Every three weeks at the Swearer Center for Public Service, 22 professors across 17 disciplines collide behind closed doors to discuss exciting new directions in education at Brown. Food justice is discussed with sandwiches in hand, education finds common ground with engineering and the medieval studies program forms an unlikely pair with prison-based teaching.
Each of the professors has been awarded funding through the Engaged Scholars Initiative to take their work into the community. Now in its third year, the initiative has sponsored many community-based courses at Brown.
Maureen Sigler, lecturer in education and director of history and social studies education, has deepened the connection between Brown and Central Falls High School through a "service-learning component" in her restructured course, EDUC 1010: "The Craft of Teaching."
The class as it was originally designed is "more of a purely intellectual exercise," Sigler said, a "broad brushstroke" to introduce students to what they should be thinking when they enter the classroom as teachers. But through the lens of service learning, a select group of the class — about 20 of 100 this year — has the chance for a deeper experience in applying and "contextualizing academic rigor," she said.
In her class, students first complete readings including education scholar Melissa Roderick's work assessing the challenges on the road to college for students in Chicago Public Schools. Through an "asset walk" in Central Falls, the group of students contextualize the community by counting its benefits as opposed to the challenges it faces. And then, based on what the community has identified as its need, students apply strategies for college advising using what they read in Roderick.
The process is ongoing. After the first year, Sigler determined the service learning component could do even more for a "deep impact, not just a broad impact." She and her students reached out to Central Falls students' parents and families, taking them to Free Application for Federal Student Aid info meetings and college fairs to raise students' awareness of their options. Soon, their work began to speak for itself. The program now has its own dedicated space and administrator in Central Falls High School.
Many of the ideas funded by the initiative were around long before it began. Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies Phil Brown received support for his Community Environmental College — run through the Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island — from the initiative. But he has been sending students to work with the league for years.
The Community Environmental College is a summer program for Providence-area high school students that offers courses in environmental justice, food justice and leadership, media and the arts.
"It transforms Phil's research into work for the community," said Keally Cieslik '13, who previously taught courses at the college. Cieslik outlined a curriculum that took students to places like Alvarez High School, which is situated on contaminated land. She described the students' outrage when they learned of industrial meat processing techniques.
"The (environmental college) is an umbrella for subprojects," Cieslik said, adding that courses were student-driven and ended with a final project. "They've done river cleanup, someone made a film about food justice," she recounted. "There was even a project with a veggie-biodiesel-fueled school bus."
As a Brown student, Cieslik entered the community "uncomfortable as a teacher," she said. Many students do not need to be told about injustice by an "outsider," she said. In that way, the summer courses became a "co-learning experience," and what Cieslik took away as a student was "insight into what it's like in Providence as a high school youth."
Being "uncomfortable" might just be part of a community-based course, Sigler said. In addition to the "asset walk," she makes her students eat meals and spend time in the Central Falls community.
At the beginning of her course, students spend four weeks "reacting critically" to their own autobiographies, she said. Students grapple with questions such as "can a privileged, white Brown Student work in an under-resourced high school?" and "what things does that student take with him or her?"
These questions and their answers are the essence of what Sigler called the service learning component's ability to add "intellectual teeth" to a course. For some students, a community component "ignites the fire," she said.
Priya Gaur '13 might be one of those students. She began her involvement in another community-based course, ENVS 0110: "Humans, Nature, and the Environment: Addressing Environmental Change in the 21st Century" taught by Kathryn DeMaster, visiting assistant professor of environmental studies. She then kept it up through work with the Community Environmental College and Environmental Justice League. She is also a teaching assistant for the class this semester.
The problems in the community are "long-term," Gaur said. They require long-term activism and involvement.
"You're dealing with structural inequalities," she said, highlighting an example of food injustice. "In some areas of Rhode Island, there is less access to healthy foods. Olneyville has no Whole Foods. College Hill has two."
Community work is in "the very charter of a university" whose mission is "to do public good," said Associate Professor of History Amy Remensnyder, another Engaged Scholar. Her work takes place in the Adult Correctional Institute in Rhode Island, where she brings knowledge of medieval Iberia to discussions with inmates about the coexistence of diverse religions.
Back in the boardroom, Sigler and Chris Bull '79 MS'86 PhD'06, senior lecturer in the School of Engineering, are discussing the overlap of their students' experiences, identifying cross-disciplinary approaches to education. All the professors enter the fray, positing ways to better fit community needs.
Everything about Engaged Scholars is "organic," said Roger Nozaki, director of the Swearer Center and associate dean of the College. Everything is also long-term — projects like Sigler's and Brown's have been running for three years and show no sign of stopping. Instead, they continue to adjust ̵
2; "ratchet," as Nozaki said — to community needs.
