This dissertation research examines students’ lived experiences of dance improvisation in a 2014 Hampshire College course titled “Community Crossovers: Dance in the Community” taught by the author. Research methodology is informed by the hermeneutic phenomenology of educational philosopher Max van Manen, dance education research grounded in phenomenological methods by Karen Bond and Susan W. Stinson, among others, and researchers and writers of classroom action research. Sources of qualitative data include students’ reflective writings about their experiences of three selected dance improvisations—Human Puzzle, Mirror, and Approach/Avoid—in both college and community settings. Additional sources contextualizing students’ experiential meanings include course entry questionnaires, videotaped college and community dance sessions, written pedagogical and phenomenological reflections of both the researcher and a teaching assistant, and class discussions. Our Massachusetts community partners were the Treehouse Foundation, Easthampton and the Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy Children’s Action Corps, South Hadley. Student lived experience writings were coded over several cycles to identify categories of meaning in each of the three improvisations at both college and community sites, and these were analyzed for themes across four modes of student participation: self, partner, group and movement (an aesthetic mode). Findings revealed bodily-affective-social-aesthetic meaning making that foregrounds relationality, or connection, through embodied experiences. Students’ descriptions of connection can be understood as qualitatively distinct kinds of felt intersubjectivity: two-person, merged, and other-first. Findings are placed in conversation with literature from dance, community-based education, philosophy, and critical pedagogy. / Dance

Generation Z, also known as the iGeneration, iGenners, GenZ, and Generation Now, consists of those born in the mid-1990s through the late 2010s. Historical events important for this generation have influenced their perception of safety as well as how they interact with others. As compared to previous generations, technological advances (i.e., Smartphones, social media) changed how GenZ communicates, socializes, and receives information. Unique experiences and attributes influenced Generation Z’s empathy because living through these events and seeing their impact changes how they can understand and take the perspective of others. The relation between three factors was examined across University students who are members of Generation Z; intensity of the CBL activity (high versus low), sex, and empathy (empathy assessment index, basic empathy scale, ethnocultural empathy scale). It is hypothesized that freshmen students would exhibit higher gains in empathy due to their developmental period. As hypothesized, there was a consistent main effect for sex in multiple subscales across the Honors Colloquium and Interdisciplinary late-teen sample indicating that females were higher in initial pretest scores and remained higher on post-scores on empathy as compared to males. These findings hold implication for instructors aiming to provide effective CBL experience for their students. Faculty may consider how students may be differentially receptive to CBL experiences on multiple demographic and personality variables, and while this study only examined sex and intensity of experience, it provides a good representation of the diversity of outcomes that can be evidenced.

While attitudes are difficult to assess, a qualitative research study can produce results to give insight into how a student feels a writing center has improved his or her confidence and attitude towards writing. This study reviews the minimal discussion of students‟ attitudes towards writing in past and current writing center research and builds upon the conversation by following three students‟ journeys in the writing center and discussing whether their experiences with the tutors has improved their attitudes about writing.

The St. Paul Redevelopment Project was unique and touted as the first-of-its-kind to feature cooperation from all three levels of government. Several government agencies helped St. Paul accomplish an “impossible dream,” spending an estimated thirty million dollars to rechannel the Clinch River in the 1970s and 1980s. The small town of 1,000 residentsrelocated 100 families from South St. Paul to carry out the project, much to the dismay of many of the residents. A primary factor in enforcing the power of eminent domain in the St. Paul Redevelopment Project was the idea of “progress,” a commonality of many redevelopment projects. The St. Paul Redevelopment Project serves as a small case study of government intervention in the Appalachian region and of resistance. St. Paul as a community and “place” has been shaped by elected officials and government agencies, but ‘place’ also belongs to individuals. The example of redevelopment in St. Paul, Virginia, and the use of eminent domain exposes a complex system of power relations at work in Appalachia, that at least in the case under study, suggests how the response of one family, the Couches, reflected both participation in the dominant system of commodification and a rejection of it.

The academic benefits and enhanced social responsibility that students derive from service-learning (SL), defined as experiential learning that ties community service to academic courses, have been well documented. However, for a college to fully institutionalize SL, a high proportion of faculty needs to include SL in their courses. Based in Kolb's experiential learning theory, the purpose of this study was to enhance planners' understanding of how college faculty's past experiences assigning SL influence their inclination to assign SL in future courses. In this basic qualitative interpretive study, data were collected from 13 individual interviews with faculty who assigned SL at a Southern metropolitan university. Findings were interpreted using Chickering's 7 vectors of student development from the conceptual framework and other relevant perspectives from the literature. One of the major themes from emergent coding of data was that faculty viewed some difficulties as challenges to be overcome rather than as deterrents to using SL. To reduce deterrents, institutions could compensate for extra time required for SL by providing stipends, released time, and support databases; recognizing SL in tenure and promotion; and helping faculty brainstorm how to incorporate SL into courses. To increase incentives to use SL, institutions could provide a full range of training and support for faculty. More courses with SL, besides increasing benefits of SL for all stakeholders, may mean that students form the habit of serving in the community and continue serving and contributing to positive social change, perhaps for a lifetime.

This thesis examines the tenets and approaches of integrative learning for sustainability, and critiques the adequacy and effectiveness of conventional, higher education practices in preparing students for what is an increasingly uncertain future. At the centre of this inquiry is the study of a fourth year, undergraduate field course from the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria that took an integrative, whole-person approach to sustainability in light of integral systems theory. The course provided students with an experiential and integrative learning approach to the study of sustainability that sought to engage the multiple intelligences of students, issuing from their intellectual, physical, social, and spiritual dimensions. To support this process, the course aimed at meeting the needs associated with these facets through diverse learning experiences that included contemplative exercises, the development of a learning community, a critical examination of course readings and experience in service learning activities. The evaluative research of the course’s impacts examined the learning experiences from the students’ perspective to identify which experiences and approaches were most meaningful. The enquiry also investigated which, if any, of these experiences led to enduring personal transformation and/or community action. The methodology undertaken involved a phenomenological examination of two small group interviews with six of the participating students, as well as an analysis of the six students’ written reflection assignments. The results of this research show the effectiveness and impact of some of the distinctive approaches of the course, namely the powerful effects of experiential learning, community based learning and the provision of time and space for personal and group reflection. These activities supported students in broadening and changing their view of themselves, their sense community, as well as provided opportunities for students to engage in sustainable practices. / Graduate

As a student enrolled in the Claremont Colleges, there are a variety of different ways in which I can engage with the greater Inland Empire community. The community-based programs, classes, and projects offered by the Colleges all have specific focuses, whether they be community service, community studies, or language improvement. This Media Studies Senior Thesis focuses on two community programs offered by the Claremont Colleges, the first being the Spanish Practicum program offered at Pitzer College. This half credit course places a group of three students with a “Promotora” (Promoter) or a Mexican immigrant residing in the Ontario community. Once a week, students are expected to travel to their Promotora’s house, speak with her only in Spanish, eat meals with her, and explore her Ontario community. Secondly, I will include a section about Huerta del Valle, a community garden in Ontario, California, which was created by a teacher of the Spanish Practicum program and a Pitzer alumnus. Even though this garden functions completely separately from the Claremont Colleges, Pitzer students have the opportunity to enroll in the Ontario Program and complete a semester studying urban garden, social engagement, and community planning alongside Huerta del Valle volunteers and organizers. This Media Studies project completed in conjunction with the Spanish Practicum Program and the Huerta del Valle program is a photographic essay about my personal experience as a student of the Spanish Practicum program, an article recounting the history of the Spanish Practicum program from the perspective of its creator, and a transcribed interview and series of photographs of the founder of Huerta del Valle as well as a student participant/leader/alumnus of the Pitzer Ontario program. These collections of writing and photographs are presented in the form of a webpage with multiple sections that I have coded as to experiment with visual storytelling, color, and design techniques. Furthermore, through this project I explore the communal significance of personal narratives, and the work they do to construct and contribute to a shared understanding of a program, event, or experience. These personal narratives that I have collected as oral histories will serve to give the community-based programs offered at the Claremont Colleges a human face, illuminating the tendency of dominant histories to discredit their intimate back stories.

No description available.

Subaltern persons continue to be most negatively impacted by the hegemonic practices of institutions. Subaltern populations are the furthest removed from political agency, not only by the insecurities of their lived experiences, but also by academic and agency discourses that recreate the subaltern political citizen-subject in modes representing the “Other” through lenses of elite scholarship and high theory. The subaltern agent is not present in her own political making. The considerations of social justice require both the underpinnings of a global ethics of caring and a commitment to center the subaltern citizen subject’s account of herself as corresponding privileged record. This paper explores the marginalizing outcomes in the historiography of subaltern studies and defends both ethical cosmopolitanism and participatory democracy as modes that better respect diverse worldviews outside of neoliberal constructions. Advocacy on behalf of subaltern groups must include Community-Based Participatory Research and eco-cultural analysis that give priority to positive near stakeholder goals and outcomes for their communities. Subaltern self-representation is the needed checks and balances for 21st century policy making

The traditional way to learn about social sciences in a university setting includes taking courses that teach theoretical frameworks and scientific methodologies that are required for one’s major area of study. The courses that are taught to students are determined by what major they sign up for. After a student has taken all required courses,what skills does the student have to take with him after graduation? Whether participation is pursued solely for academic credit, for career development, or for civic engagement, an experiential experience typically enhances a student’s connection between academic content and “real world” applications. Bridging the gap between “real world” situations and the classroom demonstrates the need for the application of knowledge. This project’s primary purpose was to examine the student’s internship experience and determine whether it helped to enhance his or her ability to achieve the predicted outcomes of the internship program. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies was deemed appropriate for empirical analysis. This evaluation project measured enhancement outcomes of an internship program, which rationalized potential designs for the undergraduate sociology major/minor and the undergraduate criminology minor, offered by a higher educational institution.