Sharpe Courses

INTR 150 Living with the Environment (Dr. Dennis Taylor)

This seminar builds a broader conceptualization of community interests . Students learn important principles and concepts to help solve the problem of human impacts on natural systems.

We explore the ethical and moral underpinnings of the human place in nature. Students learn the practical knowledge and scientific understanding needed for policy-making. They begin to build solutions for strong environmentally grounded communities. The goal is to envision a space where humans can enjoy the natural capital of their surroundings.

Student projects are specific and issue driven. They provide direct practical benefits for community partners. The projects give students opportunities for expanded scope and diversification.

KINE 150 Community Health & Research (Dr. Iyabo Obasanjo)

This course will advance students' understanding of community and public health issues facing area residents; introduce students to health provision fo the medically underserved; develop student skills in questioning health equity issues and writing on health equity issues; develop student skills in reviewing data at the community level; develop students' capacity to interpret and communicate health data and understand the impact of social disparities.

SOCL 100 Economic Insecurity:  The Virginia Eviction Crisis (Dr. Caroline Hanley)

This COLL 100 course will involveve students in research on the Virginia eviction crisis, drawing on the existting literature, a publicly-available quantitative dataset, and interviews with the Legal Aid Justice Center (LAJC) staff who are workng on housing justice in Richmond, VA.  Students will explore the "Big Question" of Economic (Housing) Justice in Virginia through community-based research, while developing skills for communicating issues to multiple audiences.

SOCL 150 Spatial Inequalities (Dr. Salvatore Saporito)

Students enrolled in “spatial inequalities” will understand and explain a newly developed measure of segregation to identify legislative districts that may have been manipulated for partisan advantage. Students will use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and to create maps of segregated legislative districts that were invalidated as Unconstitutional by the Federal Courts. Students will also use GIS and statistical software to determine if and how much measures of geographic compactness are correlated with measures of segregation. Results of these analyses will serve as the basis for writing a semester-long research paper.