#2 - Submit a Proposal for a New Class

In my undergraduate physical education program, I took a sports ethics class that was one of the best classes I've ever taken. The professor had us reading, writing, and watching stories of sport, seeing the power and the inconsistencies in sporting environments. In the last class, several of us were tearing up, watching the final scene of Varsity Blues, a film I had only laughed at before. Ever since I started teaching college-level courses, I dreamed of proposing and teaching a sports ethics or sports leadership course.

I wrote this item with the goal of proposing that course at DePaul. Well, that still hasn't happened. 

Instead, I took advantage of DePaul's first year experience program, which is called Chicago Quarter, where faculty members from any department can propose a course that has direct connections to DePaul and is cotaught with a staff member and a student, who talk about general resources and options at DePaul. 

At the University of San Diego, I had taught the first-year course Emerging Leaders twice, where we used the leadership for social change model to have student reflect on how they can and do exercise leadership in relation to themselves, the the people around them, and the larger community. I took that idea and proposed a course to explore leadership for social change in Chicago. In the course, we will start at the community level, studying people from and in Chicago who have worked for social change (e.g., Jane Addams, Fred Hampton, and Ida B. Wells). Then, they'll work with small groups to explore current and past social change initiatives and events. Then, they'll reflect on their roles as individuals and how they might want to participate in social change themselves. Throughout the quarter, we'll take excursions into the city to check out and take tours of relevant sites. 

I'm so excited the course has been accepted. There are still politics and logistics because I'm an adjunct faculty member, so departments are resistant to pay may salary from their budgets, even though they want my contributions, but I've been assured the course will run.

I'm super excited to collaborate with a staff member and student to create a really exciting, engaging course, where we get to dive into our city's history and current fights for social change.