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Home » Academics » Majors, Minors & Programs » Social Justice and Community Engagement Program

Social Justice and Community Engagement Program

Walking Tour

SEPA InternshipThe Social Justice and Community Engagement Program allows students to solidify their commitment to creating a more equitable world through both academic analysis and community-engaged learning. As defined by the program, social justice pertains to how humans relate to one another and come together to dismantle systemic barriers to equity in the world, ensuring everyone has the opportunity to thrive. Community engagement compliments this through cultivating and fostering civic, social, and intellectual networks in pursuit of the public good.

 

The Social Justice minor equips students to engage social justice matters in their major and whatever career path they pursue.

 

The Non-Profit Organizations and Public Affairs minor gives students a foundation for careers in the non-profit sector by exploring the roles of non-profit organizations, philanthropy, and volunteerism in generating policy responses to significant social problems.

SEPA
Student Opportunities Expand

Summer Opportunities

SEPA Grant Writing Internship

  • Receive training and work with an area nonprofit agency writing grants
  • Campus housing is available
  • Compensation ranges from $4,00-$4,500, plus related expenses.
  • To apply, fill out application here. Applications open each year in January.  

Social Justice Summer Research Fellowship

  • Work with AC faculty member on a summer research project or creative work related to a social justice issue.
  • Campus housing is available if you are staying local
  • Compensation $4,000, plus related expenses.
  • The time to apply for this opportunity is early in the spring semester. Contact Nate Bigelow at nbigelow@austincollege.edu for more information.

Social Justice Summer Internship

  • Work with Career Services to identify an internship with a social justice organization of your choosing
  • Campus housing is available if you are staying local
  • Compensation $4,000, plus related expenses.
  • Contact Jennifer Johnson Cooper at jtjohnson@austincollege.edu for more information.

Regular Semester Opportunities

Public Humanities Research Fellow

  • Work with AC faculty member on a year-long project relating to AC’s and/or North Texas’s history surrounding a social justice issue of your choosing
  • Compensation $4,000, plus related expenses.
  • The time to apply for this opportunity is over the Spring and Summer semesters (to be ready for a fall start). Contact Nate Bigelow at nbigelow@austincollege.edu for more information.

Acumen - Social Justice Edition

  • Transform an existing paper on a social justice topic into a submission for a special edition of the AC Acumen journal.
  • Compensation $500
  • The time to apply for this opportunity is over the Fall semester. Contact Nate Bigelow at nbigelow@austincollege.edu for more information
Non-Profit Organization and Public Affairs (NPPA) Minor Expand

The Non-Profit Organizations and Public Affairs minor provides a liberal arts foundation for careers in non-profit/community leadership, public administration, and public policy.

 

Our Definition of Community Engagement

Community-engaged learning combines the creative capacities of students, faculty, and community partners, co-equally, in pursuit of the public good. Community engagement experiences for students can range from specific class assignments to volunteering with local organizations to immersive internship experiences and more. (Community-engaged scholarship, a closely related concept, provides a framework for creating new scholarly knowledge through co-authorship involving faculty, student, and community partners.) The greatest hope for this type of learning is the cultivation of a healthier and more just democracy. For all those involved, it promotes active learning and helps in the development of civic skills rooted in humility, integration, reflection, and impact orientation.

 

Minor Checklist

Social Justice Minor Expand

The Social Justice minor allows students to complement any major with a multidisciplinary perspective on social justice.

 

Our Definition of Social Justice

Social justice encompasses structures for and patterns of distributing material resources, ascribing cultural value and social esteem, and exercising interpersonal and collective power that enable human individuals and groups to pursue their well-being and participate in society on the basis of equality with one another and enable humans as a species to live in a way that preserves and enhances the planet’s overall capacities to support diverse more-than-human life. It includes critique and dismantling of systemic barriers to such equity among humans and between humans and more-than-human life.

 

Minor Checklist

Courses Related to the SJCE Program Expand

FOUNDATION COURSES

SJCE 201: Human Rights & Social Justice
SJCE 202: The Quest for Civil Rights
SJCE 203: Environmental Psychology
SJCE 204: Environmental Justice.

 

DISCIPLINARY INTRO COURSES
ANTH 123 Socio-Cultural Anthropology
ENVS 135 Fund of Environmental Studies
GNDR 120 Intro to Gender Studies
MEDA 121 Elements of Media Analysis
PSCI 110 American Government & Politics
PUBH 235 Fundamentals of Public Health
SOC 101 Introduction to Sociology

 

SKILLS COURSES
ACCT 371 Non-Profit Accounting
BA 252 Business Analytics
BA 253 Product Lab
BA 355 Marketing
BA 486 Entrep & Small Business Mmgt
COMM 112 Public Speaking
COMM 222 Interpersonal Communication
COMM 352 Organizational Communication
COMM 455 Intercultural Communication
DSA 241 Foundations of Data Science
ECO 371 Econometrics
ECO 372 Predictive Analytics
GS 205 Quant & Statistical Reasoning
LEAD 120 Introduction to Leadership
LEAD 254 Community Leadership
PSY 120 Statistics for Psychologists
PUBH 346 Health Care Administration
PSCI 271 Quantitative Methods
*Plus approved topics courses

 

ISSUES COURSES
ANTH 263 Env/Cult/Mod in Amazon Basin
ANTH 362 Immigrant Experience in US
ANTH 365 Race & Ethnicity
BIOL 259 Conservation and Restoration Ecology
BIOL 346 Ecosystem Ecology|
EAS 335 The Two Koreas
EAS 430 Contemporary Issues in East Asia
ECO 280 Health Economics
EDUC 115 American Education
ENG 331 Topics in Medieval Lit
ENVS 245 Food Systems
ENVS 359 Resilient Systems
ENVS 379 Environmental Policy
ENVS 389 Environmental Solutions
MEDA 205 New Media and Cultural Change
PHIL 205 Ethics
PHIL 207 Ethics & the Environment
PHIL 209 Ethics and Medicine
PHIL 213 Law and Morality
PHIL 302 Ethical Theory
PSCI 220 Constitution – Civil Liberties
PSCI 333 International Social Movements
PSCI 336 Latin American Politics
PSY 340 Cultural Psychology
PUBH 345 Global Health
PUBH 347 Intro to Maternal & Child Health
PUBH 357 Health Care Law
PUBH 379 Public Health Policy
SOC 245 Law & Society
SOC 255 Sex, Gender and Society
SOC 365 Race and Ethnicity
SPAN 481 Post-Totalitarian Peninsular Lit
*Plus approved topics courses

Faculty

Nathan S. Bigelow Nate Bigelow

Director of SJCE and Professor of Political Science 

Teaching and Research Interests:  I focus on American politics with a special interest in exploring the intersection of power, inequality, rights, and policymaking institutions. Over the summers I also coordinate the SEPA summer grant writing program, a community engagement project that places students with area non-profit agencies. 

  

“I was raised in a union household and my first job out of high school was working for a consumer rights group. As such, and for as long as I can remember, it’s been a commitment to social justice that informs the way I understand my role in society and certainly the way in which I understand my role as a teacher and mentor to students.” 

Felix HarcourtFelix Harcourt

Assistant Director of SJCE (Coordinator for the SJ Minor) and Assistant Professor of History 

Teaching and Research Interests: I am a historian of the US, with a focus on issues of prejudice, politics, and popular culture, and particularly the power and influence of white supremacist groups. I teach a range of courses focused on the intersectional struggle for social justice, including Quest for Civil Rights, Immigration and the US, and Work and Wealth in the US. 

 

 "Long before I immigrated from England to the US, I was inspired by the founding ideals of freedom and equality. As a historian, though, I am continually confronted by the ways in which the US has often not lived up to those ideals. I find hope in the ways that generations of activists have pushed the country to try and live up to its promise. I am committed to helping others see that same hope and to discover in the past how we all can contribute to moving our society and our world into a more just and equitable future." 

Lisa M. Brown Lisa Brown

Dean of Social Sciences and The Herman Brown Chair in Psychology  

Teaching and Research Interests: I am interested in the public and private nature of collective identities – particularly ethnic identity and sexual orientation identity. Identity as relates to longstanding inequalities comes up in classes I have taught such as Stigma & Prejudice, Health Psychology, Human Sexuality, and Environmental Psychology. 

  

“I feel that so much of my life was affected by the intersecting identities of race, gender and class having grown up in Boston as the daughter of a divorced, Black woman working as a registered nurse. As a result, my framing of social justice and community engagement comes from experiencing and later interrogating the experience of structural factors (e.g., renting in Black neighborhoods that resulted from redlining) and choices my mother made (e.g., working at a community health center serving low-income patients in a Black neighborhood).” 

Mari Elise Ewing Mari Elise Ewing

 Associate Professor of Environmental Studies 

Teaching and Research Interests: In courses such as Environmental Justice, Food Systems, Resilient Systems, and The Decision Process, I explore questions about securing equitable access to public goods and ecosystem services and decreasing disproportionate impacts of so-called natural disasters, climate change, and consumer culture. 

 

“I grew up working on a small but still-surviving family farm on the High Plains of Colorado. I am mindful of our disadvantaged students because of my own background in which college was only possible thanks to receiving need-based Pell and SEOG grants, juggling many jobs, and chancing upon invaluable mentors. I am committed to serving as one of those mentors to my students and extending access to all students.” 

Brian Watkins Brian Watkins

Associate Professor of Anthropology 

Teaching and Research Interests: My focus is socio-cultural anthropology, with a range of courses about understanding the systems involved in enduring inequities.  I teach courses about human rights, Native North American and African diversity and experiences with colonialism, sex and gender, race and ethnicity, and methodological approaches to all of the above.   

 

"My world expanded when I was a student at Austin College, when I found a volunteer opportunity at the Center for Survivors of Torture in Dallas.  Seeing the trials and triumphs of displaced people, and in our own back yard, inspired me to work to help students recognize global and local intersections in everything we do.” 

Program Details

  • NPPA Minor Checklist
  • Social Justice Minor Checklist
  • See the SEPA website

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Sherman, TX 75090

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