration imagery (10 minutes)
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Skim article, if you would like some greater background and understanding on the topic of climate change
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Read these short guidelines for how to engage with the Council over Zoom prior to the Council session
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