Invitation to the 2020-21 Social Action Course Development Program

Posted by Bonner Foundation on October 6, 2020

The Bonner Foundation has been working closely with Scott Myers-Lipton, professor at San Jose State University, to offer a series of training and support resources designed to grow the number of faculty and staff who integrate social action into an academic course or a co-curricular fellowship program.

We want to invite you to apply to join the 2020-21 Social Action Course Development Program.  What distinguishes this approach to teaching social action is that students learn and put into practice the skills of social action by launching a campaign during the semester the course is being taught.

This program will bring together faculty and staff for a structured training and professional learning community led by Scott Myers-Lipton who teaches at San Jose State University.  This course development program will feature monthly Zoom workshops from late October to early May during the 2020-21 school year. We will also use the Bonner Learning Community platform for sharing materials and online discussions and feedback.

Scott will cover the nuts and bolts for launching a social action class (credit-bearing or co-curricular) using the model developed by Scott.  We will use his book — CHANGE! A Student Guide to Social Action — as a primary resource as we focus on such topics as issue development, leadership, recruitment, target analysis and power mapping, strategy and tactics, event planning, media outreach, facilitation, decision making, fundraising, negotiation, and evaluation. You can read more about this model here: www.bonner.org/social-action/.

If you are interested in participating, please respond to these questions in an email to [email protected] and [email protected]:

• • What interests you about participating in this course development program?
  • Have you taught social action before?  If so, please describe.  If not, have you had any experiences that will help you in teaching it?

For those of you who cannot participate but want to learn more, we encourage you to visit the social action resources on the Bonner Resource Wiki and also access the  “How to Teach Social Action” Webinar Series on the Bonner Learning Community platform.