UGS 2929 - Bennion Center Alternative Break

This community engaged learning course is the academic component to the Bennion Center’s Alternative Break (AB) experiences. Each section of this course and its corresponding AB trip is collaboratively designed by students, faculty, and staff, at the University of Utah to address social, economic, political, and environmental issues through education, community engagement, and travel. Alternative Break teams and this course will address critical community issues such as food access, illiteracy, environmental degradation, gender, society equity/justice, animal welfare, discrimination, inadequate housing, hunger, and poverty in cities and communities different from their own. The course provides transformative deeply engaged community learning experiences that help students develop their civic competencies and inspire them to generate new ideas, global perspectives, and empathy, that fosters active and engaged citizenship. Students in this course will learn and develop: 1) the four civic competencies outlined by the Bennion Center; 2) the components of quality Alternative Break experiences—Strong Direct Service, Education, Orientation, Training, Reflection, Reorientation, Diversity, and Alcohol/Drug-free; 3) how to deeply reflect on learning experiences individually and as a team; 4) the root causes and potential solutions to social, economic, environmental, and political problems facing communities; and 5) the important empathy and perspective gleaned from travel to and working with diverse communities that are different than their own.