Seminar Description, Purpose and Goals

ENVS 007/BLST 007: ChesterSemester, Fall 2024
Lang Center 112

The seminar component of the ChesterSemester program connects the collaborative work of students and our Chester-based community partners with the study, reflection, and discussion of Chester’s history, politics, economics, culture, and visions for the future.  Our weekly class discussions for the Fall 2024 semester center around racialized urban development, particularly on the cumulative effects of a century plus of institutional and systemic racism that contribute to stark disparities in income, wealth, health, education, and opportunities that persist today. By understanding the development of Chester’s racialized development, we can better support and promote the social justice efforts of residents, activists, and community leaders.

The seminar format requires active participation by its members. This course is intensive in three ways – writing, reading, and participation.  You will be expected to be an actively engaged seminar participant, including facilitating class discussions, collaborating in group work, planning seminar presentations, and demonstrating initiative in bringing issues and reflections on your community-engaged work to the larger group discussions.  

SEMINAR LEARNING GOALS
-Integration of knowledge and practice.
-Apply theory and research (i.e. what students learn within context of a seminar) to practice (i.e. what students learn about the “real world” through field study, community-based learning or other modes of engaged scholarship, internship and/or project work).
-Bring real world experience to academics (e.g. integrating new forms of knowledge within seminar assignments and a research paper).
-Connect and extend knowledge (i.e. facts, theories, etc.) from one’s own academic study, field, or discipline to community engagement and to one’s own participation in civic and social life.
-Demonstrate the ability to articulate the ways in which integrated knowledge and practice can contribute to the common good.
-Consider ideas, challenges, and solutions from multiple perspectives.
-Critically reflect upon paths/levers of social change (e.g. social service providers, social justice advocates, social explorers, social entrepreneurs).
-Recognize the impact of one's own actions and decisions -- i.e. discerning the right path “towards shaping a more just and compassionate world" in relation to one's self and others.
-Consider short-term, long-term, and unintended consequences of actions from a systems-based perspective.