Program Goals and Themes
As SUSI participants, you will explore the program themes of leadership, civic engagement, and social change. You will also develop self-confidence, independence, and connection to a larger vision of mutual understanding between citizens of the U.S. and diverse people and communities around the world. Each activity will promote active participation; inspire curiosity and dialogue between participants, local citizens, and organizations in our community; and explore leadership and service from a variety of perspectives.
Program Goals
The goals of the program are for participants to:
- Take part in challenging daily activities that encourage and support each individual’s leadership development and reinforce concepts of civic engagement, service and citizenship.
- Gain a comprehensive understanding of how individual citizens can influence community change through grassroots, organizational, and political means.
- Develop friendships and share experiences with other youth leaders from the U.S. and around the world.
- Build skills to develop and implement small-scale community development projects, including project planning, fundraising, marketing and outreach, volunteer coordination, and evaluation.
Program Themes
The SUSI Program will be delivered in two distinct tracks. Each theme will include both academic and experiential learning.
Track 1: Leadership, Diversity and Service
Leadership. The FIUTS SUSI leadership curriculum aligns each leadership area with competency-based activities that supports participants in their project planning goals and overall leadership identity development. Throughout all leadership sessions, we’ll work together on developing as leaders in our ability to communicate with diverse groups, reflect and build on our own and others’ experiences, and tell stories to drive impact.
Diversity. Seattle is an incredibly diverse city, with a network of social institutions and organizations that support and engage in grassroots social change in many ways. SUSI participants will have an opportunity to explore diversity on many levels - age, race, culture, physical ability, religion, and socio-economic class.
Service. SUSI participants will take part in several opportunities to serve the local community through volunteering, offering a chance to see organizations working to improve their communities on many levels.
Track 2: Civic Engagement and Social Change
This track, divided into three units, will encourage students to think about their future roles as leaders in relationship to a variety of models of civic engagement in the United States and a variety of pressing social issues. Aspiring to push students to think broadly about ways they may impact their own communities, we will frame civic engagement as an endeavor with multiple, meaningful approaches.
We will center students as agents of change, addressing topics like grass-roots student activism, volunteerism and direct action.
Three important themes will guide our journey:
Our first course unit explores the topic of food scarcity, particularly in Seattle. We will consider student engagement with this issue at the University of Washington (and in the city of Seattle).
Our next unit touches briefly on questions regarding climate change and sustainability.
Our final, major unit considers the way student movements transformed the United States in and after the Civil Rights Movement.
Throughout the course Ryan will take some time to situate important aspects of American history and some aspects of American governance, both at the state and national level.