Word: socialize
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Social Engagement Initiative is a program that allows students to take the theories they have learned in the classroom and apply that knowledge in the field in a way that has a social or political impact. Professor Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, the chair of African and African American Studies, explains why she spearheaded the program when she became chair of the department in 2006. “What we were trying to do was to wed a very sophisticated, rigorous, intellectual program—very much a Harvard academic course of study—to something experiential...
Darryl is just one example of the social entrepreneurs that Higginbotham hopes to breed through this program. This summer, Oluwadara A. Johnson ’10 launched a camp for young girls in Nigeria to learn the value of education, enlisting the help of a Nollywood film star to discuss issues of self-esteem. Cherie N. Rivers, a graduate student in the African and African American Studies department, is currently trying to write a rigorous scholarly dissertation while also upholding the aims of the social engagement initiative...
However, this is not to say that the academic side of the social engagement program is downplayed at all. Higginbotham goes further, saying, “If anything it’s probably strengthened because the experiential causes you to rethink what you learned...
Students preparing to embark on a social engagement project look at the subject from every angle, integrating a wide range of viewpoints. “What we offer is a team of perspectives in this department to our students,” says Higginbotham, using a group of students working with Haitian Creole diabetes patients as an example. “They have to work with John Mugane’s African Language Program because they have to get the Haitian Creole under their belt; they have to work with an anthropologist so that they can get the ethnographic skills...
...don’t have to lead a bifurcated life,” she explains. The social engagement program can add to the list of glossy careers that Harvard students traditionally take after college—doctors, lawyers, etc.—by creating entirely new professions...