Learning Outside of the Classroom

By Anna Esquibel

Vacant store windows and unfinished buildings reflect the poor economic standing of the Alma-Washington neighborhood in downtown San Jose.

In this struggling neighborhood, this quarter's Experiential Learning for Social Justice 197 course has aimed to take community-based learning one step further and provide undergraduate students in the Leavey School of Business with the opportunity to use their business skills to help the Alma-Washington community thrive.

Throughout the quarter, the 12 students enrolled in the course have been developing a proposal for a partnership between Santa Clara and business organizations in the neighborhood, under the direction of adjunct professor Jacqueline Schmidt-Posner.

"I signed up for this class without much explanation or knowledge of what we were going to be doing," said sophomore Deanna Kneis, one of the students in ELSJ 197. "We are going into it not knowing what we are doing, completely blind."

The Alma-Washington neighborhood, rimmed by Route 87, Interstate 280, South First Street and the railroad tracks south of Bellevue Avenue, is an area of poor economy with vacant businesses, gang violence, prostitution and beautification issues.

The 12 students, Schmidt-Posner and various community members of the Alma-Washington neighborhood are working together to try and develop a sustainable plan that will improve the economic situation of the Washington neighborhood.

"Basically our end goal is the establishment of a long-term relationship with the area where business students particularly can go in and turn it into a learning experience while at the same time bettering the community," said Kneis.

The course's project is in direct conjunction with the Washington Neighborhood Revitalization Plan, which was adopted by the San Jose City Council in October 1998.

The plan aims to address numerous community issues, including housing conditions, crime, parks and recreation, traffic and pedestrian safety, the physical and visual appearance of the neighborhood, and community organizations, according to an informational brochure provided on the city of San Jose's website.

Some of the plan's goals include finding ways to decrease crime and other negative activities, provide public recreational spaces for community members and improve the safety and appearance of the area.

In order to understand how Santa Clara students can help further the plan's progress, ELSJ 197's students have been familiarizing themselves with the neighborhood, building relationships with business owners, attending events such as community meetings and volunteering at community centers.

One student, sophomore Garrett Jensen, spoke on behalf of the class at an Alma-Washington neighborhood community meeting to find out what the community thought of the students' involvement and how the class could help.

The class is also working on two databases: one for groups and classes on campus that could get involved in the project and one profiling the businesses in the Washington neighborhood. These databases will help the class determine what direction to take to help the neighborhood.

"The great part is that we don't even know what the end goal is yet," said Jensen. "One idea is to create some sort of paper or electronic profile of all the businesses which would serve as advertisement for the businesses; another is to establish a business association for the business members to communicate with one anther. Really, the possibilities are endless at this point."

Schmidt-Posner, who previously worked in service learning and civic engagement at Stanford University, says the class structure is unconventional but effective.

"We hope for... a good service learning partnership where the service that's provided is reciprocal information between the students and the community," said Schmidt-Posner. "We want to make sure we are contributing something that the community wants, not what we think would be good."

Challenges such as time constraints and distance from campus have made this project difficult, but the students and community remain excited and dedicated to making improvement.

Although the students in the class have not made much change in the neighborhood yet, Schmidt-Posner believes that many important lessons have already been learned.

"What I'm excited about is all these business students recognizing the importance of finding out what the community needs," said Schmidt-Posner. "They really care about this community too, and when you connect what you are studying and what you care about it's really powerful."

Like other courses that fulfill the ELSJ requirement in the Core curriculum, ELSJ 197 aims to embody Jesuit values by cultivating social justice, civic life, perspective and civic engagement, as stated on the Office of the Registrar's description of the Core curriculum requirements.

While ELSJ 197 is focused on a particular neighborhood, it could impact both the Leavey School of Business and Santa Clara as a whole.

According to Schmidt-Posner, this is one step in making the business school a resource to the community, which is what Dean Andrew Starbird wants it to be seen as.

"Business schools are commonly seen as a place where you create people who are interested in making money," said Starbird. "But I would like us to be seen as an institution who creates wealth, which is a different thing. We are interested in creating both community and personal wealth, and this is a project that reflects that."

Schmidt-Posner also believes that this can be applied not only to the business school, but every academic department as well.

"It's a lot of work to develop something like this," said Schmidt-Posner. "But hopefully this class's success will get more departments to think about how they could use the skills their students have to help the community."

Contact Anna Esquibel at aesquibel@scu.edu or call (408) 554-4852.