2311 - Engaging Students in Social Change through Community Organizing Courses

Session Submission Type: Invited Session

Description

Few Sociology departments offer courses in community organizing or related themes, although the subject is sociological, related to graduates’ jobs, and more could have careers in the field if they had the training. This seems largely a consequence of limited discussion about the topic among sociologists. In fact, scholars of social movements rarely discuss community organizing, although the movements they study often engage in this practice. To counter this trend, speakers in this panel will showcase and discuss how students are engaged in the community organizing through their courses and after graduation from. In a way, this is a more applied, activist, and engaging twist on the more common Social Movements and Social Change courses. It is also more activist than other forms of community engagement: it doesn’t just involve students serving a community or making a change that will happen once, but aims at building organizations that can create and deepen change through time for those excluded from institutional power. The goal is to inspire our colleagues and stimulate a debate about how we can engage students into social justice in a way that goes beyond policy and services, towards empowering marginalized communities to create social change.
The speakers are the leading experts in teaching community organizing within sociology. They have authored books and articles about the topic and teaching it in college and often lead programs in sociology or interdisciplinary areas that require the applied courses in community organizing that they teach.

Sub Unit

• Thematic Session

Session Organizer

• Sebastián G. Guzmán, Purchase College, SUNY

Presider

• Sebastián G. Guzmán, Purchase College, SUNY

Individual Presentations

• Leadership, Organizing, and Action: A Pedagogy of Practice - Marshall Ganz, Harvard University

• Social Problems to Social Solutions: Why Sociology Needs to Adopt Social Action in Our Courses - Scott James Myers-Lipton, San Jose State University

• Bringing Community Organizing Training to the College Classroom - Randy Stoecker, University of Wisconsin

• Teaching Community Change on the Blurred Frontier Between Campus and Community - John Krinsky, The City College of New York