Content with Disciplines : Housing and Poverty

Education SL Course: Poverty Matters

Course description: This course explores current theories, research, beliefs, and myths surrounding poverty and its effects on people, the environment, and various communities of practice. Opportunities will be provided for students to deepen their understanding of diversity by developing relationships with local organizations and by working side by side with marginalized populations in the Front Range of Colorado through action research.     Course objectives and outcomes: The students will: Participate in applying new knowledge with local educational organizations that are addressing the cycle of poverty, marginalized populations, and/or very young children and their families; Explore various definitions of poverty and…

Poverty, Gender, and Microcredit

BACKGROUND TO SERVICE LEARNING AND COURSE OVERVIEW Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1800?s observed that the strength of American democracy lay in its spirited voluntary associations and emphasis on community. He declared however, that democracy and its manifestation of individualism, while a virtue, could become a vice when taken to extremes, especially in the form of hyper individualism. Several contemporary scholars have revealed that America has already reached this vicious stage of its democracy, one in which people are so preoccupied with their own concerns and successes that they have shut out of their consciences and consciousnesses the concerns of…

Poverty and Homelessness in America

Course Description This two quarter course will combine formal academic study on the topic of poverty and homelessness in the United States with an internship experience in a shelter-providing agency either in Santa Clara County or San Mateo County. Students will read weekly selections of articles and books relating to analyses of and personal experiences with poverty and homelessness in American cities. Perhaps the most important part of the course is the internship each student will be involved in at a local homeless shelter. Students will engage in a directed social service-type internship and will be expected to devote about…

Rethinking Urban Poverty

RETHINKING URBAN POVERTY: Philadelphia Field Project Rethinking Urban Poverty: Philadelphia Field Project is an interdisciplinary service learning course offered through the Department of Geography at Penn State. The objectives of the course are to understand why existing poverty policies in the US have failed, and to develop an alternative framework for action in cooperation with residents in a poor neighborhood of West Philadelphia. Each year we select about 10 students to participate in a yearlong course of 3 to 6 hours of credit offered in three parts. Part 1: Spring Semester (1-3 credits) – Social theories of poverty. Readings in…