Community-Based Learning Courses

Students can take courses across majors that contain a Community Based Learning component. Building upon the foundations established in CIVC 101, these courses provide students with an opportunity to gain real world skills by partnering with a community organization.

To view current and upcoming courses, please see below. CRNs link to the Term Master Schedule

Questions? Please email Carrie Hutnick at cah426@drexel.edu.

Summer Term 2018-2019

College	Course #	CRN	Course Title	Instructor	Date/Time	Location
CoAS	BIO T280-001	42164	Science of Science Fiction	Susan Gurney	Thursdays 1pm-3:50pm	Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility
Course Description Do you watch science fiction films or tv shows or read science fiction books and wonder about the science which underpins the plot? Want to reflect on the scientific themes, while also considering social justice and the impact on society? Through class discussions, including incarcerated men at the Curren-Fromhold Correctional Facility, we will review these issues through a scientific lens. Prior knowledge of science fiction is not required, just a curiosity in this genre and a willingness to participate in this unique course. Different forms of science fiction media (film, tv shows, comics and stories) will be analyzed during this course.

College	Course #	CRN	Course Title	Instructor	Date/Time	Location
CoAS	PHIL 105-002	41826	Critical Reasoning	Stacey E. Ake	Tuesdays 5:00pm-7:30pm	Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships
Course Description This course will introduce and develop students' thinking skills as well as examine those things that impede our thinking clearly. It will help give students the ability to distinguish strong arguments from weak ones, identify points of vulnerability in reasoning as well as the value and reality assumptions that lie behind our everyday thoughts and actions. Students will learn to recognize logical fallacies and understand the difference between deductive and inductive arguments. Other topics include defense mechanisms and syllogistic arguments. The main theme of the course will be race in America.

College	Course #	CRN	Course Title	Instructor	Date/Time	Location
Pennoni Honors College	HON 302-005	42678	Fashion and Memory	Jennifer Ayres	Wednesdays 2pm-4:50pm	Mantua Presbyterian Apartments
Course Description In this 10-week Summer course, students will investigate their personal and collective relationships to fashion through readings and film screenings, as well as hands-on visits to Drexel's Fox Historic Costume Collection, archive appointments, and museum visits. Students will partner with community members and learn the basics of conducting interviews for oral history research methods and techniques. Following the groundbreaking fashion blog Advanced Style as inspiration, students will generate a collaborative blog, as a class, documenting their findings in the archive and interviews in order to create public scholarship and community knowledge about how fashion has impacted the lives of everyday people in Philadelphia and beyond. The summer course meets Wednesdays 2-4:50pm from Jun 26th- Aug 28th.

Spring Term 2018-2019

College	Course #	CRN	Course Title	Instructor	Date/Time	Location
CoAS	HIST 276-130	32726	The History of Philadelphia	Scott Gabriel Knowles	Tuesdays 9am-11:50am	Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships
Course Description Philadelphia. No other city has done more to define the American experience. This course surveys the history of Philadelphia through pre-colonial, colonial, and industrial eras to the present day. We will investigate Philadelphia as an economic, social, cultural, and political center, with a special focus on the Powelton Village and Mantua neighborhoods. Students will read primary and secondary sources, as well as conduct original research into Philadelphia’s history. The course combines lectures and discussions with “on-site” historical examinations to tie the present and the past together.

College	Course #	CRN	Course Title	Instructor	Date/Time	Location
CoAS	ANTH T280	35338	Elderscapes: Aging in Place(s)	Marilyn J Musket	Thursdays 2pm-4:50pm	Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships
Course Description Aging is a universal human experience, but longevity, lifeways, and qualities of later life vary enormously from one culture to another. This course will explore various aspects of age and the aging process in a wide variety of cross-cultural contexts. This course explores that diversity through assigned readings, lectures, films, guest speakers, interactive class discussions, intergenerational knowledge exchanges, and in and out of class activities including engaging in a course project.

College	Course #	CRN	Course Title	Instructor	Date/Time	Location
CoAS	WRIT T280-004	34009	Fiction Writing at a Philadelphia Prison	Nomi Eve	Thursdays 1pm-3:50pm	Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility
Course Description Have you always wanted to write fiction? Have you been writing for a while, but are finding yourself unsure of what to write next? In this unique creative writing course, students learn to banish writer's block by using prompts to jumpstart the creative process. Students will write flash fiction and engage in collaborative writing exercises with incarcerated women. The fiction we read and write will be inspired by and analyzed through the lens of social justice. Emphasis at all times is on writing that shows guts and reveals soul. This course is appropriate for both beginning and experienced writers. This class will pay due homage to inspiration, while acknowledging that perspiration and focused work on specific teachable skills also plays an essential role in the making of good fiction.

College	Course #	CRN	Course Title	Instructor	Date/Time	Location
CoAS	SPAN 330-001	35013	Food, Culture and Heritage	Mariadelaluz Matus-Mendoza	Tuesdays/Thursdays 6:30pm-7:50pm	Garces Foundation
Course Description The class explores how the production, preparation and consumption of food relate to the construction social identity, i.e. the cultural and sociopolitical development of a society. This is done through an array of materials on the topic included but not limited to scholarly written article, recipes, conference presentations, literature, visual arts and film.

College	Course #	CRN	Course Title	Instructor	Date/Time	Location
CoAS	CJS 260	22981	Justice in Our Community	Cyndi Rickards	Mondays 10am-11:50am	Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships
Course Description This course is a community-based learning course that will begin with an introduction to our local community and examine problems unique to cities. The majority of our instructional time will take place with our community partner. The synthesis of scholarship and community classroom experience will provide a holistic leans in which to explore issues in our urban community. Topics include: urban economies, access to education and health care, information justice, race and crime. Students meet for two hours in the classroom and work as Navigators at the Dornsife Center T, W or TH from 1-3 or 3-5. You will need to choose one shift to work each week, which will appear as a recitation on your schedule.

College	Course #	CRN	Course Title	Instructor	Date/Time	Location
CoAS	PSCI T380-004	35320	Neighborhood Economic Development	Richardson Dilworth	Thursdays 6pm-8:50pm	AchieveABILITY
Course Description This course explores local strategies for community and neighborhood economic development, with a particular focus on retail commercial corridors. Topics include: community organizing for economic development, urban planning as an economic development strategy, the role of government in neighborhood economic development, and the history of retail in American cities. This course meets in West Philadelphia but off campus.

College	Course #	CRN	Course Title	Instructor	Date/Time	Location
CoAS	COM 576-900	34860	Nonprofit Communication	Lawrence Souder	Online	TBD
Course Description All nonprofit organizations must develop and maintain effective communication strategies in order to survive in a competitive economy. Nonprofits have unique needs and limitations in their long-term goals and short-term operations that relate to communication. This course introduces students to the ways nonprofits communicate with both their constituents and their benefactors and the ways researchers have examined these practices. Students will explore these two perspectives on nonprofit communication through a combination of scholarly readings, dialogues with local representatives in the nonprofit sector, and direct contact and work for a local nonprofit organization.

College	Course #	CRN	Course Title	Instructor	Date/Time	Location
CoAS	ENGL 103		Once upon A Lifetime (So Far...)	Cassandra Hirsch	TBD	Kirkbride Center, Philadelphia
Course Description In this side-by-side course, blending Drexel students with individuals at Kirkbride Center, Drexel's community partner, I will create a setting for these two groups of students to put aside their preconceptions of the “other” as they read selected works of memoir, engage in conversation about these works, and together learn the craft of writing memoir.

College	Course #	CRN	Course Title	Instructor	Date/Time	Location
CoAS	CJS 380	34651	Policing: Theory and Practice	Robert Kane & Cyndi Rickards	Mondays/Wednesdays 2pm-3:50pm	Drexel Police Station
Course Description This is an undergraduate course that examines the roles, processes, and implications of policing in America. The class represents a unique collaboration between the Department of Criminology and Justice Studies and the Drexel University Police Department. It offers both a classroom component that grounds students in the academics of policing, as well as a Citizen Police Academy experience to teach policing through the collective lens of those who do the job. Each week, students will study a topic in American policing through readings and lecture, and also through a simulated police activity hosted by Drexel police officers. For example, when we study the rules governing police search & seizure, students will read academic materials on the topic and will also conduct mock car stops in an actual police car with Drexel police officers. This combination of classroom and applied pedagogy teaches students how the rules -- both in terms of social expectations and formal requirements -- translate to actual work settings for officers in the moment while on the job. Ultimately, this course hopes to integrate two aspects of American policing that are typically separated: How we teach policing, and how we do policing.

College	Course #	CRN	Course Title	Instructor	Date/Time	Location
CoAS	CJS 261	22974	Prison, Society & YOU	Cyndi Rickards	'Thursdays 1pm-4pm	Curran- Fromhold Correctional facility
Course Description This course utilizes the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program to explore the relationship between individuals and the prison system. The Inside-Out Exchange Program is an evolving set of projects that creates opportunities for dialogue between those on the outside and those on the inside of the nation’s correctional facilities. The program demonstrates the potential for dynamic collaborations between institutions of higher education and correctional institutions. Most importantly, through this unique exchange, Inside-Out an this course seeks to deepen the conversation- and transform ways of thinking about crime and justice (Crabbe, Pompa, 2004) Course Goal and Mission: At the most basic level, this course and program allows students to go behind the walls to reconsider what they have learned about crime and justice, while those on the inside are encouraged to place their life experiences in a larger framework. Students will exchange ideas and perceptions about crime and justice, the criminal justice system, corrections and imprisonment. It is a chance for all participants to gain a deeper understanding of the criminal justice system through the marriage of theoretical knowledge and practical experience achieved by weekly meetings and extended throughout the semester. (Crabbe, Pompa, 2004).

College	Course #	CRN	Course Title	Instructor	Date/Time	Location
CoAS	WRIT 215-001	33182	Story Medicine	Nomi Eve	Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:00am-12:20pm	CHOP
Course Description Story Medicine is a community-based learning course for Drexel University undergraduates that meets in the Seacrest Television Studio at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). It is a one-of-a-kind course that aims to reach hospitalized children with joyful, innovative, and child-focused programming. Students host, write scripts and lead imagination activities for patients. All writing assignments are suitable for beginning and intermediate fiction writers.

College	Course #	CRN	Course Title	Instructor	Date/Time	Location
CoAS	ENGL 360 1	35058	Publishing Vets' Memoirss	Karen Nulton	Tuesdays 11am-2:20pm and by arrangement with course partners	Philadelphia VA
Course Description This seminar-style community-based learning course connects Drexel students with local Veterans to create texts for the Library of Congress Veterans' History Project. While working with the vets to tell their stories, students will explore the relationship of gender, race, and socioeconomics to war and peace. Students will explore the power of stories, read selected texts, and learn interview techniques while meeting with local veterans. As students learn the veterans' stories, they will work with the vets to craft narratives that fit the Library of Congress guidelines. Male and female veterans will be included and will represent a wide range of military experiences. The veterans will approve the final product before it is uploaded to the Library of Congress Veterans History Project archive.

College	Course #	CRN	Course Title	Instructor	Date/Time	Location
CoAS	COM 420-900	32803	Technical and Science Editing	Lawrence Souder	Online	TBD
Course Description Editors have a challenging job because their work can invoke in their writers a wide range of feelings: from indifference to resentment. For this reason editors must understand not just the process of correcting and revising the written word, but also the politics and psychology of working with writers and clients. Through studying the current state of the art of editing, examining case studies of professional editorial settings, and serving nonprofit clients, students in this course will explore within the field of editing such topics as: -Editorial functions and responsibilities -Readers and uses of documents -Editor—writer relationships -Editor's methods and tools -Differences among proofreading, copyediting, and comprehensive editing -Legal and ethical issues in editing

College	Course #	CRN	Course Title	Instructor	Date/Time	Location
CoAS	HIST 276-130	32726	The History of Philadelphia	Scott Gabriel Knowles	Tuesdays 9am-11:50am	Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships
Course Description Philadelphia. No other city has done more to define the American experience. This course surveys the history of Philadelphia through pre-colonial, colonial, and industrial eras to the present day. We will investigate Philadelphia as an economic, social, cultural, and political center, with a special focus on the Powelton Village and Mantua neighborhoods. Students will read primary and secondary sources, as well as conduct original research into Philadelphia’s history. The course combines lectures and discussions with “on-site” historical examinations to tie the present and the past together.