The Classroom as a Vehicle for Recommitting Campus to Goals of Civic Mindedness and Social Responsibility

• In Event: 2222 - Teaching and Learning Symposium Roundtable Session
  In Informal Discussion Roundtable: Table 05. Teaching for Social Justice and Human Rights

Abstract

Civic mindedness and social responsibility often get lost in the shuffle as policy makers, parents, faculty, and administrators debate the “hot” topics of the day which tend to revolve around college affordability and job placement. These are reasonable topics for discussion, but unfortunately the outsized focus on them may be contributing to a failure in higher education to build community and engage students in their civic and social responsibilities. Several large-scale studies demonstrate a very small to negligible shift in student attitudes on community engagement, diversity, and leadership over their careers as college students (Dey et al. 2009; Franke et al. 2009). We believe this calls for a rethinking of campus practices intended to cultivate connection and demonstrate the importance of community involvement and multiculturalism.
This paper provides looks at the ways the sociology classroom can be at the forefront in developing a campus student culture that is engaged and community minded. Data and information for this project come from a series of freshman learning communities at a regional, state university in the northeast that combined introductory classes in composition and sociology around the theme of cultural diversity and community.
Learning communities can integrate and connect students to the institution. They have the additional value of being a strategy that drives retention and graduation rates while not requiring dramatic institutional shifts in resources. We believe that learning communities are but one part of a broader institutional approach to socializing democratic actors. In particular, learning communities in the context of an introductory sociology class have the benefit of using discipline specific readings and assignments to cultivate connection – connections between students, between faculty and students, between students and the campus community, and between students and the larger communities they inhabit.

Author

• Aaron J. Howell, State University of New York-Farmingdale