Instructor: Guadalupe Lozano
Wed | 11:00 AM - 11:50 AM | In Person
This seminar will explore human assets (strengths, identities, lived-experiences, virtues, dispositions) as essential yet systemically de-centered inputs to the academic college experience. The course will open with the question “What are human assets?” and consider answers drawing on diverse multidisciplinary sources as well as literature focused on asset-based practices. Students will introspect upon and learn to recognize asset vs. deficit perspectives in formal schooling, the academy and human lived experiences. Students will also explore one large-scale example of a curricular asset-based transformation in STEM, and design a small-scale transformation in a context of value to them. The second part of the course will center the question “Why focus on assets?” and consider rationales for such a deliberate focus from three perspectives: intellectual, affective, and value-based. Students will revisit the earlier large-scale example and build upon their own asset-based designs, in an attempt to move from designing to enacting strengths-based change. The course will close with summary characterizations of human assets, asset-based dispositions, and flourishing in an asset-based academy. The course will draw equally from (1) formal, multi-disciplinary lenses on assets and asset-dispositions in the academy and elsewhere, and from (2) human perspectives, including student and community perceptions and lived experiences.