Grant Resources
2008-2009 Course Enhancement
Grant Recipients

ANTH093: UNITAS
Instructor: Malena Rousseau, Alice Brooke Wilson
UNITAS is a year long experience dedicated to addressing issues of diversity and social justice throughout the campus and local communities surrounding UNC. Experiential learning and practical applications of social justice are key themes of the UNITAS mission and course objectives. Students in this community/course are focusing on issues such as social justice in relation to food and the food economy. Students will be taking a trip to The Stone House in Mebane, NC to further learn about this issue. While at The Stone House students will participate in a 4-hour long “Sustainability from the Inside Out” program, this program addresses sustainable food production methods, the food industry and governmental influences on diet. This trip is just one way in which students are learning practical applications of social justice theories, and are able to apply the classroom to the real world.

ANTH499: Action Research
Instructor: Charles Price
Action Research is an experimental course that teachers the theory, practices, and art of doing action research. By Addressing a research question, issue, or problem students and their partners will learn the fundamentals of doing collaborative, participatory, and qualitatively-oriented research, from formulating the problem to analyzing the data and communicating findings. During the Spring 2009 semester the students are working with a campus-based group, “FLO Food”, on the issue of getting UNC-CH services and students to purchase fair, local and organically produced food. Students will be taking a trip to The Stone House in Mebane NC. There they will participate in an on-site mini-workshop on fair, local and organic food and farming. The workshop will be followed by group discussion of the experience. The discussion will also focus on the student’s experience with FLO Food and what they have learned in class.

ASIA/INTS 455: Arabs in America
Instructor: Sahar Amer
“Arabs in America” will trace the history and development of Arab American communities in the US from the slave trade to the most important immigration waves over the past two centuries. It will explore in particular the cultural, ethnic and religious variety of these communities both at the national (the US at large) and at local (North Carolina and the Triangle area) level. It will examine the multiple ways in which Arab immigrants are both maintaining and reconfiguring their cultural, ethnic and religious identities in a society where they increasingly face prejudice, discrimination and misunderstanding. This course will have a service-learning component as well as an optional alternative Spring Break trip to Dearborn Michigan.

COMM669: The Ethnographic Return;
Instructor: Della Pollock
This course builds on a withstanding partnership with St. Joseph Church in Chapel Hill NC. Developed and offered largely on the demand by students interested in fulfilling what seemed the ethnographic mandate to continue in collaborative return to a community that has not only offered us so much but that emerged as a university “service community”, this coming has developed a deep and ongoing collaboration between the church and UNC. The students in this course will be documenting this collaboration by collecting oral histories, photographs and other ethnographic materials.

ENGL 102: English and Comparative Literature
Instructor: Kimberly Burnett
The purpose of this course is to prepare students for writing in a range of disciplines and professional field of discourse. Over the course of the semester, students will be asked to build on the skills they’ve acquired in previous courses by completing assignments in an applied format. The course will continue to engage concepts of writing within and for a specific community. Funds received will be used to support student projects completed in the class. For example, students who have been asked to prepare a business proposal will have access to funds to get the proposal printed and bound in a professional format. The rationale for using the funds in this manner is to be able to fully operate the class as a “working” environment.

ENGL102: Composition and Rhetoric
Instructor: Katherine Carlson
This course enables students to write about their volunteer experiences in a variety of ways, as well one which draws an instructive analogy between written and photographic composition. The students in this course work primarily with four or five diverse community partners; the assignments surrounding students work with community partners both allow students to reflect publicly on what they are learning, while at the same time hopefully fulfilling community partner needs. Towards the end of the course students will display the knowledge they have acquired over the semester in a cumulative class project.

MUSC281: American Popular Music: Sacred Pop
Instructor: Douglas Shadle
“Sacred Pop” is a four-week summer course in which students will discuss the history and practice of shapenote singing, the oldest surviving popular sacred musical tradition native to the American South. The North Carolina Sacred Harp’s Triangle Chapter offers trainings and workshops surrounding this type of singing and students in the course are expected to fully participate in this groups singing sessions, as well as work with the group to plan other workshops and trainings. While attending these sessions with Sacred Harp students are encouraged to actively reflect on the music and their own personal experiences (both musically and in service).

PSYC465: Poverty and Development
Instructor: Lorraine Taylor
This course focuses on understanding the impact of economic hardship on child development and family functioning. The funding will support a graduate assistant who would be responsible for matching students to the placements, collecting and grading reflection papers, and collecting evaluations from the placement sites.

ROML060: Spanish and Entrepreneurship
Instructor: Della Pollock
The goal of this course is to develop entrepreneurial skills in students and foster a relationship between UNC and the local Latino community. One of the projects that has emerged from this course is Pa’lante Yoga. Pa’lante Yoga is offered to Latina students in grades seven through eleven as a fun, substance free place to learn about taking care of their bodies. It aims to teach girls how to relieve stress through yoga instead of drinking, and also to defend themselves against unwanted sexual advances. The UNC students working with Pa’Lante are provided with real-world experiences with the fundamental concepts of both entrepreneurship and community service-learning, while the young Latina students are taught self-confidence and self-respect.

SOC273: Social and Economic Justice
Instructor: Judith Blau
This course examines the international human rights framework, and works to support the Citizens’ steering Committee for Chapel Hill- Carrboro Human Rights Cities. Human rights law and doctrine insists that all humans are equal, entitled to their dignity, freedoms, and to economic and social security. No country or even community in the world has achieved all this. In the Chapel Hill-Carrboro community Latinos experience egregious violations of their human rights. This course will engage possibilities for both protection and empowerment of those violated. This semester students will work with different community partners as well as the professor to attend public hearings, churches and community group meetings in order to try to right these wrongs. Specific projects students will be working on are: gathering information on public health and financial resources, working on a documentary about these issues, planning a community day for certain neighborhoods and so on.