Graduate Courses
We've compiled the below list of service-learning course offerings for graduate students based on classes offered in past semesters. Please check Wolverine Access to verify the availability of any particular course for this semester. Email us with any updates or additions.
BIT 648 Social Enterprise Projects
STRATEGY 648 1.5 credits
Social Enterprise Projects: Innovation in the Information Society --- Students work on real-life projects involving social enterprise. Social enterprise roughly means making the world better through the efforts of for-profits or non-profits and broadly addresses the areas of poverty, health, education, the environment, and other social issues, such as treating women and children better. Projects will address problems or opportunities in these areas involving either the U.S. or the developing world. The course will be a practicum involving a combination of individual group meetings and occasional lectures and presentations that promote synthesis and cross-project learning.
HBEHED 640 Community Organization for Health Education
3 credits
Examines social and structural factors associated with health and illness; concepts and theories regarding planned change and community; and models and principles of community organization practice for health education. Several models of community organization are analyzed along the dimensions of: community diagnosis needs assessment, selection and implementation of action strategies, evaluation research, role of the professional and ethical considerations.
Permission of Instructor.
Barbara Israel
HBEHED 641 Materials and Methods in Health Education Programs
3 credits
The goal of this course is to enable participants to select and use learning materials and methods in health education programs. The course consists of in-class sessions where various materials and media are demonstrated and their utility as enhancements to learning discussed. Technical and production aspects of materials and media are considered in several lab sessions. Students are required to produce health education materials or develop learning activities through fieldwork in addition to in-class and lab sessions.
Permission of Instructor.
Patty Wren
HBEHED 651 Program Development in Health Education
3 credits
This class focuses on design of effective learning programs: specification of objectives, selection and organization of learning activities, and program assessment. It moves between theoretical bases for program development and examination of applications. Initial sessions focus on framework for development of health education. Subsequent sessions center on specific components of program design and particular applications
Permission of Instructor.
Edith Parker
HBEHED 680 Youth Violence: Issues and Prevention
3 credits
This course is designed to provide students with an understanding of intentional injury generally and adolescent violence-related injury in particular as a significant public health problem that is amenable to preventive measures in the same way as other public health problems. It will provide students with a comprehensive overview of the many issues associated with youth violence. The course will acquaint students with injury control theory and cover the epidemiology of major violence-related injuries including disparities, social determinants as well as risk and resiliency factors associated with intentional injury. Topics to be covered include violence in schools, family (e.g., domestic violence) and peer (e.g., dating violence) influences, suicide, alcohol and drug use, firearms, and violence in the media. They will also learn about conceptual and theoretical models describing the etiology of adolescent violence-related injury and gain an understanding of how such frameworks influence the development of prevention programs. The course presents examples from local communities that are actively involved in youth violence prevention. The course will be linked to activities of the CDC funded Youth Violence Prevention Center and will include discussions with community partners. The course will be working with the Office of Community Based Public Health (OCPBH) to create student mini projects.
Grad Status or NERS 484
Susan Morrel-Samuels
HBEHED701 Practicum in Health Behavior and Health Promotion
(not offered 2006-2007) 3 credits
This course is designed to provide students with both experience in one of a number of practice sites and classroom education to integrate learning from the field with theoretical perspectives. Topics covered in HBHE 601 are used for discussions about theoretical applications. Practicum sites may include school settings, home health care, intergenerational day care, outpatient adult mental health services, OBGYN clinics, county departments of public health and other community-based sites.
Prerequisites: HBHE 601, Permission of Instructor
Graduate Standing and CSIB 502 or Permission of Instructor.
NURS 567 Issues Adv Comm Health
3-4 credits
This course provides students the opportunity to synthesize current and emerging issues in community practice, as well as a historical perspective of the field. Organizational structures, services, and innovative practice models within subspecialty practice will also be analyzed and refined. Emphasis will be placed on analyzing how legislative, technological, economic, and social forces impact clinical and administrative planning and decision-making in community practice. Factors which influence professional and para-professional community-based primary health care service delivery, health policy development, marketing strategies, and research in a community health nursing subspecialty area will also be explored. Field experience provides student opportunities to examine specialty service delivery models, traditional and nontraditional subspecialty practice, and current and emerging trends in community care and home health care.
NURS 649 Infant Child and Adolescent Health: Children with Chronic Conditions
1-4 credits
This course will focus on the provision of health care to infants, children, and adolescents with selected chronic conditions. Students will incorporate into advanced nursing practice the knowledge and skill of pediatric primary health care, a developmental focus, and theoretical and conceptual perspectives important for management of children with chronic conditions and their families. These perspectives include stress, coping, and adjustment to a chronic condition, self-management, inclusion, and cultural variations as they relate to the experiences of children and their families living with and managing a chronic condition. The condition-specific as well as common health promotion needs facing children with chronic conditions will be emphasized as will the health problems associated with care and management of the medical condition over the long term. Clinical placements will be selected to enhance advanced practice nursing interventions including case management activities, and provide multidisplinary collaboration in the care of children with chronic conditions.
NURS 686 Interventions with Aggregates and Communities
4 credits
This course provides students with an opportunity to collaboratively design, implement, and evaluate a community-based, health-oriented intervention that targets a selected objective within a defined population. In collaboration with faculty and providers in the target population, such as geopolitical jurisdictions, worksites, schools, or distinct cultural neighborhoods, students will tailor the interventions to be culture and gender sensitive and developmentally appropriate. Students will implement the intervention in the context of their subspecialty (i.e. community care, occupational health, or home health care) and will evaluate the outcomes of the intervention. A guided practicum and seminar are used to accomplish course objectives.
563/CONC/Permisson of Instructor
NURS 687 Managing Community Based Systems
4 credits
This didactic and clinical course provides students with the opportunity to critically examine the specific functions of nurse managers in a variety of community health specialties: community care, home care, occupational health. Particular focus will be placed on helping students to understand and respond to factors in rapidly changing environments which affect community health service delivery and related organizational and managerial strategies. Principles and practices of human resource management, resource allocation, and services management will be emphasized. Clinical practice in community based systems enhances the students' ability to critically analyze role responsibilities of nurse managers and personal leadership style.
Pharmacy 425 Service Learning for Health Professionals
1 credit
An interdisciplinary service-based course required for all pharmacy students. Learning experiences will focus on social justice and professional responsibilities for civic engagement. Through participation, reflection, and guided discussions, students will explore issues of health disparities, poverty, and the medically underserved. Students participate in community service activities in addition to regular classroom discussion sessions.
PUBPOL 578 Applied Policy Seminar
The Applied Policy Seminar (APS) is an opportunity for students to do public sector consulting work for state and local governments and community development organizations in Ann Arbor, Detroit, and other areas of Michigan. Projects range widely in policy area, level of quantitative analysis required, size, and complexity. All projects culminate in the publication of a final report and an oral presentation to the client.
Elisabeth Gerber
PUBPOL 678 Public Advocacy
3 credits
A course on the strategy and tactics of governmental outsiders who seek to influence public policy. Topics will include: the role of analysis and expertise; testifying; lobbying, framing, venue-switching, polling, grassroots mobilization; obstructionism; and more. Several practicing advocates visit the class and students also take on an advocacy project of their own.
Richarch Hall
PUBPOL 731 Distance Learning Project for Quantitative Social Science in South Africa
2 credits
This is a year-long course devoted to developing an internet-based course to promote quantitative social science in South Africa. The end-product will be a web-based course that will teach students (initially in South Africa) how to investigate a variety of public policy issues using data. The web-based course will be based on a large survey of South African households that was financed by the World Bank. The project will use the South African data to develop modules that will teach both elementary statistics and econometrics, as well as inform current policy issues in South Africa. Enrollment will be quite limited. Enrollment will be by application only. Students will probably accompany the instructor to South Africa in the winter semester. The course will be tested with a group of South African students in a class-run workshop at the University of Capetown. Students will also work with counterparts in South Africa to develop the project.
Prerequisites: PUBPOL 529 and PUBPOL 571
James Levinsohn
PUBPOL 756 Local Government: Opportunity for Activism
3 credits
Local Government: Opportunity for Activism --- What goes on in city government is in many ways more important to our lives than what happens in Washington. This course goes beyond the structure and theory of municipal government to look at how things really happen at the local level. It will explore the underlying dynamics of the city / suburb conflict, sprawl vs. density and how these issues influence local economics and state legislatures. There will be a focus on the interaction of citizen activities and elected officials in effecting change. Topics will include running for office, environmental and affordable house campaigns and activist-generated ballot initiatives. Both past and present campaigns will be examined, including case studies of both successful and failed initiatives. Students will explore the unfolding Greenbelt and Greenway programs, and how these proposals may impact sprawl and affordable house. Guest speakers will include elected officials and activities from past and present campaigns for social and environmental change
SI 575 Community Information Corps Semina
1 credits
Course brings together students and faculty who are engaged in all kinds of community and public interest projects, to make connections between projects, to read and discuss social and political theory articles, and to meet interesting outside guests. Students learn to connect day-to-day grassroots activities with big ideas about citizenship, opportunity, and the public good in an information society, and become able to find a job as a public interest information professional. Participants will be equiped to take part in various CIC community-based projects such as computer tutoring at the Peace Neighborhood Center and operating computers for the patrons at the Washtenaw County Library for the Blind and Physically Challenged
SI 595: Practical Engagement Workshop: Cultural Heritage Outreach
3 credits
Provides students with educational experiences that integrate classroom training, advanced technology, and actual practice in real organizational settings, and helps students to realize and instantiate community service through practical engagement. Goals and related project activities of the project work include creating an online community for exchange of creative work, content, and information in music and dance of many cultures; facilitating exchange across cultures, to enable people from different cultures to share with each other as well as with the predominant and other cultures; and empowering communities to capture and share cultural heritage using digital technology to enhance real-world experiences in the arts and cultural heritage. Prequisites: SI 501 (or taken concurrently)
SOCWK 560 Introduction to Community Organization, Management and Policy/Evaluation Practice
3 credits
This course is a foundation offering in the Community Organization, Management and Policy/Evaluation practice (Macro Practice). It covers basic content in these areas of social work method, and prepares students to take the more advanced courses. It is partly survey in nature, touching on a range of methodologies and told, and providing an appreciation of the historical and contemporary importance of these methods in social work. In addition, it deals with the process of professionalization for "indirect" social work practice. Issues of gender race and ethnicity will be emphasized throughout, with special focus on culturally sensitive practice - i.e. culturally sensitive and multicultural community organizing, management practices, analyses of policy proposals and impact, and evaluation practices. The course will also identify salient connections between Macro Practice and IP Practice The student's field experience and future methods courses will build upon skills presented in this course.
UP 502 Environmental Planning: Issues and Concepts
3 credits
Environmental Planning: Issues and Concepts --- This is an introductory graduate-level course on the issues and concepts underlying environmental policy-making and planning, with a focus on the United States. Rather than concentrating on one particular type of planning method (e.g., cost-benefit analysis, impact assessment, site design), the course is designed to address recurrent value-based and analytical conflicts that cross the array of various environmental policy-making and planning processes employed in the U.S. and abroad. The principal goal of the course is to provide students with the knowledge and skills they will need to be a thoughtful and creative professional capable of recognizing the key disjunctions in communication and analysis that often hinder the achievement of effective and satisfying environmental policy and planning solutions. The course is designed to: provide students the ability to recognize and tease apart the competing values and analytical assumptions made by various stakeholders in environmental policy-making and planning debates; consider how those debates are shaped by and play themselves out within the political, legal, and administrative processes that characterize environmental policy-making and planning in the U.S.; and familiarize students with the various forms of contemporary environmental policy-making and planning practice that they will likely encounter in their professional work. Students in the class are required to assist a local township with their first serious foray into environmental planning. This will require that we translate our "BMP" knowledge to this real-world' political and environmental context.
UP 526 Sociocultural Issues in Planning and Architecture
3 credits
Sociocultural Issues in Planning and Architecture --- Throughout US history, socio-cultural factors have influenced the formation of places, and consequently, social relations and conditions within them. Yet, the fields of planning and architecture have traditionally not emphasized issues such a race, ethnicity, gender, class relations, immigration status (among other) as central topics to be addressed. The purpose of this course is to examine socio-cultural issues and their significance to planning and architecture practice and education. The course has three main goals: 1) Students will gain an understanding of the historical role that social and cultural factors have played in shaping the current context within which planning and architecture work takes place; 2) Students will engage in critical examination of theories and practices that shape the fields of planning and architecture and their social implications; and 3) Students will reflect on the current and desired roles carried out by planners and architects in deliberately or inadvertently affecting social conditions. Students are asked to reflect on current roles carried out by planners and architects and also present on a region of their choice. Harper-Anderson
UP 532 Sustainable Development
3 credits
The course begins in considering the variety of ways in which our current lifestyles, locally and globally, are not sustainable and then asking why- How do we get here? In that context, the class will work through the concepts of sustainable of development from different vantage points: in terms of fundamental principles, scale (from global to local), and institutions, policies, and laws. The course then addresses a variety of policy-making and planning prescriptions that have been offered for curing our unsustainable ways and assesses whether and how those various prescriptions will likely work in practice. Working in groups, students test these theories of sustainability by applying them to selected client communities in coastal Michigan. Boyd Fuller
UP 539 Methods for Economic Development Planning
3 credits
This course provides students with background in some of the methods used by economic development planners to understand a local economy and to identify directions for planning action. Students learn to use the methods, understand and critique reports that use the methods, and assess the problems of a local economy. Methods include location quotients, shift-share analysis, input-output, retail trade area analysis, industry sector analysis, and others. (I know this course does involve community service, but this description does not show that is the case. Can you add a sentence to explain?) The syabullus in from 2004 and does not state explicitly what the project would ential. It just says "plan the region of your choice" Harper-Anderson
UP 631 Land Use and Physical Planning Studio
6 credits
This is a professional practice course emphasizing an interdisciplinary approach to the preservation, conservation, and design of urban areas. The course is designed to fulfill the requirements established by the urban design and physical planning concentration guidelines as well as to act as one of the key studio courses for students pursuing the combined degree programs leading to dual master's degrees in architecture and urban planning and in urban planning and landscape architecture. Students from architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning work individually and collaboratively on design problems, such as urban infill housing, urban space, and the design and preservation/conservation of urban areas.
Prerequisite(s): UP 518 and UP 519 or permission of instructor
UP 654: Concepts and Techniques of Community Participation
Crosslisting: SW 654 3 credits
This course examines concepts and techniques of citizen participation in public policy, planning, and administration. It analyzes the political economy of participation; selected strategies and skills; and new and emergent techniques to involve people in decisions from neighborhood to nation. Emphasis is placed on promoting participation of economically disadvantaged people, African-Americans, women, and other groups in multicultural communities. Course responsibilities include critical analysis of recent research and practice, experiential exercises, and in-depth student-selected study of participation in an actual organization or community in the field.
Prerequisite(s): SW 560 or permission of instructor
UP 733/734 Planning Thesis/ Professional Project
3 credits
The thesis or professional project is limited to students pursuing a master's degree who are in their final year of study. It may be taken in lieu of UP 634. It offers students an opportunity to engage in an in-depth theoretical or empirical study, or a professional activity. Students normally work under the direction and guidance of a single faculty member and must submit, and secure approval of, a written proposal that describes in detail the proposed thesis and a timetable for completion.
Prerequisites : Permission of Instructor.
UP 634 Integrative Field Experience
6 credit hours
A one- or two-term capstone experience involving second-year students working with community-based organizations or with agencies concerned with neighborhood issues in Detroit and occasionally in Flint. Following general introduction and orientation to the planning topic and the neighborhood, students work intensively in collaboration with neighborhood leaders and residents in improving their situation. Students produce a plan to deal with the community-identified need. Plans often address strengthening housing, reinforcing neighborhoods, revitalizing commercial districts, relieving transportation difficulties, dealing with contaminated sites, reinforcing industrial areas. Students will make presentations at community or agency meetings throughout the semester. (3 or 6 credit hours)
Prerequisite(s): URP 505 and permission of instructor
Margaret Dewar, Eric Dueweke
