Department of Sustainability and Social Justice launches with focus on global challenges

Cynthia Caron ’90 and Laurie Ross ’91, M.A. ’95, arrived at Clark in the 1980s thinking they would major, respectively, in sociology and psychology. But they found their true calling in geography and international development and social change. Studying with professors Richard “Dick” Ford, Barbara Thomas-Slayter, and Dianne Rocheleau, Caron and Ross embraced the  scholars’ work on participatory research and gender analysis.

“Dick and Barbara merged sociological theory and concepts of community development with their fieldwork in Kenya,” Caron recalls. “I sat in class thinking that I wanted to be Barbara Thomas when I grew up.”

Caron went on to do development programming in South Asia, including in Sri Lanka for two decades. Ross, after studying and researching in Central America and with Rocheleau in the Dominican Republic, became deeply involved in Worcester, partnering with residents to pursue transformative initiatives in their neighborhoods using Ford’s pioneering concept of Participatory Rural Appraisal, or PRA, which invites communities to determine their destinies. .

Eventually, the two alums returned as faculty members in what had become the International Development, Community, and Environment Department (IDCE) — Ross in 2002 and Caron in 2012.

Now they want their students to have the same transformational opportunities they did.

Alongside their colleagues, they have launched the Department of Sustainability and Social Justice, a reimagining of IDCE that, Ross says, captures the spirit of what Ford and Thomas-Slayter first envisioned when they created IDCE. It includes continued partnerships in Worcester along with Global Learning Collaboratives, which will allow undergraduate and graduate students to pursue new and emerging learning opportunities from Latin America to Africa, Asia, and Europe.

“I see this as an opportunity to deepen and amplify what we always have done best: provide opportunities for students to work with faculty and to partner with communities on projects that matter. That remains the core mission and spirit of our department, and with the world facing multiple crises, we see the need to focus even more acutely on achieving socially just and environmentally sustainable outcomes,” says Ross, director of the new department and professor in the Community and Development and Planning Program, which she started with Ford’s support nearly two decades ago.

“Our students are asking for more hands-on opportunities and to be more engaged with the world,” she adds. “At the same time, the complexity of the world today requires us to provide students with an education where they can better anticipate — and address  — emerging global challenges.”

In their practice and research, students will focus on interconnected issues including climate change adaptation, forced migration and human rights, gender equality, youth wellbeing, food justice, global health, and access to quality education and affordable housing. They will collaborate with a diverse range of stakeholders and changemakers — community members, scholars, policymakers, and practitioners — in Worcester and across the world.

“The world is facing multiple systemic crises, and people are divided about how to solve them,” Ross says. “Our students see that this is the world they are coming into, and they long to make things better. We are committed to engaging with our students in a knowledge and skill creation process that prepares them to act ethically and effectively on their desire to improve the world. ”

A transformed curriculum

All of the department’s undergraduate and graduate degree and certificate programs will remain, with the addition of a new M.S. degree in Sustainable Food Systems, where students can explore innovative initiatives and social movements for food security, sovereignty, and justice.

The department’s curriculum and learning outcomes, however, have been transformed, making them even more interdisciplinary and centered on the world’s challenges, which are excacerbated by climate change, according to Ross. Faculty have redesigned courses and experiences to better prepare students to become professional practitioners in education, government,  and nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations.

“We have been intentional in emphasizing how the work of our department focuses at multiple scales — global and local; urban and rural,” she says. “We have realized that there is a false dichotomy in thinking about ‘global’ and ‘local,’ or ‘rural’ and ‘urban,’ as distinct; it’s better to think about them as interrelated and interconnected.”

Regardless of major or degree, students in the Department of Sustainability and Social Justice will take a course on sustainability studies, and another on social change and community transformation, allowing them to span natural and social sciences, examine problems more holistically, and learn how to engage with institutions to produce more sustainable and equitable outcomes.

“One of our core values is the idea of reciprocal, mutually beneficial partnerships.”

— Professor Laurie Ross ’91, M.A. ’95

In a class on intersectional analysis, students will examine multiple systems of inequality and oppression across racial, gender, ethnic, and other lines. “Students need to understand that there are intersectional impacts of development work and the historical and political factors that produce those inequities,” Ross says. “It’s not enough to just know how men and women differ. One needs to understand how race, class, gender, and age intersect when working in communities.”

All students will take a common seminar on Principles and Ethics in Community Engagement.

“We’re excited about our common seminar; this is the unifying experience for students in the department,” Ross says.

The course will give students the space to reflect on their own positionality and consider how their identities shape their ways of knowing and being, she explained. They will learn how to harness this awareness in their work with diverse communities.

“One of our core values is the idea of reciprocal, mutually beneficial partnerships,” Ross elaborates. “Even when working in the policy or research arenas and not directly with communities, we still need to understand how communities are impacted by policy and research and how one can involve affected communities in the policymaking and inquiry processes. Understanding and navigating power dynamics among individuals and institutions is critical in ethical community engagement.”

Beyond foundational core courses required for their degree programs, students will take skills-based courses on project design and management; monitoring and evaluation of programs; organizational leadership and management; and qualitative, quantitative, or spatial analysis.

“We reconfigured the curriculum so that we had more confidence that our students would leave Clark equipped for meaningful engagement and impactful practice,” Ross says.

“I appreciate how the department’s transformation has given faculty and staff a space to think about the how we want to train and create opportunities for students to actively participate in the world,” says Caron, director of graduate studies for the department and coordinator of the undergraduate program in international development and social change. “We’ve been thoughtful and intentional about the changes that we have made to our new curriculum, and frankly, I can’t wait to use it.”