Writing intensive multidisciplinary approach to addressing the common question, "How can one person make a difference?" Students read a common book/work collaboratively to produce a final project. Active learning strategies to develop students' skills in critical reading, thinking, and writing.

This course is an invitation to meet and engage with the field of Youth Studies. This is an introductory course to a subject you already know about ? you?ve lived its content; thought about it; you may even written poems, made a video or posted a meme about this life-moment. Since you know this so well, why take a university course on it? You will leave this course better able to notice the young people around you; wonder about them and their lives; name, describe and analyze what you see and hear and read about youth. This course is about all young people. This means that we are attentive to including material about youth from diverse backgrounds, many ethnic/racial, social class, linguistic, and geographic locations or those who have a variety of physical and mental capacities, those who are ?normal? and ?typical? and those who are ?not?. Together, we will examine myths and stereotypes about youth, where they come from, and how to deconstruct them using a variety of lenses-- social, popular and news media, young adult novels, academic articles, biographies, and more. We will do this through engaging class discussions and activities. You will learn how to use critical ethnography ?in the field? where you will observe and write about youth in a variety of settings including malls, sporting events, busses, coffee shops, and music venues. We believe that an introductory college course is a space and time to reflect, analyze, and learn about what matters to you, about who you are and about the work others have done and what you want to do. In these ways, this course introduces ways of being an engaged and thoughtful student, citizen and professional, all of which require critical thinking skills and an ability to work across difference and diversity. In this course, students will develop skills in assessment, reflection/reflexivity, deconstruction, empathy and judgement; all precursors for professional decision-making in careers like youth work, policy, public health, education, communications, and other fields. We hope this course may lead to reflecting on your occupational future and vocational call.

This course is designed as an introduction to multicultural families using an ecological lens. The institution of the family is recognized globally as a basic unit of a society that produces, develops, socializes, and launches the next generation of its citizenry. This course will focus on families in contemporary America, a society that has grown increasingly diverse, and faces many complex challenges in today?s global environment. Using a human ecological lens allows us to examine families in their nested and interdependent environments--how individuals shape and are shaped by families, their human built environments, their socio-cultural environments, and their natural-physical environments. This is a service learning class.

This course is designed to introduce you to the study of society and what sociologists call the "sociological imagination:" a way of viewing the events, relationships and social phenomena that shape our individual lives and much of our collective experience. Through the course we will examine some of the central concepts and problems that have preoccupied both classical and contemporary sociologists and gain a sense of how the sociological imagination can illuminate the social forces that have a concrete impact on our everyday lives. Throughout the course you will be asked to consider the ways in which society affects your life, and how you, in turn, affect society. prereq: Soc Majors/Minors must register A-F

Introductory statistics. Emphasizes understanding/applying statistical concepts/procedures. Visual/quantitative methods for presenting/analyzing data, common descriptive indices for univariate/bivariate data. Inferential techniques.

Academics and researchers have long used data & visualization to support and illuminate particular narratives in their scholarship. Today, data visualizations are found not only in the pages of academic journals; many non-academics, including journalists and activists, use increasingly complex data visualizations and statistical summaries to convey salient information and storylines. This course will help students build on their statistical thinking and understanding learned in high school to think critically about the use of summaries and visualization and their role in the data narrative. It will also cover the use of computational tools and methods for creating data summaries and visualization that facilitate seeing patterns and relationships in data, and producing better narrative through communicating with data. Students will learn course material through in-class activities and projects conducted in cooperative learning groups and through assignments requiring the application of concepts and technology presented in class to additional real-world examples of data visualization.

Graphical/numerical presentations of data. Judging the usefulness/reliability of results/inferences from surveys and other studies to interesting populations. Coping with randomness/variation in an uncertain world. prereq: Mathematics requirement for admission to University

The course introduces students to applied psychology as a discipline and reviews fundamental principles of psychology through the lenses of applied and professional areas that are the foci of CEHD majors. Specifically, through the lenses of education, we review principles of learning, memory, development, intelligence, and interventions; through the lenses of health and wellness, we review personality, biological, social, and cognitive bases of normal and abnormal behavior, as well as treatments; and, through the lenses of business and organizations, we review principles of motivation, sensation perception, and social behavior. Thus, these psychological principles are considered theoretically, empirically, and through examples for application, with lab discussions and projects emphasizing education, business, health and wellness. The course serves as a foundation for future coursework in education, health sciences, and psychology, and is consistent with the APA’s public education effort to demonstrate how the science and application of psychology benefits society and improves lives.

Introduction to geographical understandings of globalization and of connections/differences between places.

Scientific study of human behavior. Problems, methods, findings of modern psychology.

Introduction to social and cultural anthropology. Comparative study of societies and cultures around the world. Topics include adaptive strategies; economic processes; kinship, marriage, and gender; social stratification; politics and conflicts; religion and ritual; personality and culture.

Introduction to social/cultural anthropology. Comparative study of societies/cultures around world. Adaptive strategies. Economic processes. Kinship, marriage, gender. Social stratification. Politics/conflicts. Religion/ritual. Personality/Culture. prereq: Honors

This course prepares students to present information and adjust their messages based on audience need in a variety of future work contexts. Students interested in majoring in Family Social Science, Education, Youth Studies, and Kinesiology will take this course in order to develop the disciplinary practices used in counseling, community-based organizations, education, and health sciences to convey important, and often sensitive, material to specific audiences.

Public communication processes, elements, and ethics. Criticism of and response to public discourse. Practice in individual speaking designed to encourage civic participation.

This course prepares students to present information and hone their messages based on audience need in a variety of business, leadership, and workplace contexts. Students interested in majoring in Business and Marketing Education (BME), Human Resource Development (HRD), and other majors can take this course in order to develop the disciplinary practices used in training and development, as well as business and industry to convey vital and timely messages.

Designed for those CEHD learners who seek to fulfill the upper level writing intensive requirement in a way that is relevant to their major and field of study, this course will support you as you manage a larger writing project. Learners in this course will form a community of writers, as each grapples with the challenges of a major project focusing on a meaningful problem or issue in your field of study. Some of the most important and most challenging work you face as you near graduation in your major is the work of bringing your academic training to bear on current issues in your field of study. By focusing on project-based writing, this course supports undergraduate learners in the endeavor to delve into and contribute to the work being done in your field to address a particular problem. You will propose a project, identify an audience, tailor your work to address your audience?s needs, gather relevant information through primary and secondary research, and create a product that engages others and furthers the real-world work of solving problems. Collaborative activities and assignments will support you through the process. The course structure is flexible and designed to be responsive to individual needs and a variety of disciplinary contexts, so that students can receive feedback and guidance during different stages of capstone or thesis writing, or community engagement projects. Thus, you can anticipate that the majority of the work will focus on a project that you will propose based on your interests, needs, or connections to your writing work in your major. Course goals are to develop a writing process, understand the habits of writings, work through a larger research project, develop skill in the APA format, learn to use the University libraries, consider audience needs. In class work include: peer review, active learning activities designed around writing skill development, discussion, lecture, and presentation. Learners are expected to actively engage in the course material, participate in class and give and receive feedback about writing. prereq: 60+ undergraduate credits, declared major, or instr consent

Explore professional communication. Research/analysis writing. Memos, reports, proposals, human resource-related documentation, letters or announcements, presentations. prereq: 60+ undergraduate credits, declared major

This is a course for students ready to face more challenging assignments and deepen their comfort and skill with writing. The instructor helps the student develop more sophisticated research strategies and experiment with more creative stylistic choices. Assignments might include autobiographies, critical comparisons, reviews of articles or books, cultural analyses, persuasive essays, and annotated bibliographies. Students in this course learn to 1) generate topics and develop essays with greater independence than they exercised in freshman composition, 2) write for multiple audiences?academic and non-academic?making appropriate decisions about content, rhetoric, structure, vocabulary, style, and format, 3) write creative non-fiction and other genres incorporating complex description and analysis, 4) analyze the conventions and styles of writing in their major field, and 5) experiment with new and more sophisticated writing strategies and styles.

This course introduces students to technical and professional writing through various readings and assignments in which students analyze and create texts that work to communicate complex information, solve problems, and complete tasks. Students gain knowledge of workplace genres as well as to develop skills in composing such genres. This course allows students to practice rhetorically analyzing writing situations and composing genres such as memos, proposals, instructions, research reports, and presentations. Students work in teams to develop collaborative content and to compose in a variety of modes including text, graphics, video, audio, and digital. Students also conduct both primary and secondary research and practice usability testing. The course emphasizes creating documents that are goal-driven and appropriate for a specific context and audience.

This course explores issues faced by youth, especially those who live in or are characterized by our understanding of urban areas. We explore by asking questions like: ?Which youth are labeled as 'urban' and by whom?? ?What has contributed to notions of ?urban? and ?suburban?"? "What are the associated myths and stereotypes?? and ?How are urban communities policed and what are the consequences of this policing?? We will critically examine what the term ?urban youth? means, how it has evolved over time and place, its relationship to power and privilege, and its use as a ?code word? with implicit associations of race, poverty, and violence. Using a critical Youth Studies framework, which engages with the role of historical, social, cultural, geographical, and political contexts, we seek to understand how each of these axes of power-relations influence the opportunities and struggles of young people, their interaction with institutions and the construction of their identities in particular places. This class is a part of the Community Engaged Learning (CEL) program. Students will combine direct work with youth in the community with classroom learning. The objective is for students to make valuable contributions to communities, gain practical experience and apply the knowledge gained in the classroom to their service learning work. Students will also be able to discuss, reflect and write about their community ?engaged experiences. This class offers a unique opportunity to engage with diverse youth in different settings thus gaining valuable skills that can be useful for future professional practice in many fields including, education, recreation, mental health, and youth work. prereq: YOST 1001 or instr consent

Youth work is often described as 'highly experiential' and transformative. But what does that mean? Youth workers understand, sometimes intuitively, that 'learning by doing' makes sense, but why? Is all experience equally valid, moral, and educative? What makes an experience educative or mis-educative? What is the difference between experiential education and experiential learning? This course will explore a range of definitions given to experiential learning and will lay a sound theoretical foundation for understanding it, particularly in the context of youth work. This class is interactive and uses hands-on and in-the-field learning in its instruction. In any given class, students may hike, rock climb, practice meditation, engage in animal therapy, canoe, visit gardens, outdoor STEM classrooms or simply go on the lawn outside of the classroom in order to engage in youthwork ?icebreakers? and ?games.? The intention in this, is to learn by doing; to learn about by simultaneously learning how-to! Through experience, you will learn about the importance of place and history in experiential education; multiple theories and practices of experiential education, including the Learning Cycle Theory and educative and mis-educative experiences; methods of reflection and assessment, group facilitation, leadership skill development in youth; values curiosity and the outdoors. prereq: YOST 1001 or instr consent

This course exposes students to a depth of perspectives on young people and youth work. Exploring various historic and philosophical origins of ?normal? childhood, we unveil the way our modern understandings of child, youth, and adolescent draw upon a rich history of sexist, colonialist, and racist science. To do so we explore Indigenous, early European, Middle-Class, and W.E.I.R.D. (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) notions of childhood. We explore how these ideas are operationalized into practices on youth/youthwork. We explore how contemporary organizations of American youthwork and youth development, then took up and applied these ideas thus naturalizing modern norms and expectations of child and youth. This course covers the philosophical and historical foundations of youthwork in a critical and interactive way through a review of youth, youthwork, and youth organizations set in the context of the past 500 years. The course is designed to encourage students to examine their familial histories, timelines and geographies and through collaborative and interactive learning, begin to explore how these histories, combined with others, helped to shape the ways that we think about youth and how this thinking collectively shapes youth policy, practice, and the institutions within which we meet and work with young people. All of this with the goal of becoming more effective and thoughtful when working with young people in youthwork settings. Whether you choose to work in youthwork settings or in other human service organization or agency, developing a sense of cultural humility and skills to understand historical data, philosophical frames and current practices will be critical to your success in professional arenas. prereq: YOST 2xxx or instr consent

In this course, we will explore the multitude of theories that have been proposed to describe, understand, and even explain young people in the second decade of life and beyond. Indeed, we will be studying development theories that have been used to explain your own life and experience. This gives us a unique perspective in the class. You have first hand experience that can be used to interrogate the theories and often illustrate both the strengths and weaknesses of each. Over the course of the semester, we describe, discuss, and critique six theories of adolescent and youth development, including: Social Justice Youth Development, Participatory Youth Development, Community Youth Development, Positive Youth Development, Adolescent Development, and Recapitulation. We begin with the most recent theory and then using academic archeology, dig back through time to understand not only the individual theories but also how they connect and join to each other. Along the way, we also discuss the social and cultural events and situations that influenced each theory?s development and often demise. A major goal of this class is to better understand where these theories come from, what they are connected to, and often how they are used to both support and marginalize young people. Class will be interactive, using both small and large group discussion, experiential learning activities, and guest lecturers. The major assignment for the class is a grant writing project, where students will collaborate with a youth-serving organizing to develop a grant proposal that addresses the organization?s needs. This project will be used to deepen understanding of how to apply the theories we learn in class, as well as to develop skills around writing strong grant proposals for youth-serving organizations. prereq: YOST 1001 or 2101, [any Psych or CPsy course], or instr consent

Within the U.S. there is an ongoing conversation about what values, knowledge, skills, and practice are basic to the field of youth work. The occupational title, youth worker, is not widely recognized with a set of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that distinguish it from other occupations that work with young people (teacher, coach, social worker). Often youth worker is taken to signify those who ?work with youth.? In recent years there have been attempts to clarify and specify what a youth worker does, whom a youth worker should be, and how one should be educated for this type of work. These debates now occur within international and national movements to ?professionalize? youth work. In this course, we enter this conversation by considering the multiple ways of becoming, being a youth worker, and doing youth work. Toward the end of the course, we will also explore how context?agency, street, and neighborhood?can have consequences on all three of these. To be knowledgeable participants in these conversations you must know the possible answers to at least four questions. Who are young people? What is youth work? Who are youth workers? Where is the location of the work? For each of these questions, we explore the diverse answers, given by scholars and practitioner, here in the United States and internationally. How one chooses to answer any one of these questions has consequences for the other three. Attention is also given to how you and I choose to answer these questions given our own experience of being a young person and our current interactions with young people. At the end of this course, you will be able to participate at a beginning level in the conversations that are of concern to youth work and enhance your direct work with, on behalf of, and/or for young people. In the process, you will have begun constructing and articulating a personal philosophy of youth work. prereq: One gen psy course, one gen soc course, or instr consent

Program evaluation can enable youth workers to improve the work they do with young people, to financially sustain their work, to communicate with colleagues in a community of practice with the intention of strengthening the youth work field, and to influence youth policy, program design, and practice. Many people who invest time or money in youth programs request program evaluation. As the emphasis on quality continues, youth workers will be expected to support evaluation, at minimum, and may also be asked to manage evaluation projects, either working with an internal or external evaluator, or doing evaluation as part of their job. Youth work positions now typically include these roles, regardless of settings. Evaluation can support ongoing professional development for youth workers. This course emphasizes how evaluation and applied research supports professional development and strengthens overall quality in youth programs. Evaluation and applied research provide frameworks and tools that support youth workers to describe, analyze, synthesize, and better understand how they can create high quality programs and support high quality practice for all young people. Evaluation is considered as both a tool- and a site for- critically examining issues of equity and social justice. The course includes readings and discussion on the social justice implications of evaluation and explores culturally responsive evaluation frameworks. During the feedback process for each stage of evaluation, a social justice lens is used to examine and critique the stage?s process and outcomes. This course offers an introduction to evaluation and applied research for youth workers, through introducing evaluation and applied research concepts, terms, orientations, methods, and tools and their application. During the course, students (individually and in small and large groups) will design, carry-out, and report on an evaluation study. Students will both learn about evaluation and applied research as well as do it! By course conclusion, students will have the knowledge and skills to design and conduct beginning level evaluation and applied research, for their own practice or other youth programs. prereq: 1001 or 2101, or instr consent

Scientific method. Major questions/objectives of family research. Data collection/analysis/reporting. Social context of family research. prereq: STAT 3011 or PSTL 1004 or STAT 1001 or ESPY 3264 or ESPY 1261 or SOC 3811 or SOC 2550 or PSY 3801 or instr consent

This course provides an introduction to the materials and methods of social science research in a comprehensive and critical way. The course begins by introducing social science research, including philosophical and theoretical foundations. The course then covers the primary components of research design, including conceptualization, operationalization and measurement, primary and secondary data collection and sources, sampling, and the logic of comparison(s). prereq: 1001 recommended; soc majors must register A-F

In-depth investigation of one area of youth studies. Teaching procedure/approach determined by specific topic and student needs. Topic announced in advance. prereq: [Two social sci courses, exp working with youth] or instr consent

This course will provide participants with increased knowledge and practical skills to communicate sensitively and effectively with young people and their concerned persons about sexuality. Participants will explore a variety of adolescent sexual issues with a focus on healthy adolescent relationships, sexual development, gender, sexual orientation, and diversity. With this perspective as a base, other topics will include body image, laws regarding teens, sexual health and disease, dating and sexual violence, sexuality and cyberspace, and professional and ethical boundaries in working with youth. We will often analyze all of these issues through the lens of the various community/cultural, scientific and political debates that surround the issue of sexual health education here in the United States and abroad. Pertinent theory, research, strategies, and experience will be reviewed using readings, video, online resources, interactive web sites, and participant interaction in a safe, sensitive, and even fun atmosphere. prereq: YOST 1001 or instr consent

Empowering methods of personal/creative development using experiential learning and theater activities to enhance creativity/imagination. Approaches to working with youth in school and youth agency settings. Experiential learning, improvisational theater theory/practice. prereq: 1001 or 2101

Most young people (12-18 years) in the U.S. spend at least 6 hours per day for at least 6 years in a school building, doing ?school work.? There, they are students, and participate in adult designed classes, in co-curricular activities such as clubs and teams, and other activities, and in youth-formed worlds, such as jocks, nerds, stoners, furries, council kids, hicks, and the like. Professional staff learn to read and understand these youth primarily as students and less so as youth. Typically, educators learn some about adolescent development and psychology, about what is typical and common of young people in middle and high school. They also learn some about youth who are troubled, troubling, and in trouble. By and large, educators are practical folk who study and use ?practical knowledge? so as to better teach and otherwise serve their students. This course intends to enrich the knowledge of school professionals in two ways: One, contribution will be centered focus on youth people and their life-worlds, in school, outside, and between the two, e.g. family, work lives, play lives, spiritual lives, friendship lives, etc. The second is a focus on youthwork as a craft orientation and occupation. In this view, most professional educators can approach some of their work as youthworkers, and they can work with designated youthworkers from the school and from community agencies in the service of young people and the school. The goals are more effective service for young people through deeper understanding of these persons and, reciprocally we believe, less existential burnout by educators, i.e. a loss of personal meaning in their work. This course will include as resources, youth and adult educational professionals from the range of local educational settings, including public, religious and charter schools, and community-based, non-formal and informal, education programs. Field visits are required. prereq: Introductory course in education or instr consent

This interactive course will introduce interested youth workers to media as a tool for working with youth. It will review the theory and contemporary context of youth media practice. It will showcase exemplar youth media organizations from diverse communities and will introduce and provide hands-on practice with various forms of youth media. This class will focus on a theoretical framework of critical media literacy (CML). CML equips young people with opportunities and resources necessary for them to critically analyze, use, and produce various forms of media. Like traditional notions of literacy, critical media literacy depends on two interdependent components: analysis and production. In terms of analysis, media literacy is the ability to sift through and analyze the messages that inform, entertain and sell to youth every day. It is the ability to bring critical thinking skills to bear on all aspects of media? from online news outlets and podcasts to Facebook algorithms and the shrinking ownership of mass media. In terms of production, the course will provide exposure to and an an opportunity to engage technical skills, artistic expression, contribute to public dialogue and to experience how young people are contributing to their worlds through youth media projects like: murals, graffiti, spoken word, music, documentaries, magazines, public service announcements, and digital storytelling. prereq: 1001 or 2101 or instr consent

How does youth work change in contested spaces? Do youth workers require different competencies to work in a ?world that has been made strange through the desolating experience of violence and loss?? This course continually revisits these questions as we read about, research within, and talk to others who have worked in contested spaces. The course ends by describing and developing an understanding of youth work in current and post-violently divided societies internationally, such as Northern Ireland, Palestine, South Africa, and India. Veena Das? work in India around social suffering, will be used to frame the work and understand the overall aims and goals of community based youth work in such places. Indeed, youth work in contested spaces began in these worlds marked by suffering, loss, and a legacy of violence. One purpose of the course is to explore youth work practice in contexts marked by suffering, loss, and violence. During the first two thirds of the course, we begin to understand how contested spaces exist all around us, some that we are well aware of because we also experience and are shaped by them, and others that exist only slightly further away from our own personal experience. To gain a deeper understanding of what it is like to work in contested space, students and faculty will talk with and visit different organizations and people working in different ?contested spaces.? Over two weeks we will talk with community members and young people to gain insight into how contested spaces provides background and context for growing up, what major issues young people face living and growing up in this space, and what work is currently going on to address the contested nature of the community. The course also supports an autobiographical turn, asking students to begin to reflect on, and understand the contested spaces that they too were a part of, either as victim or instigator. We end the course by analyzing the data we have collected on the neighborhood, our own personal experience of contested spaces and searching for themes and touchstones to guide youth work in such spaces. prereq: 1001 or 2101 or instr consent; 3101 recommended

Young people's participation in and understanding of subcultures, life-styles, and event cultures. Place of these in young people's identity, friendship, and life chances. prereq: [1001, one basic course in [ANTH or SOC]] or instr consent

This course is organized as a conversation lab where students ?try on??in class in person, in real time, with other students as conversational partners?specific conversational practices that are rooted in an ethic of relational care and dialogical approaches to youth work. This course is designed to give students concepts and practices for doing youthwork in a wide range of settings with individual youth. The focus will be on cultivating and expanding students? capacities for working with youth from an ethic of relational engagement and cultural responsiveness. This ethic is a relational stance that youth workers take, whether they are mentoring a youth in a Big Brother/Big Sister program, providing medical case management to HIV+ youth, doing programming at a community center, facilitating outdoor activities, leading arts-based youth programs, leading camp activities, or passing out condoms and toothbrushes as a street outreach worker. Emphasis is on taking up a reflexive practice that considers multiple perspectives; that accounts for the influence of prevailing cultural discourses that influence youth, youth workers, and their relationships; and that commits to the generating of multiple possibilities. We will approach youthwork as a political act that requires workers to articulate an ethical stance when engaging with young people. prereq: 1001 or 2101 or instr consent

Young people develop in moments and interactions (Krueger, 1998). Many of their moments occur within families and families come in a wide variety of forms. The American Academy of Family Physicians locates family as, ?a group of individuals with a continuing legal, genetic, and/or emotional relationship. Society relies on the family group to provide for the economic and protective needs of individuals, especially children and the elderly (1984, 2003). The stories, behaviors, dynamics, attitudes, and habits of families shape the identity and experience of young people. To understand and respect young people, and to participate in the creation of environments for healthy youth development, youth workers must learn how to understand and respect the role their families play in their everyday lives. This course introduces students to the social construct of ?family? as it intersects with traditional notions of adolescent development, their own experience, public policy, and youth work practice. Care is taken to honor the rich diversity of family structures found in the United States today, and to notice the impact cultural identity, economic status, education, ethnicity, gender, geography, and other important factors have on the nature of families and the experience of young people inside them. prereq: 1001 or 2101, or instr consent

The purpose of this course is to begin to explore the topic of spirituality and its importance to youthwork practice. Typically, the spiritual experiences of young people have been the province of religious instruction or faith-based youthwork. Yet spiritual thoughts, feelings and experiences beyond top-down isntruction are actual and necessary aspects of healthy youth development. Youth workers need not be employed by or volunteers in a faith-based organization to bring increased knowledge, appreciation, and awareness of spirituality to youthwork in any context. The range and extent of research concerning adolescent spirituality has grown substantially over the past twenty years. This conversation across disciplines in the academy raises important issues for practitioners. How will new research findings confirm or challenge their experience? How will new research impact everyday practice? This course enters the spaces of social, political, cultural, and religious institutions and practices, illuminating issues, topics, problems, and concerns for those who work with youth directly and or on their behalf. We will consider what youthwork practices are most respectful of, and best able to facilitate spiritual development of young people in their everyday lives. Additionally, as an undergraduate writing intensive course, all undergraduate students will be expected to write frequently and use a variety of writing styles: autobiographical, journal/book critique, essay, field mapping/observation notes, and research in APA style. Students will be given feedback on each assignment, and regular class time will be devoted to writing skills and basic grammar. prereq: 1001 or instr consent

This international immersion course explores the history, struggles, accomplishments, and experiences of Croatian young people who have engaged in social change efforts. Our focus will be on young people's involvement in a diverse range of social change movements and how these emerged, how they worked, and what caused them to decline.

This introduces students to the practice of youthwork and supports their professional development as a youth worker. The goal is to explore how we can become reflexive and critical practitioners. This is the required course for the Youth Studies major but is also open to students from other majors who want to explore the field of youthwork. Students can opt to pursue placement at a site already approved by the department or they can negotiate with the instructor to pursue an independent site. Using the University policy on undergraduate workload, the course hours are divided between seminar and in-site placement hours (requirements will not go beyond that of a typical 4 credit course). The course requires students to participate in BOTH a weekly seminar and a supervised youthwork internship. The focus in the seminar is on integrating knowledge and youthwork skills for entry-level professional work with young people including topics such as professional ethics, identities and current issues in youthwork practice. The focus of the supervised fieldwork is on the experience of doing youthwork with real youth contextually and professionally teaches us about affecting change in the lives of young people. The Youth Studies program takes an interdisciplinary approach to youth work and youth development. Students will integrate different ways of understanding youth into their direct practice. The program also focuses on human rights and social justice. This means accounting for and responding to the many ways discursive and institutional power operates to silence young people. This includes the ways in which power structures what opportunities are available to young people of different genders, sexual orientation, ethnicities, race, classes, geographical locations, etc. Our approach to understanding and responding to these issues is to attend to young people?s everyday lives and the idea of ?youth-in-the-world.? The Youth Studies program expects students to be self-reflexive and engage in an analysis of power and privilege from a micro/personal perspective and a macro/ policy perspective. Students will begin to craft responses to lessening these structures on the young people?s everyday lived experiences. prereq: Declaration of youth studies major, or instr consent

This course starts with the idea that research should be conducted inside and outside the walls of academia. At a basic level, youth workers conduct research everyday ? even if they don?t consider it ?formal? research. We all have questions about what is going on in the everyday lives of young people ? and we all seek deeper understanding. Given that, there may be an ethical requirement to carefully consider the data used to understand young people. Historically and currently, research with young people is being ?done to? and ?not with? young people. And often, that data is used to both shape our perceptions of what it is to be a young person and the policies that affect their daily lives. For example, consider what data on emotional regulation is commonly used and how that has shaped suspension policies in schools? Youth workers are often advocates for youth, but they may not consider research about young people as places for action and resistance. Students will begin class by exploring the purpose, definitions and methods of research most commonly used in youth work, with an emphasis on qualitative research as a process highly relevant to daily practice. Students will review a variety of perspectives on research that encourage a more critical eye on subjectivity, the social/political contexts around data and the acknowledgement from indigenous research methods that a researcher must articulate their relationship to the research question. This course will then move students through a full research experience from a problem to questions, from purpose to methods, towards data collection, analysis, writing and presentation, as a beginning researcher. Quite a challenge, so expect it to be imperfect and messy. By the end of the semester, students are not expected to complete a flawless research design and report, but to gain a deeper understanding of the research process, how to conduct and critique the process, and how to engage others to create potential change based on data. In practical terms, most students will work in a small group to determine research questions, develop a process for gathering data about the questions, analyze the data and create a report based on the findings. The process will be supported by readings, activities during class time and through highly focused consultations with research groups with faculty. prereq: YOST B.S. declaration & basic research methods course, or instr consent

Designed for those CEHD learners who seek to fulfill the upper level writing intensive requirement in a way that is relevant to their major and field of study, this course will support you as you manage a larger writing project. Learners in this course will form a community of writers, as each grapples with the challenges of a major project focusing on a meaningful problem or issue in your field of study. Some of the most important and most challenging work you face as you near graduation in your major is the work of bringing your academic training to bear on current issues in your field of study. By focusing on project-based writing, this course supports undergraduate learners in the endeavor to delve into and contribute to the work being done in your field to address a particular problem. You will propose a project, identify an audience, tailor your work to address your audience?s needs, gather relevant information through primary and secondary research, and create a product that engages others and furthers the real-world work of solving problems. Collaborative activities and assignments will support you through the process. The course structure is flexible and designed to be responsive to individual needs and a variety of disciplinary contexts, so that students can receive feedback and guidance during different stages of capstone or thesis writing, or community engagement projects. Thus, you can anticipate that the majority of the work will focus on a project that you will propose based on your interests, needs, or connections to your writing work in your major. Course goals are to develop a writing process, understand the habits of writings, work through a larger research project, develop skill in the APA format, learn to use the University libraries, consider audience needs. In class work include: peer review, active learning activities designed around writing skill development, discussion, lecture, and presentation. Learners are expected to actively engage in the course material, participate in class and give and receive feedback about writing. prereq: 60+ undergraduate credits, declared major, or instr consent

The purpose of this course is to begin to explore the topic of spirituality and its importance to youthwork practice. Typically, the spiritual experiences of young people have been the province of religious instruction or faith-based youthwork. Yet spiritual thoughts, feelings and experiences beyond top-down isntruction are actual and necessary aspects of healthy youth development. Youth workers need not be employed by or volunteers in a faith-based organization to bring increased knowledge, appreciation, and awareness of spirituality to youthwork in any context. The range and extent of research concerning adolescent spirituality has grown substantially over the past twenty years. This conversation across disciplines in the academy raises important issues for practitioners. How will new research findings confirm or challenge their experience? How will new research impact everyday practice? This course enters the spaces of social, political, cultural, and religious institutions and practices, illuminating issues, topics, problems, and concerns for those who work with youth directly and or on their behalf. We will consider what youthwork practices are most respectful of, and best able to facilitate spiritual development of young people in their everyday lives. Additionally, as an undergraduate writing intensive course, all undergraduate students will be expected to write frequently and use a variety of writing styles: autobiographical, journal/book critique, essay, field mapping/observation notes, and research in APA style. Students will be given feedback on each assignment, and regular class time will be devoted to writing skills and basic grammar. prereq: 1001 or instr consent

Explore professional communication. Research/analysis writing. Memos, reports, proposals, human resource-related documentation, letters or announcements, presentations. prereq: 60+ undergraduate credits, declared major

This is a course for students ready to face more challenging assignments and deepen their comfort and skill with writing. The instructor helps the student develop more sophisticated research strategies and experiment with more creative stylistic choices. Assignments might include autobiographies, critical comparisons, reviews of articles or books, cultural analyses, persuasive essays, and annotated bibliographies. Students in this course learn to 1) generate topics and develop essays with greater independence than they exercised in freshman composition, 2) write for multiple audiences?academic and non-academic?making appropriate decisions about content, rhetoric, structure, vocabulary, style, and format, 3) write creative non-fiction and other genres incorporating complex description and analysis, 4) analyze the conventions and styles of writing in their major field, and 5) experiment with new and more sophisticated writing strategies and styles.

This course introduces students to technical and professional writing through various readings and assignments in which students analyze and create texts that work to communicate complex information, solve problems, and complete tasks. Students gain knowledge of workplace genres as well as to develop skills in composing such genres. This course allows students to practice rhetorically analyzing writing situations and composing genres such as memos, proposals, instructions, research reports, and presentations. Students work in teams to develop collaborative content and to compose in a variety of modes including text, graphics, video, audio, and digital. Students also conduct both primary and secondary research and practice usability testing. The course emphasizes creating documents that are goal-driven and appropriate for a specific context and audience.