Building the Beloved Community

This course addresses the need to create flourishing communities that are sensitive to the requirements for human and ecologically sustainability. In seeking to build the Beloved Community, the course offers a Community Engagement component that encourages the pursuit of meaning, commitment to truth-seeking pluralism, and first-person engagement through participation in community dialogues. Through the Service Learning component this course seeks to identify and build upon those values through interracial, intergenerational and interfaith conversations with our Community Partners, and other community stakeholders. Writings from several inclusive thinkers are used to brings diverse perspective into a harmonious whole.

LA VERNE EXPERIENCE MISSION:

The La Verne Experience (LVE) is the University of La Verne’s signature academic experience. LVE is designed to foster a holistic education and create a sense of belonging to build a community of learners. LVE focuses on integrated learning and theory-to-practice participation, as well as engagement in reflective thinking and analysis of critical social issues. LVE thus empowers students to create transformative change through a pedagogy of equity and social justice, intentional discourse, and community engagement, by working alongside diverse groups and individuals.

At the University of La Verne, core values direct the General Education curriculum. As such, community service, one of our four core values, is an LVE requirement. Through LVE 305: Learning through Community Service, we hope to impart on students the value of civic and community engagement to become civically engaged leaders in an ever-changing democracy.

LVE 305 courses also give you the opportunity to improve core competencies (skills) that employers are looking for in a La Verne graduate. In an LVE 305 course, you will be able to develop your critical thinking skills, strengthen your communication skills, enhance your leadership and teamwork skills and equitably engage and include people from different local and global cultures.

In the context of this course, we will explore LVE 305 Course Themes: Social justice, power and privilege, reciprocity, and social issues are the focus of LVE 305 courses. Given the U.S. social climate over past few years, there is a need to explore new approaches of contesting unequal power structures in order to gain deeper participation, critical reflection and analysis, through service learning. For example, immigration issues currently grip global politics and impact diverse communities and cultures. Early childhood education faces major literacy issues. The LGBTQ+ communities struggle with social justice issues on a local and national level. As a result, LVE 305 courses are designed to guide students through a reflective process of identifying power and privilege issues, as well as recognize where their views of similarities and differences emerge within our diverse communities.

LVE LEARNING OUTCOMES

1. Reflect on service as a component of active citizenship, community engagement, and social responsibility.
2. Demonstrate reciprocity and responsiveness in service with the community.
3. Describe and analyze the social issues relevant to the community organization.
4. Explore issues of embedded power and privilege as related to the nonprofit organization.
5. Explore Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) methodology in the context of self, a nonprofit organization and those the organization serves.

Students will choose a nonprofit organization provided by the instructor and complete a total of 20 hours of unpaid community service at 2 – 4 hours per week. The 2 – 4 hours per week offers students a sustained experience to clearly understand the organization and its relationship with the community.  Students will be required to use GivePulse to track the 20 hours of unpaid community service.

Community Service is understood to be a minimum of 20 hours of unpaid, active participation assisting an off-campus community nonprofit organization in the achievement of its mission and vision, and not simply observing the work of the organization.

Course Objectives:

1. This course will introduce the student to some of the philosophical discourse concerning the building of the Beloved Community in the face of power and oppression concerns within several socio-political contexts.
2. The student will be able to identify and analyze the different philosophical views presented in class and think critically about the positions and their social implications.
3. The student will be able to write arguments that demonstrate his/her ability to delineate and address the various aspects of the power and oppression theme.
4. Community Engagement Learning Objectives: Students will be able to reflect upon the themes the Good Life and the Beloved Community within a contemporary community engagement project.  This engagement will provide an opportunity for the students to relate course content and knowledge to real life issues regarding the course topic. Ultimately, this community engagement component will afford students the learning experience of bringing classroom theory to practice by connecting and involving students with community-based service learning, as well as by nurturing, supporting and engaging in co-curricular civic and community engagement activities.

Learning Outcomes:

1. The students will be able to describe and explain key concepts used in philosophical discourse concerning power and oppression along with strategies to address problematic issues.
2. The students will investigate and analyze major ideas and worldviews impacting today’s global crisis via written, oral, electronic and other expressions of thought.
3. Students will appraise and critique assumptions behind common solutions to local, national and global issues.
4. Students will participate in, design, and facilitate collaborative interdisciplinary, interfaith and intercultural projects dealing with marginalization by envisioning the Beloved Community.
5. Students will propose new models for reasoning and living that synthesize theories and methods in Philosophical and Religious Studies.
6. Students will explore their own view of a flourishing life in the Beloved Community.

Required Texts:

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, ISBN: 978-1-57131-356-0
Mahatma Gandhi, Selected Political Writings, ISBN: 0-87220-330-1
Howard Thurman, The Search for Common Ground, ISBN: 0-913408-94-8
Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community, ISBN: 0-8070-0571-1