This FOCUS cluster pursues themes associated with Duke's strategic goal of using knowledge in the service of society. In American higher education, public and private institutions are underscoring their commitments to contemporary social issues and to community-engaged opportunities in their curricular and co-curricular offerings. This focus stems from an increased recognition of the important role that our colleges and universities play in helping to solve real-world problems in our local, national and international communities. As the role of higher education experiences increased scrutiny, Duke’s commitment to community engagement has remained strong.
Students enrolling in Knowledge in the Service of Society (KISS) will have real-life experiences through Service-Learning courses that place them in a Durham public school or a community-serving organization where they will learn about, critique, and explore the conceptual underpinnings of the pursuit of social change for the public good.
Susie Post-Rust, Lecturing Fellow of Documentary Studies
Few experiences are more vital than childhood or more reflective than retirement. Using digital photography and a documentary approach, students document one of Durham's public schools or the Croasdaile Village Retirement Community. Students learn to use cameras, and through a semester-long project explore meaningful topics, give voice to subjects, and think about issues that grow out of change. Collectively the students’ body of work portrays the life of the school and community, and in so doing, mirrors course content across the FOCUS cluster. As part of Service-Learning, culmination of the class includes a student exhibit and website launch that takes place publicly at the school; prints and the project website reside at the school. Course includes discussion on ethics in documentary photography, basic camera usage, Photoshop, narrative storytelling, and dissemination. Service-Learning Course (SLCE).
Zoila Airall, Adjunct Associate Professor of Education
This class will consider the complicated multiple dimensions of oppression that privilege some in our society and disadvantage others. Those dimensions include the individual, the institutional, and the social/cultural. There are also unconscious and conscious dimensions that allow us to understand how oppression is intentional and unintentional. The dimensions of attitudes and behaviors are the norms, practices, policies, laws, values, beliefs, and customs that show us how oppression is demonstrated.
We will interview members of a retirement home as the Service-Learning component of the course, using critical race theory to understand how these members have been privileged or disadvantaged in their educational, medical, and housing experiences throughout their lives.
Amy Anderson, Assistant Professor of the Practice of Education
In 1954 the Supreme Court case Brown versus the Board of Education forever changed American schools by ending segregation and creating educational equity. Or did it? Are today's schools any more inclusive or socially just than schools were 50 years ago? Examination of ways schools may or may not perpetuate and reproduce social inequities. Focus on recent efforts to imagine and create socially-just schools. Discussion of our ethical responsibilities as civically engaged citizens to work towards educational equality and provide support of schools that are inclusive, culturally responsive, and democratic. Required service-learning experience working with children in a Durham public school. Service-Learning Course (SLCE).
