Course Description
This course will focus on connecting students to conversations with local speakers, businesses, and community-based organizations that are conducting similar action-research projects, in order to examine how they disseminate, persuade, and advocate. Students will meet in cohorts to examine the local factors enabling or barring change in their field. Course texts revolve around histories of generational shifts, city planning, migration, and development. Students apply theories of change to their individual projects as well as to the design of a group project where they are tasked with arranging appropriate guest lectures from their local communities. (3 credits)
Prerequisites
- Enrollment in Charter Oak’s partnership program with College Unbound.
- ENG 101: English Composition 1
- ENG 102: English Composition 2
Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs)
Students who successfully complete this course will be able to:
- Identify phases of place-based research.
- Evaluate methods, forms and approaches found in the various dissemination exemplars.
- Apply the various concepts of community to community organizing.
- Analyze the different types of organizing goals, roles and organizing strategies.
- Recognize the value, power and resource differences that impede community organizing and development.
- Use social histories, oral testimony and community dialogues to discuss experiences of identity, diversity, migration, pluralism and assimilation with neighborhood residents, institutions and businesses.
- Apply theories of archival practice to documenting research materials and interviews.
- Evaluate the ways in which community elders impart or withhold knowledge and experiences and the consequences of these decisions.
- Develop a public speaker series on city-wide current events.
- Apply the skills of growth communication, co-leadership, active listening, sharing and responding and reflection.
Course Activities and Grading
| Assignments | Weight |
|---|---|
Readings, Postings and Class Participation | 10% |
Field Research Exercise | 30% |
Public Speaker Event | 30% |
Civic Vision | 30% |
Total | 100% |
Required Textbooks
Available through Charter Oak's online bookstore
- Bobo, Kim, Jackie Kendall and Steve Max. 2010. Organizing for Social Change: Midwest Academy Manual for Activists, 4th ed. Santa Ana, CA: Forum Press. ISBN-13: 978-0-9842752-1-2
Required Textbooks
(Not available through the Bookstore)
- Place Matters: Metropolitics for the Twenty-first Century.Peter Dreier, John Mollenkopf and Todd Swanstrom (University Press of Kansas), 2001
- Smart Growth, Better Neighborhoods: Communities Leading the Way (National Neighborhood Coalition), 2000
Additional Resources
- Chris Valley. 2008. Alinsky at 100. Journal of Community Practice vol:16 iss: 4 pg: 527 -532. http://www.informaworld.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/smpp/content~content=a906666675~db=all
- Mike Miller. 2010. Alinsky for the Left: The Politics of Community Organizing. Dissent. http://ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=47660309&site=ehost-live
- Ellen Ryan. 2010. Whatever Happened to Community Organizing? COMM-ORG Papers. http://comm-org.wisc.edu/papers2010/ryan.htm
- Gary Delgado. 2009. Reflections on Movement Building and Community Organizing. Social Policy Summer2009, Vol. 39 Issue 2, p6-14. http://ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=44680031&site=ehost-live
- Randy Stoecker. 2010. Has the Fight Gone out of Organizing? Shelterforce, in press. http://comm-org.wisc.edu/drafts/shelterforce.doc .
- Ray Suarez, The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration, 1966-1999, Ch. 1 "What We Lost" (Free Press, 1990).
Course Schedule
| Week | SLOs | Readings and Exercises | Assignments |
|---|---|---|---|
1 | 1,3 | The Fundamentals of Direct Action Organizing
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2 | 2,3 | Choosing An Issue and Developing Strategies For Action Based Research
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3 | 6 | Introducing Your Project; Why People Organize
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4 | 6,7 | Mobilizing Analysis: Strategy, Deliberation, and Decision Making
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5 | 8,10 | Communities in Action: Organizations
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6 | 8,9,10 | Becoming a Good Organizer
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7 | 9 | Public Speaker’s Event
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8 | 10 | Public Exhibition
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COSC Accessibility Statement
Charter Oak State College encourages students with disabilities, including non-visible disabilities such as chronic diseases, learning disabilities, head injury, attention deficit/hyperactive disorder, or psychiatric disabilities, to discuss appropriate accommodations with the Office of Accessibility Services at OAS@charteroak.edu.
COSC Policies, Course Policies, Academic Support Services and Resources
Students are responsible for knowing all Charter Oak State College (COSC) institutional policies, course-specific policies, procedures, and available academic support services and resources. Please see COSC Policies for COSC institutional policies, and see also specific policies related to this course. See COSC Resources for information regarding available academic support services and resources.