URB 310
Urban Field Experience

Course Description: This is a service-learning field experience course focusing on the urban setting. Students accomplish at least 100 hours of service work during the semester in a field placement, meet in a weekly seminar and complete assignments designed to integrate classroom content and a student's academic interests, knowledge, and skills with field work.

Course Rationale: This seminar-based course is meant to provide students with a challenging, applied educational setting for critical thinking and experiential learning from a liberal arts perspective. An emphasis will be placed on linking previously accomplished course work, current semester studies, and seminar readings with field experience. Students will design and implement their own learning objectives, activities, and outcomes with the faculty person serving primarily as a guide and facilitator. An underlying goal is for students to learn from one another as they consider the relationship between various texts and contexts of urban living and work. In a weekly seminar class, students will share insights with each other in an effort to integrate knowledge and gain understanding of themselves, their faith, the city, and our world.

Course Goals: This course is intended to accomplish the following goals:

• to have each student design and direct a “subject-centered” learning, integrate service work experience into a specific academic discipline, and link social action to personal reflection on community life.
• to recognize the importance of a liberal arts perspective for study, service, work, and life within an urban context.
• to expand a student's understanding of and appreciation for various social service organizations that exist within the city and find evidence of God's work through them.
• to broaden one's experiences and perspectives about city life in order to achieve greater insight into one's own social condition and to view each interaction as a potential opportunity for learning and social change.

Syllabus Outline

Course Text:
Os Guinness. The Call. Nashville: W. Publishing Group, 2003.
J. Nathan Corbit & Vivian Nix-Early. Taking it to the Streets: Using the Arts to Transform Your Community. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2004.

Course Requirements:
1) Seminar Attendance and Participation: We are a seminar/workshop class. That means a community of learners. Your active participation is crucial to the learning that we all have an opportunity to enjoy together this semester. This class needs you! Therefore, please know that you are expected to be in class on time for each scheduled evening, prepared and willing to contribute to class discussion and activities. Since the course is designed to be a cumulative and comprehensive learning experience, each seminar session you miss or which you fail to prepare for or participate in will reduce the educational value you and your colleagues will receive from this class.

Statement on Attendance: Missing two seminar sessions will lower your course grade by one full letter. Coming late or leaving class early two times will be equal to missing one class session. Arriving to class more than twenty minutes after class has begun will constitute an absence.

Statement on Participation: Students will be graded on the quality of their individual contribution to discussions and in-class assignments. To receive a high grade for participation come to each class having read the assigned material, be prepared to make helpful contributions to class discussion, have prepared the assigned reading notes, and bring questions from your interaction with the text. Please also be prepared to share from your service experience as discussions lead us into what you are seeing and hearing and feeling in and through your site of service. Your “Participation” grade will be assessed as follows:

• “Full Credit” - came to class having read the assignment (and written the assigned reading notes), prepared to contribute to class discussion, and ready to ask relevant questions;
• “Partial Credit” - came to class having read the assignment (and written the assigned reading notes), only participated in class discussion when called upon, and rarely asked relevant questions;
• “None” - came to class but did not participate in discussion, did not have the assigned reading notes or ask relevant questions.

2) Service Work Project & Course Assignments: The primary focus of this course is a “Service Work Project” that each student performs within the context of a local agency, business, or organization through a minimum of 100 contact hours during the semester (at least 8-9 hours per week for 12+ weeks). Students will design and implement an individualized, service-learning program that includes a “Service Work Statement” with clearly articulated learning objectives and a “Field Experience Portfolio” that is to be a creative representation of what you have studied, learned, and accomplished during the semester.

Grading:
Grading for this course will be based on the following components:
Seminar Attendance, Participation and Reading / Notes 15%
Journal entries: 7 completed as assigned & Statement of Experience 15%
Digital photos submitted 5%
Assessment of “Field Experience Portfolio” 10%
Site Supervisor (and student) mid-semester Evaluations5%
“Service Work Project”: fulfillment of 100 service hours and assignments submitted as assigned 50%