Changemakers

In 2008, CCCSI proudly launched Changemakers, a new project to promote Pitzer's social responsibility ethos through scholarship, action and advocacy. Programs focus on linking local and global social and cultural issues in relation to students, faculty, staff, and community-based organizations.

Changemakers specifically integrates community engagement programming within the first-year student experience and promotes social responsibility as a fundamental aspect of our new residential learning communities.

An advisory committee is now accepting both student and faculty proposals for courses and projects that enrich social responsibility on campus and in local communities. New Changemaker courses include: “Survival, Resilience and Resurgence: Indian Nations of Southern California” and “Youth, Social Issues and Resistance.” Changemakers is paid from through a generous gift from the Weingart Foundation.

Courses

Changemakers has completed funding for two community-based, social responsibility courses, both first-year seminars. In Fall 2008, Youth and Youth Resistance, enrolled with twelve students, and required students to work in a local community service organization or school while they studied relevant community issues, particularly those faced by at-risk youth. The course culminated in the student research conference, in conjunction with the Changemaker conference event in December of 2008, sharing knowledge and experiences related to community engagement. The second course, Survival, Resilience, and Resurgence: Indian Nations of Southern California, with an enrollment of sixteen students, familiarized students with local indigenous American Indian communities, their histories, and knowledge systems; examined Pitzer’s relationship with local Native American tribes; and helped to create a new partnerships through mutually beneficial participatory research and community interaction. Both the courses received the first allotment of their payment upon the receipt of the finalized syllabus and roster of enrolled students and the second allotment of their award upon the completion of the course in December 2008.

Changemakers funds two more courses in the Fall of 2009. Changemaker community-engagement course, Spanish 33 with Professor Martha Barcenas will focus on transcultural discourses in socio/cultural/economic contexts that promote activism and encourage teaching and learning for underprivileged students (adult and young). Students are required in this course to actively participate in an organization/institution/project that has been established in order to support outreach programs for marginalized populations.

Professor Brent Armendinger’s Changemaker course, Poetry and Public Space, will provide a site-specific collaboration in finding and making poetry outside the walls of the classroom. Half of the classes will be in the public spaces in the local community – in parks, buses, the farmer's market, and community centers. In the first semester this course is offered, efforts will be aimed towards building a partnership with a local service agency working with local homeless populations to offer a long term poetry workshop.

Community Partnerships

Changemakers supports, staffs and monitors three new community-based partnership development projects which began in Fall 2008 and continue over a two year period. The first of these partnerships was developed through one of the new Changemaker first-year seminars, wherein students conducted projects in collaboration with the local Costanoan Rumsen Carmel tribes. This tribe is part of the Ahlone Nation and is a non-profit organization devoted to fighting for the rights (and federal recognition) of this American Indian Tribe. Students are involved in research and activism around legal rights, health care access and cultural or historical research projects. Students may also get involved in community outreach and advocacy through college mentorship as well as policy and lobbying work. In the Fall 2008 semester, the course placed its twelve, enrolled first-year students at this site, and the faculty for this course will also help to facilitate projects and internships with other interested students. Students, staff and faculty continue to be involved in the community with the Costanoan Rumsen Carmel Tribal office.

Changemaker also developed partnership with Study Buddies, a community-based after-school tutoring program for at-risk and transient youth in Ontario, Montclair, Pomona, Claremont and other neighboring municipalities. This program provides extensive training for tutors and a comprehensive testing system to evaluate the needs and academic levels of tutees. Changemakers has agreed to fund the development of this partnership and the facilitation of student interns/tutors, an additional evaluation process for the new site and a summer intern to maintain the relationship with the site and analyze the evaluation material for the betterment of the program over its proposed two-year span.

Changemakers also funded partnership with the local community-based organization, UnCommon Good. This small non-profit organization provides legal and health services to underprivileged populations and tutoring and mentoring to at-risk youth. Their newest program is Teen Green, an environmental leadership program composed of high school students committed to community projects and awareness-raising around environmental issues; Teen Green has over 25 active members and over 200 youth participating through college mentoring programs. Through this group, Uncommon Good is spearheading a new project called the Khalili Community Center, wherein they have planned to build a LEED-certified, environmentally sustainable community center in Claremont.

In Fall 2009, the Changemaker project has funded a new partnership development grant. Through a student proposal, Changemakers has been supporting the facilitation and funding of an after-school program based in a local high school for at-risk women. A Pitzer student founded the program, Girltalk, in 2007 as an after-school educational and peer support group for teens struggling with abuse, addiction and other risk behaviors. This student applied for funding and staff support to continue the program and bolster the longevity of the partnership with Garey High School in the nearby city of Pomona. As of Spring 2009, students have been working with students at Garey High School, holding weekly Girltalk sessions. This contract and partnership may also lead to other student projects in tutoring, college counseling and mentoring programs in the Pomona Unified School District as a strong foundation has now been set for students to work with Pomona students. Programming and partnership between Pitzer, CCCSI and the Pomona Unified School district continues to be developed.

The Public Speaker Series

The purpose of the public speaker series is to raise awareness about critical social and political issues and to help empower and inspire our students and our communities to move from scholarship to action. The 2008-2009 academic year took on the theme of “The Many Faces of Justice” with monthly speakers and workshop on related sub-topics.

In Fall 2009, Changemakers presented a semester-long Skills-Based Workshop series for students working at community-based internships. This series is to provide students with the tools to effectively engage in their internships and better equip them to make a meaningful contributions.

February 6 & 9, 2009: Orientation and Ethics Training
February 17, 2009: Teaching Skills and Learning Theories: tools for classroom teaching
March 6, 2009: Teaching English as a Second Language
April 1, 2009: Power Analysis and Introduction to Community Organizing
April 28, 2009: Wellness and Critical Consciousness in Community Engagement
May 1, 2009: Public Speaking and Presentation Skills

Fall 2009's Public Speaker Series theme will be Learning to Live Responsibly in an Irresponsible Time and will focus on different definitions, both theoretical and practical, of social responsibility across diverse perspectives and disciplines and on interpersonal, community, local and global levels.