Dealing with Disappointment in the Community Engaged Classroom

Community-based courses in the social sciences run the risk of dampening students’ enthusiasm for work that addresses social problems by exposing them to the full complexity of an issue without the corresponding lesson that their work can make a difference. In this case study, we discuss two such courses: an undergraduate sociology course and a graduate public administration course which both focused on affordable housing and gentrification in a historically African American town in coastal North Carolina. The case study explores the techniques that we incorporated into the courses to overcome disappointment and support students’ nascent desire become change agents after graduation. Our data source is student reflections written before, during, and at the completion of their work. From the comparison of the graduate and undergraduate courses, we conclude that the two-semester course structure, collaboration between the undergraduate and graduate courses, opportunities for intellectual and professional growth, and the strong community partnership were sufficient to overcome disappointment and empower students to continue working on intractable problems in the future.