Community-Based Learning

Smith student teaching Vietnamese to school children

Students from a variety of disciplines combine coursework, practical experiences, independent research projects and guided reflection to develop essential skills for addressing complex local, national and global challenges.

Community Engagement & Social Change Concentration

The Jandon Center is the organizational hub for the Community Engagement and Social Change Concentration, through which students embed community work directly into their curricular studies.

Community-Based Learning Courses

Community-Based Learning (CBL) courses at Smith and the Five Colleges help maintain significant community partnerships and aim to meet actual community goals as well as advance academic learning. CBL courses at Smith span disciplines, topics and community partnerships as near as Northampton and as far as India.

Please refer to the Smith College Course Catalog for current offerings and a full listing of courses.

ARS 370	Memory & Socially Engaged Art
ARS/LSS 389	Broad-scale design and planning studio
CCX 120	Community-based learning [CESC Gateway] Ethics and Practice
CCX 320	Capstone Seminar for the CESC Concentration
DAN 267	Dance in the Community
EDC 200	Education in the City
EDC 232	The American Middle School and High School
EDC 336	Seminar in American Education
EDC 338	Children Learning to Read
EDC 342	Growing Up American: Adolescents and Their Educational Institutions
EDC 343	Multicultural Education
EGR 410D	Engineering Design and Professional Practice
EGR 422D	Engineering Design Clinic
ENV 201/202	Researching Environmental Problems
ENX 301	Environmental Capstone: Sustainable Food
GES 305	The Gender of Politics Participatory Democracy Development
HST 383	Research Seminar in US Women's History, The Sophia Smith Collection
IDP 320	Women's Health of Tibetan Refugees in India
LSS 110J	Interpreting the New England Landscape
LSS 250	Studio: Landscape and Narrative
MUS 202	Thinking About Music: Hidden Musicians Northampton
PSY 355	Practicum Seminar in Clinical Psychology
PSY 373	Research Seminar in Personality Psychology
SWG 230	Gender, Land and Food Movements
SWG 238	Women, Money and Transnational Social Movements

Community-Based Participatory Research

A key goal of the Jandon Center is to provide more and better-coordinated support for faculty and students undertaking community-engaged work. In particular, we seek to create a research culture grounded in Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR). CBPR (also referred to as "participatory action research" or "mutual inquiry") is considered a successful collaborative research model that stresses campus-community partnership and connects faculty from across the disciplines to concerns in the community.