SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
EDUC 1131 College Adjustment (with Community Service Component)
Maverick Scholar Association (MSA)
MSA & MSA Community Service
The Maverick Scholar Association is a first-semester program for incoming freshman and transfer students. MSA organizes students by academic interest into groups of 25 who enroll in several core classes together including EDUC 1131, the College Adjustment course. Faculty mentors and peer counselors assist MSA students to ensure a successful transition to UTA. Students learn from another student’s perspective (the Peer Counselor) about how to succeed in the university setting. Participants get to know other new students in a small class setting, improve their academic preparation and skills, and are provided access to, and understanding of, resources available on campus.
MSA Community Service is a Spring semester extension of EDUC 1131 in which students will plan, execute, and evaluate a community service project under the guidance of a peer counselor, faculty mentor, and the Center for Community Service Learning. Reflection activities include a reflection journal and a class reflection activity. Students will complete ten hours of community service.
EDUC 1131 College Adjustment (with Community Service Component)
The Student Success Course helps freshman and transfer students make the transition from high school/community college to college. College Adjustment includes the presentation of skills, which are necessary for academic success as well as various social and personal issues relevant to college students. Students will learn about the resources, programs and services available at UTA.
Speakers from community agencies such as Women’s Shelter, Arlington Charities, and Arlington Night Shelter will make presentations to the class. Students will visit various community agencies and will participate in a service learning project. Reflection activities include a reflection journal and a class reflection activity. Students will complete ten hours of community service.
EDUC 1302 College Learning
The College Learning Course is designed to introduce college students to learning strategies and behaviors necessary for academic success. In this course students will be introduced to theoretical models and the application of these models. The theories and strategies presented in this course may be applied to knowledge across academic programs and in personal and career development The course is divided into three major units of study: I. Self-Assessment and Self-Regulation; II. Cognitive Theory and Learning Strategies; III. Behavior Modification. Each EDUC 1302 student is required to maintain a calendar or planner and a portfolio (notebook) for class assignments, course work, lecture notes; course handouts, course packet and written responses. The Written Reponses provide an opportunity for students to think about and react to theories, ideas, strategies, and behaviors. These responses also offer practice in critical thinking and writing.
Additional assignments allow students to apply strategies that are informed by the theoretical models discussed in class. The Self-Change Project stems from behavior modification models and requires students to employ a variety of strategies in order to complete it successfully. Reflection activities include student response (written and oral) to service learning activities in written responses and incorporation of service learning in the self-change project.
EDUC 2101 Explore Teaching, Linda Denson
Students agree to learn about basic teaching concepts and apply them to mentoring students in a school setting. The schools include public, private, parochial and charter and the goal is to show the important of community involvement in schools to insure our country’s freedoms and to support our system of education as a means of protecting our way of life.
READ 4376- Assessment in Literacy
READ 4376 examines a variety of formal and informal assessment tools of reading and language arts learning. Strategies will be taught for helping children with various reading and language arts needs. Student will apply reading and writing assessment and instructional strategies with children. This course involves a two-hour lecture and two-hour application of theory/lecture. The two-hour application of theory/lecture will require students to spend time in a K-12 classroom during normal school hours.
Students have the option of community service, working directly with children and their families as their major project for this course. Reflection activities include keeping a daily summary of tutoring and a reflective log for each day of tutoring.
READ 5350 – LITERACY ASSESSMENT
Assessment and diagnosis, both formal and informal, of reading and language arts learning. READ 5350 is a practical, hands-on, clinical-based course in which students work one-on-one with a child to identify and improve reading strengths and weaknesses.
The Service Learning component will involve students tutoring children in reading. Students will help determine children’s strengths and weaknesses in reading and will develop strategies to improve these areas. Reflection activities include reflection sessions and keeping a reflective log.
HEED 3305-WOMS 3305 – Women’s Health Issues
This course addresses specific issues of importance to women and their health, including growth and development, nutrition, reproductive health, pregnancy, chronic diseases and relationship/family issues. This course offers a service learning option for students to work collaboratively and serve as team consultants to address a particular women’s health problem or need in the community.
HEED4340-Principles of Health Applications
This course is designed to integrate the information base of health studies into action plans for organizations and agencies.
HONORS COLLEGE
HONR 2612 – Honors American Studies Sequence II: Themes in American History and Politics, Dr. Rebecca Deen; Dr. Chris Morris; Dr. Laurin Porter
Honors 2612 is a 6 credit hour course that is a part of the American Studies Sequence in the Honors College. The American Studies Sequence introduces students to the American experience through a multidisciplinary investigation of the concepts, theories, and phenomena of past and present in the United States. Students have the opportunity to take courses in English, History and Political Science that have been specifically designed to encourage integration of material and critical thinking. To facilitate learning, a common theme is integrated into all components of the sequence. This year’s theme 2001-2002) was “The Body in Modern America.” We studied 4 different aspects of the body politics and the politics of the body: identity (based on sex, gender, race, and ethnicity); immigration; family and reproduction; and drugs.
Students enrolled in Honors 2612 had the option of participating in a service learning project, in lieu of a research paper. The project required them to complete 20 hours of on-sight learning, to keep a reflection journal, to meet periodically with the instructors, and to write a paper (usually of 8-10 pages) in which they integrated their experiences, reactions to what they’d learned, and their analysis of the experience through application of course concepts. This project was worth 30% of their final grade.
Honors Service Learning Courses
UTA Honors College students can earn university credit for community service learning. These credits can be used as elective units and can help fulfill graduation requirements. Students may sign-up for 1, 2, or 3 units of HONR credit per semester.
HONR 4144 – 1 unit of credit requires 25 hours of community service.
HONR 4244 – 2 units of credit require 50 hours of community service.
HONR 4344 – 3 units of credit require 75 hours of community service.
All students in Honors Services Learning Opportunities courses are graded on a Pass/Fail basis. In order to receive credit, a student must:
- Attend an Orientation Workshop
- Complete a Reflection Journal
- Complete a Reflection Paper
- Attend a Reflection Workshop
COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS
ANTH 3330 – Cultural Diversity and Identity
This course takes a cross-cultural approach to questions of cultural identity and power, drawing upon ethnographic research, life histories, and the media. We examine ethnic conflict and human rights both in the U.S. and around the world. Topics include general discussions of ethnic identity and cultural diversity, as well as specific case studies of immigration and refugee resettlement, violence and terrorism, and ethnic conflict. Students have the option of community service, working directly with refugees in the metroplex as their major project for this course.
ART 4345 – Advanced Printmaking, Nancy Palmeri
This course, titled Print Blitz, brings together faculty from around the country to interact and collaborate with students in an intensive one week workshop in printmaking. During this time, 10 area high school students will also be invited (juried in by faculty from the Department of Art and Art History) to campus to live and work along side both the UTA students and the faculty from campus and abroad. Each high school junior will be given a student mentor while on campus, who will interact with them both creatively and socially.
When the course is over, the 10 UTA mentors will act as campus satelites, teaching workshops at the each respective high school as well as on campus.
ENGL/WOMS 3370: Women in Literature: 20th C. American Women Writers, Dr. Laurin Porter
This class took as its subject short stories, novels, poetry, and essays written by twentieth century American women. After grounding ourselves in principles of feminist theory and criticism, we examined these texts for what they revealed about the construction of gender in modern and contemporary American society and the ways in which gender, intersecting with race and class, shapes the identity of both women and men. Our five “anchor” texts were novels and novellas by Toni Morrison (African-American), Cynthia Ozick (Jewish), Sandra Cisneros (Mexican-American), Maxine Hong Kingston (Chinese-American) and Joyce Carol Oates (Anglo-American), each exemplifying a different voice of American womanhood.
Students were invited to participate in CSL projects that foregrounded race, class, and gender issues, the primary focus of the course. Several students worked in the Arlington Night Shelter, another worked at a Crisis Pregnancy Center, and still others with a YMCA after-school program. All were required to keep a Reflection Journal, in which they recorded their thoughts and impressions after each of their shifts, as well as to share their experience orally with the class midway through the semester. Their final paper asked them to draw on their personal experiences as recorded in their journals, as well as concepts and information from class readings and discussions, in order to analyze issues of race, class, and gender which they encountered at their CSL sites-for example, the socialization of children and their gendered identities; the ways in which gender affects family dynamics as well as the relationships between the clients and the staff; race, class, and gender as they impacted clients’ responses to them; their own race, class, and gender stereotypes and how they were affirmed or challenged, and so forth.
GERM 3314 – Advanced German Composition, Dr. Lana Rings
In this project-based course you will have the opportunity to practice writing, writing, and more writing in German. You’ll determine topic, audience, and genre based on your own interests. Are you interested in film, music, art, literature, sports, cuisine, textile work, cathedral architecture, intercultural differences? Think of the million and one things that interest you. From them you will choose your topics. Do you want to write a diary for yourself? A short story for others? A letter to your (new) German penpal that you found on the web? A poem you wish to publish on the internet? A description of your Christmas experiences in Germany and the U.S. for your German friends? A discussion of Swiss and American crosscultural differences and similarities with your friend in Switzerland? What written genres interest you most? Essays? Letters? Film reviews? Music reviews? Short stories? Poetry? Recipes? How-to descriptions? Etc.
Optional service component: If you are interested in combining your practice in writing German with a volunteer activity, such as working with limited English speakers from Eastern Europe who know German, writing beginning-level German readers for junior high and high schools, or tutoring in junior high or high schools, then you can get credit for such work, in place of other writing projects. I can envision, for example, a website for international understanding that you and a good speaker of German from Eastern Europe might write, talking about that person’s or your own life.
HISTORY 3355-GEOGRAPHY 4391 – ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF THE U.S., Dr. Chris Morris
Course Description: The history of the United States has been shaped by a close relationship between people and the North American environment. The land has altered human behavior and touched human consciousness as surely as people have transformed the land. From the colonial period when nature mediated relations between Europeans and Native Americans to cattle ranching in the West to modern environmental engineering to conservation and environmentalist politics, this class will explore the largely unconsidered but crucial role land and nature have played in the history of America.
This course offers an optional Service Learning component, the objective of which is to enable to student to bring topics and materials from class (readings, lectures, discussions) to bear on the world outside of class, and vice versa. The relationship between people and the natural environment is experienced, re-defined, and contested daily in our society. Therefore, this assignment asks that you devote some time (15-20 hours over the semester) to working as a volunteer in a non-profit organization that is, so to speak, on the front lines of our society’s ongoing efforts to understand and shape our relationship with the environment. Previous students have volunteered with Arlington’s River Legacy Foundation, and with the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge, but there are many suitable organizations. As a volunteer, you will observe and participate in the on-going process of defining the meaning of the environment and its place in United States society. But you are not just any observer; you are a student in History 3355. Your education should shape your experience as a volunteer, and you need to show that is the case. Grades for Service Learning will be based on a weekly reflection journal and a reflection paper of 8 to 10 pages in length.
HIST 5345 – Introduction to Public History, Dr. Robert Fairbanks
An overview of the field of public history focusing on public historians, their work, their relationship to academic historians, their accomplishments, and the ethical principles under which they operate.
Community History Project
This assignment is to introduce you to what public historians do by having you do public history with some public or private agency. This can range from volunteering at the Arlington Historical Society to working for Historic Fort Worth. You might also want to volunteer for the Dallas Historical Society or provide assistance for Preservation Dallas. There are many other bodies are possible places for you to serve.
A short paper of not more than three pages that discusses who you worked for, what you did, as well as provides observations about the agency’s efforts at public history will be required.
POLS 2311 – Government of the United States, Dr. Victoria Farrar-Myers
The constitution and government of the United States. The organization, procedures, and duties of the branches of the government, together with their accomplishments and defects. This course offers a service learning option that allows students to pursue opportunities to employ course related materials in service to the community. If you decide to exercise this option, you will be required to work in a program assisting recent immigrants of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex in their effort to gain U.S. citizenship, complete a reflection journal about your experience, attend reflection sessions, and write a short paper about your experiences as they relate to the course content.
POLS 4316 – Women in the Political Process, Dr. Rebecca Deen
The goal of this course is to expose students to the unique experiences of women in the political process, to explore possible explanations for these experiences, and to discuss the impact these experiences have on the political system. The course covers theories explaining gender differences, women as citizens, women running for elected office, women in government and public policies that affect women. Students have the option of using a volunteer experience in which to understand and explore course concepts and ideas.
POLS 4318 – Politics of African Americans, Dr. Jose A. Gutierrez
The influence of African-American politics on United States government and politics with special attention given to organizational development, participation in political parties, leadership, ideology, the Civil Rights movement, current issues, and relations with other ethnic groups. Students have the option of community service, by using ethnography and interviewing leading influential public figures in our metropolitan community.
SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK
SOCW 2313 – Social Work Practice
This is the first course in which students learn basic assessment and counseling skills. One component of the course is a 25-hour volunteer placement in a human service agency. The activities and experience from the volunteer placement are discussed in class.
SOCW 3306 – Social Work Practice III
The theory and practice of social change at the community level and an analysis of community and social service agencies is the basis for this course. Integration of this material is accomplished as the class engages in a project such as a community survey, conducting a fundraiser, writing grants or developing policy manuals.
SOCW 5306 – Introduction to Community Practice: Theory, Approaches, and Skills
Since most social work practice takes place within organizations in the context of one or more communities, theory for understanding and skill for intervening at the organizational and community levels are essential for effective social work. This course builds on the “person in environment” perspective by focusing on the environment as a focus in practice. The nature of community is examined and intervention theory, concepts, methods, skills and values for community practice taught and demonstrated. Specific attention is given to techniques and skills for conducting an assessment of community strengths and needs and for designing intervention strategies. Students have the option of community service, working directly with their selected community by assessing and writing action plans for their selected community in the Metroplex.
SOCW 6315-001 – Advanced Community Practice
This course examines community practice, its theory, and skill beyond the generalist approaches. Building on these basic planning and organizational models, students will develop an integrated model to community practice and explore the role of community practice from both a social work method and the agency/setting perspectives. This course is required for students pursuing the CAP-Community specialization (CAP-C) and the specialization that combines both administration and community practice (CAP-B). The prerequisite for the course is SPCW 6371. The students have the option of community service, work directly with homeless shelter residents, shelter staff and potential employers.
SOCW 6471 – Community Practice and Administrative Practice
This is the first advanced methods course in the Community Practice, Administrative Practice and Combined CAP curricula. It builds on the generalist foundation, including the Generalist Practice in Macro Settings course taken by all students in the foundation curriculum. This advanced course covers in detail the history and development of community and administrative practice of social work. The course surveys theory and builds skills in the many roles associated specifically with community practice (e.g. locality development, social planning, social action) and administrative practice (e.g. supervision, administration, program development, management and management systems). Emphasis is placed on the structure and culture of communities, engaging with a community organization to build relationships, designing programs in response to community needs, and evaluating the effectiveness of programs. This is a required course for all CAP students. Students have the option of community service, working with groups and organizations in the community that emphasizes an understanding of cultural diversity, gender, sexual orientation, social economic status, and people with disabilities.
