Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
Community Engagement, Unique Courses and Other Opportunities
The Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work offers a variety of exciting curricular and co-curricular opportunities for students, including unique courses that engage with local and global communities and opportunities for students to develop and showcase their research skills. We have a number of unique courses, including courses taught within The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program and anthropology courses that are accompanied by a one week international immersion trip during the January intercession.
Students also have opportunities to participate in community engaged learning through many of our regularly-offered courses, including:
- SWK 401 Community Field Experience
- SWK 331 Death and Dying
- SOC 351 Urban Sociology
- SOC 339 Social Inequality
Fostering and facilitating immersive global learning experiences is a distinctive and core feature of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work at UD. As a department committed to social justice, our primary interest lies in teaching students to understand, through direct and personal encounters, those in the global margins, ranging from the urban poor in India struggling for water in the era of water privatization, youth in El Salvador facing police brutality, to indigenous peoples in the Yucatan peninsula displaced by tourism.
We offer a transformative experiential learning opportunity by enhancing specific courses with a short term global immersive travel. For example, students enrolled in ANT 325 Anthropology of Human Rights completed an immersion trip to El Salvador, facilitated jointly by Dr. MIranda Hallett, the Center for Social Concern, and CRISPAZ, an NGO in San Salvador. Also, students enrolled in ANT 315 Language and Culture participated in a trip to Mexico with Dr. Stephanie Litka and the Center for International Programs.
Please contact an anthropology faculty member for more information about this program.
The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program brings together "outside" students from universities and "inside" students from correctional institutions. Founded in 1997 at Temple University in Pennsylvania, the program has expanded to more than 150 colleges. Faculty in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work at the University of Dayton began offering an Inside-Out class in Spring 2016. "Transformational" and "life changing" are commonly used to describe the program. The class is offered to a limited number of students in the Spring semesters; informational sessions take place in the Fall semesters. Students are required to complete an applications, interview, and background check.