The learning objectives:

1. Become expert on the broad area of poverty: the data, the programs, the politics, and the experiences
2. Understand the relationship between gender, race and poverty.
3. Ability to develop a strategy for change
4. Ability to think creatively and learn collaboratively
5. Enhance communication skills.

Learning Assignments: The members of the class will co-create the learning assignments. It will include participation and a paper/project connected to the real world

We will form small teams to work on a course-project. The goals of the course-project are:

1. To gather information about poverty in our community
2. To understand what it means to live in poverty in our community, and
3. Develop a communication strategy to increase community awareness and understanding about poverty in our community.

This class will produce a handbook and workshop material that can be used to facilitate discussions about poverty in our community. This may include: data, description of various key programs, a list of service providers, a poverty map, and interviews/focus group results. It might also include related areas: poverty and education, poverty and transportation, poverty and childcare, poverty and health, poverty and housing, etc. It might also include workshop resources, including recommended videos, community speakers, case studies, workshop exercises, and books/articles of interest.

On the first night of class, we will generate a list of questions that the public might be interested in, as well as questions we would like to explore. No doubt, we develop more questions than we can answer. We will go through a process of narrowing our focus and then develop a project plan (tasks, due dates, responsibility chart).

Students will receive credit based upon satisfactory and on-time completion of all course requirements and assignments. Plagiarism, failing to complete one or more assignments, completing one or more assignments late (without having made special arrangements in advance of the due date), or missing classes without making prior arrangements to make up the work, will result in denial of credit.

At the end of the quarter, students will prepare three copies of their self-evaluation and evaluation of the faculty using Evergreen’s forms (they are available on the computers in the computing center or you can obtain the software to use at home). These must be completed and ready for signature when we meet. I will prepare an evaluation of each student. Each student will meet with me to discuss performance. Students can choose to share their evaluation of my performance at this meeting or they may turn this evaluation into the program secretary.