Below is a list of Service Learning courses that will be offered during the 2007–08 academic year.

Health Policy/Health Activism

Sarah Wilcox

Level: Intermediate

Semester: Year

Experiences of health and illness are simultaneously deeply personal and embedded within complex social systems. Within the United States and in the rest of the world, not only is health care often a scarce resource that is unevenly distributed, but ill health is itself closely connected to broader societal inequalities. The goal of this course is to understand this intersection of inequality and health by exploring who gets sick and why, the organization and structure of medicine in the United States and other countries, the development and consequences of health care policies, and the role of activism and community-based research in creating social change. In the first semester, we will examine the social production of illness, the roles of medical professionals, the doctor-patient relationship, the structure of the U.S. health care system, and the organization of health care in other countries. In the second semester, we will continue to study social epidemiology, as well as critically examining health campaigns, community-based research, and health activism. There will be a service-learning component to the course, involving work with a community health organization or agency. For conference, students may study a specific health issue or a health care policy question, or they may develop a research proposal addressing a question relevant to their community placement.

Open to sophomores and above.

Quantitative/Qualitative Research Methods in Health Psychology and Public Health

Linwood J. Lewis

Level: Intermediate,Advanced

Semester: Year

How can psychology help to affect public health? How do we move from an individually oriented science to design and implement change in the realm of social health? In this course, we will examine research issues in the psychological study of health and illness. The course emphasizes theoretical perspectives in epidemiology and in the psychology of health, illness prevention, stress, and coping with illness. The fall semester will highlight quantitative research methods (e.g., survey, case-control studies, experimental design), while the spring semester will focus on qualitative research methods (e.g., focus group methodologies, individual interviewing). Our primary goal will be to use our expanding knowledge to design and implement a research project focused on health psychology or public health. Readings and class discussion in the latter half of the course will involve sharing information about studies in progress and receiving feedback and suggestions from class members.

Previous course work in statistics is helpful, but not required. Previous course work in psychology or social sciences is required.

Science Education: From Congress to the Classroom

Kanwal Singh

Level: Intermediate

Semester: Spring

This course tackles a variety of topics in science education. We will begin with a discussion of the history of science education in the U.S., changes that were proposed and that actually took place following the 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk and a comparison of science education requirements in the U.S. and other industrialized countries. From this broad overview, we will move to discussions of policies put in place to improve U.S. science education. Some questions that we will explore: What exactly were these policies meant to achieve? Whose education did they improve? How were they conceived? What incentives were put in place? Is it sensible or possible to have national policies given the decentralized nature of our school system? Finally we will talk about what actually happens in the classroom, especially in the early grades. We will discuss philosophical and practical reasons why science isn’t usually introduced until late elementary or even middle school. Again, some questions for students to explore: How much science does one need to teach? What does science mean for very young students? What habits of mind do scientists employ? How do you teach these habits of mind? Is there specific content that everyone ?should? know? Who decides what it is? How does policy make its way into the classroom? This course has a service learning component. Students’ conference work consists of volunteer work in a science classroom or a science museum, or as a tutor.

Open only to sophomores and above. Students must have previously taken at least one science course at Sarah Lawrence College.

Urban Poverty and Public Policy in United States

Komozi Woodard

Level: Intermediate

Semester: Year

Since the United States of America is a rich country and the Supreme Court ruled against school segregation in 1954, many would like to believe that in the United States poverty and school segregation are issues in America’s distant past. The paradox between American wealth and the nation’s poverty raises a number of questions. What is the extent of inequality in America’s schools? What is the history of America’s poor? What has been the public policy on urban poverty through the years? Have there been any major changes in economic hardship over time? What is the poorhouse and what is its legacy of the poorhouse on our nation’s welfare system? Has there always been a housing crisis in Manhattan? What was the nature of the urban crisis in the aftermath of the Second World War? And what did the Great Society and the war on poverty do to solve it? This seminar explores the dynamics of capitalism in cities with merchant, industrial, and postindustrial economies; it investigates the nature of immigration, class formation, social reformers and political bosses, ethnic and race relations, slums and ghettos, work and residence, opportunity structures and social mobility, corporate investment strategies and federal urban renewal policies, as well as poverty and welfare. Students will pay special attention to the relationship of ideas and institutions in the rise of schools, prisons, and asylums in urban America. What is the meaning of blackness and whiteness in the United States? And why does that matter? Finally, what is the impact of the economic degradation of poor people on American citizenship in general? What is the price of citizenship in the era of globalization?