DePaul’s HumanitiesX Experiential Humanities Collaborative is an ongoing project that utilizes community engagement and collaboration to help students learn through “interdisciplinary teams that apply humanities methods to real-world projects.” WRD professor Tim Elliott is one of the faculty leading a class in this year’s HumanitiesX 2022-23: The Environment: Crisis and Action. We sat down with Dr. Elliott to learn more about his upcoming HumanitiesX project for Spring Quarter 2023.
What will your HumanitiesX class look like, and how did you get involved??
The course titled Writing and Social Engagement: Community Centered Environmental Advocacy will be engaging in a community environmental project, and I’ll be teaching it along with Danielle Vance-McMullen, Assistant Professor in the School of Public Service, and our community partner contact is Jim Merrell, Managing Director of Advocacy at ActiveTrans.
As far as getting involved, I’m always interested in collaborative work, especially when it’s across boundaries between different departments. When I was in my PhD program. I worked with a group of architects, and it was a really fun, formative learning experience, and it sort of got me into the Urban Studies vein. Thinking about some of the work in WRD, like the SWAN Certificate, I think that makes a pretty natural partnership for us to get involved with similar departments, like urban studies, and that got me interested in the partnership possibilities of HumanitiesX as well.
Can you tell us more specifics on what your HumanitiesX class project will look like?
I can tell you as much as I know, because it’s still kind of ongoing. But to start, the thing that initially motivated us was looking at Gen Z, and the way they communicate around environmental advocacy. We thought it would be fascinating to have our students think about themselves and their peers through that lens. However, we’ve shifted a bit–thinking more directly about change making and having the students reach out, work with, and get to know a specific neighborhood.
So, for our project we’re looking at a large marsh, which is part of a park on the far south side. The park is being revitalized in some ways as part of a larger “recreation and land use” project. Our partner for the class is the Active Transportation Alliance, or ActiveTrans, who works on encouraging people to use public transit and making that transit equitable We will get to work with them all spring quarter during our class term. I’ve never had a class that was completely partner-conceived, so I think that’s really exciting.
Part of what we’re focusing on as a class is getting the perspectives of 14-20 year-olds who may not be attending community meetings and listening sessions (which will also be informing what will happen with the park), but who are still stakeholders in how this park is used. Our class will be thinking about how we can gather those perspectives and how the project as a whole can communicate about them. Then we’ll pass our information and ideas back to our class partner, ActiveTrans, and the other neighborhood groups working on the larger project. At each step we will be checking in with the neighborhood to make sure other stakeholders in the project are listening and not signing off on things that the community doesn’t necessarily want.
What’s your approach to getting students involved in these types of projects?
Not trying to reinvent the wheel, I think, is one of the biggest things at play with community engaged work. You want to try to see what’s already been done and understand other perspectives in the neighborhood to get the best solution–and by best, I mean the one that addresses the most people’s concerns in the most holistic, collaborative way you can that makes sure everyone’s priorities are heard. I know we’re not going to come up with a perfect plan for the park in just ten weeks, but we might be able to play a small role right in that solution, and our students can learn a lot from that.
We also want students to have a sense of humility and to know that we’re not going to “fix” a neighborhood or go in with any of our students thinking that the neighborhood even needs “fixing.” We also know we’re not going to decide the final fate of that park in ten week. What we do believe is that we can help some, and that this project will engage our students in this process of environmental thinking and engagement.
Does your philosophy of community engaged learning change for a period as short as this ten-week class?
Believe it or not, I feel like ten weeks is a pretty substantial time period as far as college classes go. In other classes, I usually do direct projects like this in just three weeks. But either way, the way I think about my approach is helping students develop skills to do different kinds of writing and learning how to build rapport with communities that may not be their own. For undergrad classes like this one, I also bake in a few check-in points to connect and make sure the students have what they need and feel confident in the way they’re working with the community partner(s). One of my biggest things is the sense of authentic audience that students develop by working with real-world community partners on real-world projects. I think it really helps them grow as writers and students.
You’re already touching on some great student outcomes – what other specifics can students can look forward to learning through this class?
This class is interesting because the “outcomes” aren’t totally predictable until closer to the time frame because the project is continuously developing. Because much of our work will be student-directed, students will also actively be tailoring their own learning and outcomes based on what they find and think is important.
I do think students will get to be in a really interesting and engaging environment, working with a real-life partner for real-life impacts. Our course reading is going to be focused on community engagement and the environment, so we can build students’ expertise on those topics. In addition to becoming stronger writers, students will learn how to do good research as they work with community members. We’ll be having some bigger conversations as well on environmental racism, urban planning, and other “built environment” topics.
I think it’s a balance between making a real impact, keeping the community’s priorities in mind, and understanding what has already happened both to create the problem and to start solving it.