Social Justice and Public Scholarship Concentration
Cornell University has adopted a new campus-wide concentration in social justice studies and public scholarship, crafted by faculty in the Department of City and Regional Planning. Professors John Forester and Richard Booth, associate professor Kenneth Reardon, and Richard Kiely, faculty director of the Cornell Urban Scholars Program, developed the new course of study.
It is distinguished from other concentrations at Cornell by its focus on policy and its strong component of field-based service learning. The concentration consists of a total of 18 credits (6 courses, 3 core courses, 2 service-learning courses, and a senior policy seminar). Ideally, students enrolling in the social justice and public scholarship concentration will take an introductory course that prepares them for engaging in field-based service learning and explores the structural causes of social problems, a second class examining alternative approaches to poverty elimination, and a final course on participatory action research techniques. Following this initial course sequence, students will complete two in-depth service-learning experiences. They will complete the concentration by participating in a senior seminar in which they will produce written essays and policy papers addressing critical social problems.
The new concentration is open to all undergraduates regardless of their majors. Cornell will be one of the few schools offering an interdisciplinary service-learning minor designed to prepare students to lead major social reform movements aimed at reducing poverty at home and abroad.
