Stanford Today Edition: March/April, 1998 Section: Features: Learning Curve WWW: Learning Curve
A compelling class seen through the eyes of professor and student
THE STUDENT:
Katie Tinto
A.B. '96, Urban Studies
Do you want a bulletproof vest? We offer it to every ride-along." I shook my head no although my confidence was fading fast. "You won't need it. Don't worry about it." Sure, easy for him to say, but I chose to believe this police officer, who has been my friend since my first day at the department. I have to admit that several worst-case scenarios were flashing in my head as I sat in the front seat of the police car. I was on my first ride-along since starting to work at the East Palo Alto Police Department. Later that day, watching from the car as the officer talked to two men allegedly trespassing, I thought, "A year ago, I never would have guessed that I would be sitting here now."
Back then, I was in a book-paneled room in the Political Science Building. It was the first day of my seminar on "Urban Policy" with Professor Luis Fraga. A senior urban studies major, I had taken lecture courses on similar issues, but this was my first opportunity to experience those issues as an intern.
As I surveyed my choices for an internship in urban policy, I realized that this class offered me a wonderful opportunity. It was a chance to challenge myself and gain a different perspective on urban issues. When the time came to pick my internship, I heard myself say, "the East Palo Alto Police Department."
During my internship, I began what is now the Family Violence Prevention Program there. I started by creating an advisory board composed of community members and experts in the fields of domestic violence and related issues. We created an outline of the "ideal" family violence prevention program for the community. This process enabled me to learn about the people of the community and to interact, as a colleague, with activists, district attorneys, probation officers and teachers.
Back at Stanford, my internship enriched my work for the seminar. I infused my analysis of theories of local government and race relations with my experiences. Class discussions were strengthened by other students' internship experiences.
Similarly, my work was strengthened by my academic reading and the exchange of ideas. Each student in the seminar was required to write a final policy paper and make a presentation to the class, which for that occasion became "the city council."
My paper was a description of the Family Violence Prevention Program. By outlining the work of the police department and the high incidence of domestic violence, I wanted to convince the council of the need for the program. Although the students could not give me real funding, my class paper became the basis for my grant proposal to the Packard Foundation.
After graduating, I decided to stay at the police department and continue the development of the program. The proposal to the Packard Foundation was accepted and I became the official, and salaried, program coordinator.
As program coordinator, I have done everything from riding in a Little
League parade to receiving more than $100,000 in program funding. I
started with a piece of paper on which I outlined an ideal prevention
program. Today, there is an advisory board, foundation support,
community involvement, timelines, long-term goals and enough work, and
paper, to keep me very busy. And current students in the urban policy
seminar come to work in the Family Violence Prevention Program for their
internship.
THE PROFESSOR:
Luis Fraga
Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Political Science
All university professors expect their work to meet the academic standards of parsimony and logical consistency. Political scientists attain parsimony by first identifying the fundamental principles of political behavior. As scholars, we must then use these principles in a logically consistent way to explain the causes and consequences of that behavior.
For some of us, that's still not enough. We add other standards saliency and viability. Saliency pushes us to deal with issues that concern major segments of the population. Viability requires us to undertake work that is relevant not only to the scholarly community, but also to the larger public. After all, who provides universities with the legitimacy and resources to do our scholarly work?
Hence, Political Science 104, "Urban Policy: Strategies for Urban Development." The seminar enrolls 20 students each year and examines an issue central to life in this country: why substantial numbers of the residents of America's large cities live with limited material resources and even more limited opportunities.
At the outset, we use parsimony and logical consistency to assess the relevant literature and review current research. As for saliency and viability, we go a different road. Large central cities in the United States contain the most concentrated aggregations of class, racial and ethnic diversity of any level of government in the United States. The patterns of politics and policy-making in cities often set the patterns for how the issues of class, race or ethnicity are decided at state and national levels. How can students best see those patterns?
For at least seven hours each week, my students fan out to internships in East Palo Alto's government offices, social service agencies and community-based organizations: the police department, the Gateway 101 Retail Center Project, the office of the Enterprise Foundation, the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula, the Ecumenical Hunger Program, EPA CAN DO and the 49er Academy, among others.
The internship experiences allow students to develop a set of empirical evidence. Thus armed, they can critically and firsthand assess the worth of the literature they have reviewed. Ultimately, they become not only spectators of political phenomena but intellectual participants in the application of scholarly analysis.
This class has been a revelation to its teacher as well as its participants. It is the most challenging and rewarding that I have taught in my seven years at Stanford. It forces me to stay current with research, policy analysis and developments in East Palo Alto. I have learned from the reflections of the students in their weekly journal submissions. Those journals are a delight - when placed under the direction of community leaders, the students demonstrate a creativity matched by their critical analysis.
Each student must develop a policy proposal consistent with his or her internship experience. Then he or she must present those recommendations orally and in writing before the class as it poses as the city council, board of directors or community focus group assessing the proposal.
This course grew out of a call by Stanford's Haas Center for Public Service urging faculty to develop courses with service-learning components. The concept of service-learning argues that some intellectual inquiry can serve the scholar, the student and the interests of local leaders.
Too little of our intellectual capital at universities is spent improving the lives of those Americans with the least opportunity for upward political, economic and social mobility. One theory attributes the current condition of many inner cities to middle-class and white flight to the suburbs. It is important that universities, as well, do not commit intellectual white flight.
Political Science 104 is one of my efforts to help Stanford comply with its responsibility to all segments of our society. But it is still more personal: I am a better researcher and teacher through this course. I know that it makes my students even more insightful student scholars. ST