Funded Courses

Jessica LeClair, Clinical Instructor, Nursing

Community partners: Department of Human Services and Dane County Climate Action Team

Human health and wellbeing are dependent on the constancy and functioning of the Earth’s systems—including its oceans, forests, biogeochemical cycles, atmosphere, and levels of

biodiversity. The emerging field of Planetary Health explores how transgressing planetary limits, such as damaging climate systems through excessive carbon emissions, is incompatible with continued human thriving. Addressing questions regarding how human society can thrive and develop in this era, while remaining within planetary boundaries, are the paramount issues of our time. In this interdisciplinary course, students will explore the intersections between risks to planetary health and the resulting impacts on communities using the lenses of healthcare, population health, social and environmental justice, and will create advocacy plans with community partners to support them in responding and adapting to climate change.

Mariela Quesada Centeno, Ph.D. student, Human Development and Family Studies

Community partner: Centro Hispano

The Latinx community still lives in the shadows of our city, county, and state. The lack of  accurate data and recorded stories and histories inflicts unintended consequences on an often perceived “invisible” community. In addition, the lack of representation on research studies,

leadership positions, academic appointments, school boards, medical professions does not follow the demographic shift. This course will use a community-participatory framework to discover stories from community members in our city and county, increase students’ knowledge and awareness of the multiplicity of realities nested in the community, challenge systems of oppression, and ignite strategic action.

Mary Beth Collins, Executive Director of the Center for Community and Nonprofit Studies (CommNS), School of Human Ecology

Community partners: Many

This grant is supporting the transformation of two new undergraduate courses in the Civil Society and Community Studies program. These courses are focused on key aspects of community and nonprofit organizations, and will generate meaningful service and useful deliverables for Wisconsin-based and global partner organizations of the CommNS. In the course Nonprofit board leadership, students will work with the boards of nonprofits to learn about board leadership while working on a project identified by the community partner. In the course Infrastructure and operations for community and nonprofit organizations, students will learn about the context of their community partner and aspects of domestic and global community and nonprofit organizations’ infrastructure and operations, and ultimately take a “deeper dive” on a specific aspect of a community partner’s operation and infrastructure that the partner will identify as the topic for the deliverable from the student to the partner.

Patti Coffey, Faculty Associate, Psychology

This course is a collaboration with the UniverCity program and Brown County. Brown County has requested help evaluating/improving their jail/former prisoner reentry process. Students will be conducting research with many people who intersect with the criminal justice system to provide valuable information and resources for Brown County, and potentially other Wisconsin communities, as well. Students will gain valuable professional experience and a direct understanding of how psychology can contribute in a meaningful way by addressing community and social justice issues.

Linn Posey-Maddox
Summer 2019

Community partner: various Madison nonprofits with leaders of color

The course will build on a research project being conducted by Sociology grad student Greg Wilson and Professor Randy Stoecker, using an “initiator” model of CBR where the academics use a research project to identify issues and organize a constituency.  The project is documenting the challenges faced by Black-led community organizations in Madison and the strategies they use to manage those challenges.

Olufunmilola Abraham
Fall 2019

Community partner: various

Research seminar in social and administrative pharmacy. Exposes students to research related to SAS topics, discuss strategies for writing research theses and articles, discuss various methodological approaches to answering research questions, and improve oral and written communication skills. Seminars may involve presenting completed and/or planned research, leading discussions among seminar participants about research topics, and discussing written assignments.

Caroline Gottschalk Druschke
Fall 2019

Community partner: Driftless Writing Center

This small seminar offers students close instruction in the principles and practices of informed, engaged, critical reading and writing.

Ronnie Carda
Fall 2019

Community partner: Independent Living and Attic Angel Community

Present/discuss the scientific basis and current practices of strength and conditioning for athletic performance. Training program design and training methods, for performance enhancement, related to the areas of strength, power, speed, and endurance.

Steve Ventura
Spring 2020

Community partners: Community Groundworks and Savannah Institute

Agroecology systems provide a variety of social, economic, and ecological functions to society, each with a different network of stakeholders. This course explores methods of evaluating these diverse functions and perspectives, with a special focus on participatory approaches.

Carolina Sarmiento
TBD

Community partner: Freedom, Inc.

Community-engaged research and practice and community-centered knowledge and learning are two of the P.O.W.E.R. Collective’s core values. These values place the community as the directors of knowledge creation, learning and application, and project development. In doing so, we aim to center the minds, bodies and experiences of community members of color. The development of this course includes intentional and meaningful engagement with community members of color, inviting them to collaborate with us at every step of the process.

Claire Luby and Ben Futa
Summer 2020

Community partners: Chrysalis, Inc., Dogs on Call, Community Groundworks, Campus Food Shed

Linn Posey-Maddox
Spring 2019

Community Partner: Goodman Community Center

In this course, students will learn about and critically reflect on the experiences of students and families of color in U.S. public school systems, and critically analyze the ways in which race, class, and gender shape educational opportunities and outcomes. The majority of the course material focuses on contemporary urban educational issues (with a focus on K-12 public schooling). The community-engaged component will provide students who are interested in teaching with concrete experience working with children and youth in a local setting, providing them with opportunities to learn more about the Madison community. Those students who are interested in careers in research will have the opportunity to gain experience in community-engaged research (both reading about it, as well as doing it).

Bailey Smolarek and Matthew Wolfgram
Fall 2019

Community Partner: UW-Madison undergraduate population

Community-Based Approaches to Educational Research is a project-based course that will be open to both graduate and undergraduate students. In this course, students will develop, conduct, and analyze their own community-based, qualitative educational research study. The course is designed to be relevant to future educators, social scientists, anthropologists, and community organizers, and is divided into two sections: 1) Learning about community-based research approaches, and 2) Designing and conducting a community-based research study concerning issues relevant to higher education and the UW-Madison student body.

John Harrington, Cheryl Baeuer-Armstrong, Maria Moreno, and Sam Dennis

Community Partners: Madison Metropolitan School District, Ho-Chunk Nation, Centro Hispano, Catholic Multicultural Center, Community Groundworks, Dane County Lakes and Watersheds

In this course, the Earth Partnership will promote restoration-based education and process with a cultural focus, utilizing environmental perspectives, land ethics, folklore, and problem-solving approaches to community issues as a way to engage learners of diverse backgrounds in academic and stewardship pursuits. This course invites undergraduate students representing multiple disciplines to connect their knowledge of ecology, culture, environmental justice, and service to real issues in their community.

Julia Garrett and Brenna Swift
Spring 2019

Community Partners: Healthy Food for All

This new version of English 201, Intermediate Composition, will offer course themes related to environmentalism and social justice. The pilot semester of this course will focus specifically on the interdisciplinary topic of “food justice,” an emergent field of scholarship and teaching that brings together research paradigms from sociology, environmental studies, history, critical race theory, animal studies, and sustainable agriculture. The range of disciplines and pressing social issues in this field of study will offer students broadly appealing materials for developing their skills of writing, rhetoric, research, and oral communication.

Cecelia Klingele

Fall 2018

Community partners: Street Law Clinic, Goodman Library, Centro Hispano, Catholic Multicultural Center

This course will teach law students how to effectively translate complex legal information for lay audiences. It will engage students who have an interest in community legal affairs, by connecting them to identified groups within the community that have a need and desire for basic education on specific legal topics. By asking students to connect with community groups and develop a simple presentation or series of presentations responsive to the identified area of educational need, the course will help law students develop a deeper personal understanding of community-relevant legal topics, and the learn to more effectively communicate with non-expert audiences.

Jill Jacklitz, Law School

Fall 2017

Community Partners: Wingra Family Medical Center

This course will build on an existing program coordinated by the Center for Patient Partnerships, which will expand the current Community Resource Navigator Program (CRNP) volunteer program for undergraduate students to include this community-based learning course to provide a richer learning experience for students and an opportunity for them to earn credit. The program engages undergraduate students interested in becoming future healthcare professionals in direct work with patients in order to help them develop a better understanding of how social determinants of health affect peoples’ lives. The class will work with Wingra Family Medical Center and two additional clinics for pilot programs in Summer 2017 and 2018.  The students will work directly with patients to screen them for thirteen identified categories of social determinants of health, then partner with patients to identify the most pressing needs, assist them in connecting to needed resources, and follow up to be sure that the connection was made and evaluate the quality of the resources provided.

Gail Simpson; Heather Owens, Art Department

Fall 2018

Community Partners: tbd

This course will focus on current and former students of UW–Madison’s Creative Arts & Design Learning Community, aka “The Studio”, the Multicultural Learning Community, and the Entrepreneurial Residential Learning Community.  All three learning communities collaborate on programming throughout the year. Each year over 60 first-year students, including 15 First Wave Scholars through the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives (OMAI), apply to live in the Studio. This course gives all three an opportunity to come together and to work with at least one local community organization—especially with one that serves under-represented populations—from an interdisciplinary artistic perspective. Many of these students are interested in activism and using art as a tool to bring awareness of social justice issues and to encourage positive change and advocacy from the general population.

Revel Sims, Urban and Regional Planning

Fall 2018

Community Partners: Centro Hispano

This course will begin with an overview of different forms of academic and community collaboration around research broadly covered under the various terms with the concept of “community-based participatory action research” (CBPAR). From there, students will engage with quantitative material produced from a current CBR course, process that material together and determine how to (1) translate the material into popular education pieces, (2) engage with el Centro Hispano members about key findings and concepts, and (3) interview el Centro Hispano members and community members identified through the housing survey conducted in the CBR course to reveal important housing issues within the neighborhood immediately surrounding el Centro Hispano and Latinos/as throughout Dane County.

Claudia Calderon, Horticulture

Spring 2018, Summer 2018

Community Partners: Centro Hispano

The course involves two components that integrate a pedagogical theme of learning-by-doing that will combine local and international learning experiences focused on sustainability, agriculture, conservation, health, and nutrition. 
In the first component, students will learn cultural competency, key concepts of sustainable food systems, and information on Guatemala’s social, economic and environmental issues related to food systems. We will work with UW-Madison’s Earth Partnership to train students under their participatory model of community engagement that integrates environmental education lessons. We will use Earth Partnership’s experience to develop a community-based learning project in the vegetable garden of Centro Hispano.

The second component of the course will be a follow up course that will also integrate a community-based project. This international experience would take place in Guatemala during the first two weeks of the Summer Session 2018. Students will meet with farmers, activists, NGOs, policy-makers, and local specialists working to transform food systems to provide a background on specific topics related to sustainable food systems. For the community-based learning in Guatemala, UW students will support the work of a local partner in Guatemala (Universidad Rafael Landivar) with urban gardens.

Anna Rue, Marcus Cederström, and Nathan Gibson; Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures

Summer 2018

Community Partners: Juhannus Mid-Summer Festival in Toivola, Michigan

This course focuses on public humanities programming designed to extend and diversify the longstanding transnational networks that have connected Nordic Americans (i.e., people from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, as well as people belonging to the region’s indigenous Sámi culture) to communities and artists in the Nordic region. A folklore field school, part of the Sustaining Scandinavian Folk Arts in the Upper Midwest initiative for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students, will focus primarily on Finnish-American folk arts in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, with overlap into northern Wisconsin and attention to people of Sámi, Swedish-speaking Finnish, Swedish, and Scandinavian-“other” heritage. The field school will center around the Juhannus Mid-Summer Festival in Toivola, Michigan, where students will conduct interviews with local folk artists, record the festival and folklife of the community, and create rich folklore documentation for archival preservation.

Faisal Abdu’Allah, Associate Professor, Art

Fall 2016

Community Partners: Madison Public Library, the Neighborhood Intervention Program, and theDane County Juvenile Court Program

FausHaus II participants- teens and UW-Madison student peer learners- will collaboratively design, produce and install a public art exhibition that engages racial disparities. It builds upon the 2013 UW-Madison art and laboratory exhibition FauHaus: Bodies, Minds, Senses and the Arts and Making Justice, a Madison Public Library/Wisconsin Idea makerspace program for court-involved teens. The course will help narrow the educational opportunity gap for court-involved teens and campus-bound students, fostering community engagement, self-expression and skill development. Fauhaus II will create a racially diverse learning cohort from within and beyond the academy, prioritizing relationship-building and peer-supported learning. Self-expression will include the creation of visual media-photographs, prints, drawings and paintings-documenting individual and collective identities and disparities. Skill development will emphasize cultural and creative competencies, including the ability to recognize biases and barriers; to analyze visual representations of culture; and to effectively use art to promote social justice.

Andrea Hicks, Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Fall 2016

Community Partners: Bayview Foundation, Friends of Lake Wingra, additional

This course explores the sustainability impacts (environmental, economic, and social) of human actions. It begins with a review of environmental history and disasters, next explores environmental legislation and finally focuses on ways to build a better, more sustainable future. Working in small groups, students will engage with community partners to assess from a sustainability perspective two or more products or processes under consideration by those community organizations. The students will provide both an environmental and economic assessment of the options, which then may be utilized by the community partners.

Courtney Saxler, MPH, Wisconsin Area Health Education Center, School of Medicine and Public Health and Paula Tran Inzeo, MPH, UW Extension, Cooperative Extension

Fall 2016

Community Partners: Several Dane county community-based organizations as well as UW Extension sites in Dane, Green Lake and Rock counties

Since 2002, the Wisconsin Area Health Education Center (AHEC) has worked across the state to match UW-Madison students with full-time summer internships to improve health in local communities through its Community Health Internship Program (CHIP). Projects have been proposed by sponsoring agencies or health departments to address local health priorities and provide direct benefit to the community. These projects have varied widely, with initiatives across a spectrum of issues including nutrition, education, oral health, beach and well testing, mental health and more. Following this successful model of AHEC summer internships, INTER-ILS 260 will provide academic credit bearing internships for 5-10 UW-Madison students during the Fall 2016 semester. As part of the standard INTER-ILS 260 course work, interns will analyze their professional training experiences in the workplace in the context of the goals of a liberal arts and sciences university education, by practicing critical reading, writing and observation skills. Additionally, a section within INTER-ILS will be created for students participating in CHIP and will involve structured opportunities for reflection as well as specific readings, writing assignments, discussions and presentations. AHEC will also develop and implement trainings and a toolkit for host site mentors to strengthen their skills in managing projects and mentoring students.

Lew Patty Loew, Professor, Life Sciences Communication

Fall 2016

Community Partners: United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 538 and Wisconsin Public Television

This course will teach students how to produce effective videos by working with displaced union workers affected by plant closings at Oscar Mayer in Madison and Tyson Foods in Jefferson. Inspired by the “Humans of New York” initiative, a successful project that profiled ordinary New York City residents facing extraordinary challenges, this course will profile plant workers and their families in a way that elevates worker self-esteem, brings public attention to their stories and motivates civic and business leaders to make decisions that improves the lives of these workers (e.g., hiring initiatives, social services and other opportunities, etc). Students will research, write, compose music for and edit a short-length video project, and in the process, learn about lighting, scripting and videography techniques.

Julia Garrett, Graduate Instructor, English

Spring 2017

This section of English 100, Introduction to College Composition, will utilize CBL pedagogy to provide students with opportunities to compose in authentic environments and to be exposed to the many different purposes that writing serves in communities. Students will apply the rhetorical skills they learn in the course to produce genre-specific written and multi-modal texts to meet real world communication needs of the community organizations they partner with.

Colin Gillis, Associate Lecturer, English

Spring 2015

Community Partner: My VA, My Story

This new course introduced students to the basic skills of literary analysis by examining literature as both a source of knowledge about medicine and catalyst for reflection about its organizing concepts and practices. Students analyzed literary works that examine the cultural and political dimensions of illness and health and, in the process interrogated important topics in medicine, like wellness, pathology, disability, life and death. Finally, students also considered whether and how literature can serve as social and psychological resource for patients and healthcare practitioners.

Ger Xiong, Associate Lecturer, Asian American Studies Program

Spring 2015

Community Partners: Freedom Inc.; Schools of Hope-Urban League of Greater Madison; Bay View Community Center; Kajsiab House-a program of Journey Mental Health Center, Inc.; Kennedy Heights Community Center; Hmong Language and Culture Summer Enrichment Program; and Victory Hmong Alliance Church

This course explored the cultural, educational, health and socioeconomic experiences of contemporary Hmong Americans. By utilizing community-based learning pedagogy students were provided with opportunities for learning and working with community organizations in ways that connected their research and literature in Hmong American Studies to community settings, enhancing their understanding of how Hmong American communities rely on service organizations and social institutions for mobility.

Dr. Maria Moreno, Earth Partnership Multicultural Outreach Specialist, Arboretum / Professor Sam Dennis, Landscape Architecture

Spring and Summer 2015

Community Partners: Fundación Nicaraguense Para El Desarrollo Sostenible, FUNDENIC, Dr. Jaime Incer Barquero, Reserva Natura, Gustavo Martinez, Coordinator; Fundación para el Desarrollo, FUPADE, Juan Francisco Rodriguez, General Director, Victor Cedeño Cuevas, Environmental Consultant; Jardín Botánico Ambiental (JBA) National Autonomous University Of Nicaragua (UNAN) – LEON Lic. Dania Paguaga Rivera, Director; Arboretum Nacional Juan Batista Salas, Managua, Ing. Roberto Dominguez, Director; Ministerio de Economía Familiar, Comunitaria, Cooperativa y Asociativa: Ing. Jose Antonio Cruz Olivera, General Director; Erenda Lopez, Coordinator; Colaboración Ambiental Granada: Ministerio de Educación (MINED) Granada, 5 schools: Escuelas Naciones Unidas, Sara Mora, Carlos A. Bravo, Dezandberg, Elsa Head; Municipal Botanic Garden and Environmental Division; Colaboración Ambiental Pio XII: Comité de Lideres, Parents, Ministerio de Educación (MINED), Escuela Pio XII

This two-part 3-credit course was taught as Landscape Architecture 375 (a 1-credit orientation in Spring 2015, followed by a 2-credit experiential summer experience in Granada, Nicaragua). During the Spring 2015 orientation students learned about the education system in Nicaragua; were intoduced to environmental education concepts as well as the Earth Partnership’s teaching and learning philosphy; and received cultural competency training. During the three week summer class students participated in and co-taught a 40-hour EPS Institute with five local school teams and assisted teachers with the implementation of environmental curriculum at their schools .

Alaura Seidl, Lecturer, Art

Fall 2015, Spring 2016

Community Partners: Briarpatch; Freedom, Inc; Alianza Latina; Outreach; Street Pulse; GSAFE; The Bubbler @ Central Library; and Dane Arts Mural Arts (DAMA)

The purpose of this course is to engage homeless or runaway youth in the art-making process to 1) develop their voice by cultivating creative expression, 2) share their stories among their peers and 3) bring the narrative of an historically underrepresented group to public space through portraits, zines, murals, and other media for the purposes of extending educational and health resources to more youth, shifting collective perceptions of LGBTQIA+ issues, and advocating for the needs of these youth. Meanwhile, an interdisciplinary crew of UW-Madison students will discuss and interrogate historical, structural, and political contexts that perpetuate social inequity while developing technical skills to execute community art projects for and alongside queer youth of color. Ultimately, the course will seek to develop skilled artists as agents of change in the UW community and community at large.

Steve Quintana, Professor, Counseling Psychology

Spring 2014

Community Partner: Catholic Multicultural Center

This new service learning course provided training for students who aspire to one of the social service professions working with Latin@ Spanish-speaking populations. By combining community service and learning, this course provides the opportunity for students to reflect on and build their cultural and linguistic competence working with Latin@s. Students bridge their own experiences in the community by integrating what they learn in the classroom with the community service they provide. The course provides important frameworks for working with Latin@s, including cultural, spiritual, linguistic and historical features relevant to this population. Importantly, instruction is in Spanish and the focus on students who are bi- or multi-lingual, to give them further opportunity to build on their interpersonal communication skills in Spanish and enhance their fluency in professional and academic Spanish during class.

Bianca J. Baldridge, Assistant Professor, Educational Policy Studies

Spring 2014

Community Partners: Lussier Community Center, Scholars Academy (Urban League of Greater Madison), Simpson Street Free Press and Goodman Community Center

After school community-based spaces are often regarded as positive and affirming spaces for youth. In policy circles, they are usually regarded as valuable to youth and communities with little exploration into their diversity, philosophy, framing of youth, or pedagogical practices. The purpose of this new service learning course is to provide students with the opportunity to engage with and discuss historical, ideological, and contemporary issues within community-based youth programs in the Madison context. Students will also examine the social and political context of after school programs to better understand the ways in which they have the potential to meet important needs of youth and communities.

Mariana Pacheco, Associate Professor, Department of Curriculum & Instruction

Spring 2014

Community Partner: Simpson Street Free Press

This new service-learning course is designed to facilitate students’ understanding of sociocultural learning theories; better articulate a situated view of the fundamental relationship between language, culture, and learning; and reflect on the relationship between the sociocultural organization of literacy practices and learning opportunities for middle and high school youth.

Tess Arenas, Faculty Associate, Department of Chican@ /Latin@ Studies

Spring 2014

Community Partners: Wisconsin Historical Society, Latina Task Force and Chicanas Por Mi Raza

CLS 510 is the Chican@ Latin@ Senior Capstone course. Students learn to think critically using post-modern and post-colonial theories to explore culturally bound or culturally influenced norms, traditions and behaviors outside the mainstream Chican@ Latin@ culture, eg. Latinas in the military, women’s activism, GBLTQ Latin@s, elderly males and machismo.