PA Institute on Teaching Social Action – Oct 25-26

Posted by Bonner Foundation on June 18, 2024

We would like to invite you to apply to our Pennsylvania Institute on Teaching Social Action at Slippery Rock University on October 25-26, 2024. The PA Institute will run from 8:45 am-6:15 pm on Friday, October 25 and 8:45 am-1pm on Saturday, October 26; food will be covered during the Institute. The Institute will be led by Dr. Scott Myers-Lipton, Director of Teaching Social Action and hosted by Fadoua Loudiy, Associate Professor of Strategic Communication and Media at Slippery Rock University.

Our no cost Institutes train faculty and staff to develop social action syllabi for a course (or workshop series) that engages students in leading “policy change” campaigns. The key component of this experiential learning model of teaching social action is that students, during the semester the class is taught, choose a campaign to work on and attempt to enact a policy change on campus or in the community by making demands of a decision-maker. Students can launch their own campaign or join a community organization’s campaign and create a “student-wing” in collaboration with the community organization. You can see the Spring ’24 student campaigns here (which include links to the related course students were taking that semester).

Here is what Dr. Arun Agrawal, from the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS), says about the Institute on Teaching Social Action:

“I have personally gone through the Institute and found it incredibly helpful in developing a social action course, that I then taught at the University of Michigan the following semester. Teaching social action has been one of the highlights of my career, as it provides students with concrete tools with which to organize social action campaigns and actions for undertaking social action for change. I highly recommend it! It really is a fantastic, generative opportunity.”

We hope you apply to the Pennsylvania Institute on Teaching Social Action! If for some reason the October dates do not work, please consider applying to one of the other upcoming in-person or virtual Institutes. If you have any questions, please contact us. If you have specific questions about the content of the PA Institute, you can contact Scott at smlipton@sjsu.edu or (510) 508-5382.