This article examines relational ways of knowing-a concept both broad and deep-as a strategy we have infused throughout our design of one first-year living and learning community (LLC). As outlined here, the authors teach faith as relationship; justice as being in just relationship with others, research as the concept of putting ideas in relationship to one another, and dialogue as the commitment to remain in conversation-to build community through ongoing relationship. This model has implications for how faculty and student development professionals may integrate faith and justice in the college context integrating personal, social, and civic responsibility as one viable means to introduce students to both a disposition and a skill set, an attitude and action strategies. Key among the skills authors convey and practice are deep listening, deliberative dialogue, performance tasks that address critical thinking and writing across the disciplines, and rigorous research that involves putting sources in dialogue and applying theories to living contexts. This curriculum may help other educators design developmental, sequenced, scaffolded, and integrated learning activities to foster a disposition to "doing justice."
In this article, we identify the steps and strategies that emerged through an interdisciplinary, community-based participatory research (CBPR) project—the Crabby Creek Initiative. The Initiative was undertaken jointly by Cabrini College faculty in biology and psychology, the Valley Creek Restoration Partnership (VCRP), the Stroud Water Research Center, (SWRC) and local residents of this eastern Pennsylvania region. The paper examines the phases the partners have gone through and the strategies used as the building blocks of partnerships in the process of collaboration: trust, mutual design, shared implementation, joint ownership, and dissemination of knowledge, the building blocks of sustainable partnerships. Ultimately, the lessons learned have the potential to galvanize practitioners to engage not only in citizen science, but also more broadly in the practice of applied and engaged democracy.
Two community-based research (CBR) courses—Watershed Citizenship and Watershed Ecology—were piloted at Cabrini College in southeastern Pennsylvania. The courses connected service, education, and research using a local Pennsylvania stream, Crabby Creek, as the focal point, while working with several community partners. Course feedback using a qualitative student focus group regarding attitudes about environmental awareness, interdisciplinary thinking, and community-based, undergraduate research experiences showed that students gained a better understanding of how different disciplines can collaborate to address a problem in an integrative manner. Students also valued the faculty interdisciplinary team-teaching approach of the courses. We offer a model for designing and conducting an interdisciplinary team-taught CBR course employing instructors with different disciplinary backgrounds and areas of expertise. In this paper we present a case study in which we discuss the benefits and costs of these types of courses offered through the eyes of course instructors, community partners, and students and emphasize lessons learned that should prove helpful for others considering developing similar courses.
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