Faculty Self-Statement
Public and Community Service Studies (PSP) combines academic analysis and hands-on community experience to offer students the knowledge, methods, and skills to identify inequalities and to work towards systemic change that promotes a better life for everyone. Our faculty have backgrounds within cultural studies, education, theology, philosophy, political science, and psychology and, thus, offer students multidisciplinary theories, methods, and practices that engage the individual in the context of community and society.
As our pedagogy is resolutely student-centered, students ultimately can choose to focus their learning around personal growth, allyship, activism, community-asset mapping and development, community building and organizing, philanthropy, or public scholarship. Within each of these choices, however, PSP encourages students to do systemic analysis, to address the problems inherent in privatization, and to shape practices of inclusivity and equity that serve the public good.
By helping students to develop their sense of civic identity and personal development, PSP equips them to navigate the crucial and contested concepts of democracy, community, and service. These concepts foreground students’ articulation of their unique assemblage of multidisciplinary approaches to understand, deconstruct, and contextualize the social issues and dynamics that matter to them.
PSP praxis, finally and concisely, promotes an iterative cycle of critical analysis, experiential learning, and reflection about individuals and community processes.
