Classes

CRD 151: Community Research and Analysis

I designed the core methods requirement of our CRD major, Community Research and Analysis (CRD 151) as a variable unit qualitative field research course and laboratory class. It entails far more face to face interaction, guidance, and mentoring of students than is the case in typical lecture classes. The course is designed to provide students with actual field experiences conducting qualitative ethnographic research and elite interviewing. It requires extensive supervision and guidance of individual students. Students are expected to design viable individual or group field research projects; to conduct interviews; and to complete three separate writing assignments. To demonstrate the skills they have acquired students must write an issue background paper identifying the topic of their research, complete a written research design, and write a narrative report of initial research findings once their fieldwork is completed. They must also give an oral presentation of their research in progress that is subject to critique by myself and by the class.

CRD 157: Politics and Community Development

The pedagogical aim of my lecture course Politics and Community Development (CRD 157) is to enable students to develop their capacities for political analysis of key issues in urban and community development, like urban sprawl, community economic development, and social policy analysis. The course provides students with extensive case study materials as well as lectures and readings on competing social theories of community power structure. Assignments include: an analytical take-home mid-term problem essay in which students must select a case study of urban development in a particular city (e.g., San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Atlanta, or Detroit ) and show how the outcomes of the case study can be explained using the alternative theories of community power they have studied. Students also must design a role-playing in class presentation to illustrate key themes found in selected readings; write a research paper based on topics from a list of topical issues; and complete an analytical essay type final exam. This particular mix of assignments is intended to develop students' capacities for creativity, interpretation, analysis, and research.

CRD 245: Political Economy of Urban and Regional Development

At the graduate level I offer a 4 unit graduate seminar on The Political Economy of Urban and Regional Development (CRD 245) that relies extensively on graduate student engagement in seminar discussion of selected critical readings that have shaped the current boundaries of the theoretical and practical discourse on urbanism and urban development in the social sciences. Readings are paired to offer alternative theoretical and practical perspectives on the issues raised. The objective of the course is to stretch these boundaries and open up new spaces for theory, research, and social action. Forty percent of graduate students' grade in the seminar is based on the quality of their seminar participation including: giving verbal synopses of selected readings, leading a seminar discussion, giving a progress report of their research paper to the seminar, and contributing more generally to seminar discussions. Sixty percent of their grade is based on their written research paper. Although a majority of the graduate students taking the seminar have been Masters students in the Community Development masters program the seminar generally also includes Ph. D. students in Sociology and Geography, the two other graduate groups with which I am affiliated.