Course Meeting Time
Fall 2008
Tuesdays 6:45-9:00pm with additional lab times

Course Description of HON292S
This course introduces you to the practice of Community Service Learning—including how to engage effectively with a community through its people and organizations and how to learn deeply from that experience. In this course you will encounter and learn from people who have different experiences, opinions, racial and ethnic and class backgrounds from yourself and you will get to know yourself better. You will develop skills for experiential learning and for taking charge of your own education—including observation, journaling, and learning circles—that you can use during your UMass education and beyond. This course fulfills the Interdisciplinary and U.S. Diversity Gen. Ed. requirements.

Section Description: Student Bridges: Access to College
This course—the first of two in a fall/spring sequence— examines how race, class and a variety of historical forces shape students' access to quality public education and can be reshaped. As part of the course, you will tutor/mentor Holyoke middle school students once or twice a week.  We will use this experience to deepen our exploration of educational (in)equality and our familiarity with Holyoke—a post-industrial, predominantly Puerto Rican, and culturally vibrant city close to UMass. In the spring, the course will explore pathways and barriers to college in greater depth, and you will develop a group project to support college access for Holyoke youth. 

Note that you must commit to this course and participate in your service learning team for both the Fall 2008 and the Spring 2009 semesters.

Student Bridges is a student-initiated outreach program that connects UMass students with Holyoke schools and community-based organizations through academic tutoring/mentoring, college awareness activities, and policy advocacy. Holyoke is a racially-diverse, post-industrial city less than half-an-hour from UMass.

How to Sign Up
You cannot use SPIRE to register for this course. Course registration is by application only. Click here for the application.  For more information, visit www.studentbridges.org or contact the Student Bridges office (306 Student Union) at 545-7676 or umbridge@stuaf.umass.edu.

Instructor Information
TBD