Stanford University Urban Studies &
Urban Summer Fellowship
Student perspectives of community-engaged learning and research across the United States
Hi! I'm Ethan Chua, a rising junior and anthropology major trying my best to fight the modern/colonial new world order.
I’ve been spending the past several weeks working at an Oregon-based nonprofit called the Innovation Law Lab, an organization which is dedicated to ensuring that immigrants in detention get access to legal counsel, especially in judicial jurisdictions hostile to immigrants. While Innovation Law Lab has primarily worked in detention centers out-of-state, helping immigrants move through the nebulous process of gaining legal status in the US, the problems of immigrant detention and mass deportation recently moved very close to home for the organization, as the federal government moved over a hundred immigrants to a prison in Sheridan, Oregon, where they’re currently being detained. Given that, the work I’ve been involved in this summer has primarily focused on getting legal services to the immigrants being detained in the Sheridan facility, helping them out with their credible fear interviews and working on requests for their release. I’ve definitely been moved and humbled by the work, especially with the headlines on the Trump administration’s family separation policy having come out right when I began the internship. I wanted, badly, to make a difference - and felt grateful to be able to contribute in a concrete way. One of my main takeaways after these few weeks, though, is a frustration at the narrow rhetoric with which family separation is discussed. It’s undeniable that tearing families apart is a major violation of ethics and human rights, but I’ve learned that to stop the conversation at family reunification is to miss a series of broader problems. If we focus our attention on reuniting families without recognizing the reasons why they fled their home countries in the first place, we risk reunifying families only for them to be deported en masse. And if we focus all our rhetoric on the migrant children being cruelly moved to shelters and “foster families” throughout the country, we risk losing sight of the continued inhumane practices which animate adult detention - practices which have existed even before the immigration crackdowns of the current administration. Family reunification is undeniably important, but so are the rights of immigrants who aren’t separated from family, or who arrive in the United States on their own. Though, in my mind, there’s cause for hope that the current scrutiny US immigration policy is subject to will turn into a more sustained and nuanced conversation - one that might begin with the slogan of keeping families together, but could translate into a discussion on the complicity between private prisons and deportation; a reckoning with the institutional prejudice which animates ICE; and a recognition of the thinly veiled systemic racism which is at the core of calls to deport “criminals” and “illegals.” In addition, I think one thing I’m struggling to figure out right now is the language and power of the law. Constitutional rights are a cornerstone of the US government, and part of the work of my organization is safeguarding those rights which are provided to anyone on US soil, regardless of their immigration status. But understanding subjectivity solely in terms of the dictates of a nation-state’s constitution might be overly reductive, and risks a rhetoric of humanism where the human is framed solely in political terms. I’m trying to figure out how to align this legal orientation (which is, from my experience at this organization, extremely powerful and a way to hold the US government accountable) with my belief in radical imagination - imagination which pushes at institutional limits and which invites us to empathy for immigrants even outside the framework of constitutional rights. I’ve been turning a lot to theorist Gayatri Spivak in this regard, and how she describes such aspirations as constitutional rights and democracy (in her case, specifically pertaining to situations of decolonization) as those things which “one cannot not want” - but how she also reminds her readers that her deconstructive project is precisely to question and examine that which one cannot not want in ways that open up new structural possibilities.
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Hi, I'm John Okhiulu, a rising sophomore looking to double major in Human Biology and African and African American studies on a Pre-Med track at Stanford. For Starters... This summer I've been working as an intern with Go DEED, an up-and-coming tech company based in Brooklyn, New York. Now before I get into what we do, I'll first explain what lead me to this organization. I've always been dedicated to service in the communities I've been a part of. At a young age, my family would spend our time ministering to the homeless or attending church events in the community. In highschool I'd spend weekends working with my friends on cleaning up the lake or planting trees or giving hours to the North Texas Food Bank. I found these experiences to be fun and fulfilling, even more so when I had friends around me. Fast Forward to Winter Quarter freshman year. I needed to figure out what I'd be doing with my summer. I have plenty of computer science experience that I could put to work for the hundreds of thousands of companies shifting grounds currently. However my applications with the biggest of the tech giants had fallen through. No offer from Microsoft, a botched interview with Google, and I found myself falling fast without a cord to retract me or a rock to latch on to. Doors were being slammed shut in my face. Instead of frantically despairing or sitting in sorrow with the "L's" I'd been taking, I decided to reflect and think about what I wanted to gain from my freshman summer experience. I had to rethink my approach to the search. I thought about the community work I'd loved so much in the past. I thought about the skills I currently had that could be of value to someone else. Finally, not sorry at all, I thought about where I wanted to spend my summer (Not back in Texas, far too hot - not at Stanford, I wanted a change in scenery). Boiled down, I was looking for social good organizations in New York City that could use an intern with software skills. Cool, a new target, but what was the next step. Well, ironically enough I went to Google. I searched something along the lines of "social good + new york city + software". Shot in the dark, right? Well it landed me on a Complex article in partnership with Marvel's Defenders, a new Netflix series. The article was titled "Four Real Life Defenders". One of the real-life-defenders is my current boss, CEO and founder of DEED. The company he started was exactly what I was looking for: an organization connecting members of the community to service opportunities. My shot in the dark landed cleanly into the net: 3 points! My time at Go DEED Alright, so now I'm here working for this company dedicated to creating a platform that connects New Yorkers to volunteer events in their community. It's been both a humbling and heartwarming experience thus far. I came in and within a few hours, myself and the other interns realized that when it came down to software development, we really knew nothing. It was as though we were working totally from scratch, learning a new language and programming in a native environment. On a scale of knowing absolute zilch about software development to being able to write my own app from scratch, I'd say that while I haven't gone from 0 to 1, I feel like I can safely say I'm at a 0.6 on the scale at the moment with room to grow. Aside from the programming experience I'm gaining, I'm learning a lot about the ins-and-outs of running a startup. Interns get to sit in and input into company meetings, where all the members of the team update the rest on what they've been up to. I get to learn about all the little pieces that go into turning a brilliant idea into an even more brilliant realization. The best part about this opportunity is that I have been exposed to other amazing service opportunities within the community I'm working in. My favorite even to this point has been working with a children's resource center in Brooklyn. I got the chance to work one-on-one with a student named Freedom. Dude was cool: we talked about his family and his love for math and connected over Fortnite, the video game. There were so many smiles to be had that first day. We as volunteers even played a kickball match against the kids (bad idea). We got our butts whooped but it was a lot of fun so I can't complain. What matters to you and why? Experiences like this matter to me. I know I probably don't have to preach about the need for everyone to give back to their community when they are in the position, especially to you if you're reading this post. Instead, I think this experience speaks to the ability and the access that we all have as students, as members of the workforce, as educators, etc. to make a difference either within our work or outside of it. I'm more motivated than I've ever been to help DEED improve their platform because I've seen the impact that service work can have on the planet and the lives of its inhabitants and I know that we as citizens could benefit from an app that allows us to easily seek out those opportunities and make friends with people trying to accomplish a similar thing. In conclusion, I'd say that perceived losses or rejections don't always have to be considered "failures". Sometimes, a door is closed so that a brighter and more aligned one is opened up for you. I'm excited to see how far I can go to helping DEED grow as a company and I'm hopeful for the direction of this platform. “Without a strong and inclusive central heart, a city tends to become a collection of interests isolated from one another. It falters at producing something greater, socially, culturally, and economically, than the sum of its separated parts.” -Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities As everyone in the Quad Cities (a metro area of about half a million people on the Iowa/Illinois banks of the Mississippi River) knows, downtown Davenport, Iowa is changing rapidly - the parking lots along the river are being turned into parks and plazas, empty storefronts are finding new life with cafes and shops, musical artists are stopping on their Midwest tours to perform here, and you can now actually see people walking around again (in contrast to what my mom wondered when she arrived from Spain in the ‘80s: “Where are all the people??”)
I’m Pablo Haake, a rising senior in Urban Studies, and I"m working with the Downtown Davenport Partnership (DDP) - a nonprofit organization that oversees economic development and revitalization in the downtown district of the city. I was brought on to the team to drive research and spur conversations, mainly around streetscape and mobility: figuring out how we can make our streets more “complete” and accessible to pedestrians and cyclists, beyond just cars, as usual. So far it’s been really rewarding to be back home over the summer for the first time, and to apply what I’ve been learning at Stanford to where I grew up, a city that is big enough to teach me more about urban development, and small enough where change feels tangible and manageable. Why Here, Why Now? I’m majoring in Urban Studies and participating in another Urban Studies Summer Fellowship because I firmly believe that as we remake the city, we remake ourselves, and that to truly achieve changes to social, political, and economic realities, we need to remake the city. This idea -stemming from the “right to the city” philosophy of Henri Lefebvre, Guy Debord, Jane Jacobs, and countless others sociologists and urban activists who have fought to democratize the power of people to shape their communities- ties together my interests in urban planning, social change, justice, design, policy, and political philosophy. Through classes, projects, other internships, etc., I’ve explored the history of cities, how systems of economics and politics shape and govern them, and how through design we can reimagine them in the face of present challenges and future ideals. It’s meant a very broad approach, and occasional uncertainty about what exactly I’m aiming for, but it’s always felt quite real, applicable and important. I’ve been amazed by how many people excitedly dive into conversation about some aspect of cities when I tell them about my major. Clearly, people have a lot of ideas about what to change, and I happen to think that considering the current crises of climate change, declining democracy, rising inequality, pervasive division and discrimination, and other forms of injustice, a lot of changes are needed. I started down this path senior year of high school, when a few classmates and I hosted an event targeted at other young people (the “OurCity Ideas Festival”) to pose the question: “What do we want our city (Davenport) to look like in the future?” Now I’m back, three years later, to complete the circle: to see what I’ve learned, how I’ve changed, and to push for positive progress. Real Life SimCity or Grassroots Community Development? In these first two weeks, the experience can roughly be summarized as a combination of frustratingly slow and imaginatively exciting, which in some ways describes the planning process generally, and the pace of change in Davenport’s downtown. Sitting in a City Council meeting and hearing council members and aldermen discuss the new zoning ordinance and the recommendations for changes to downtown parking policies I helped prepare (not the most fascinating area to research, but always surprising how much parking affects everything else), I saw firsthand how personalities and misperceptions can sometimes cloud logical approaches. Faced with the opportunity to secure 80 new high-paying jobs downtown, city staff and the council were hesitant to grant more parking spaces in a ramp that is never even close to being full, because of an outdated policy. It’s a small example, but it was telling. Talking with Kyle Carter, the head of DDP, about all the areas of work he oversees is exciting given our shared interest in the future of the downtown. It almost felt like a real-life SimCity game when we were panning over the downtown on Google Maps. “This block would ideally be residential, to tie together the fabric of the neighborhood. Here is where we’re trying to attract a new grocery store. This building was preserved for new housing units, that one is going down soon, a gym in its place.” Walking around, of course, provides a different perspective - of residents, store owners, office workers living their everyday life amid the change. It’s pretty wild to me how much a nonprofit can influence so much, and recalls the importance of involving as many people as possible in such processes. Starting this week, I’ll begin to interview business owners and residents about proposals for the future, in order to collect their thoughts and bring them back to DDP and the city government. I hope to support the work being done here at DDP while pushing for “the right to the city” philosophy I described earlier. Because after all (to finish with another Jane Jacobs quote), “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” -Pablo Haake This summer under the Haas Urban Summer Fellowship at Stanford, I am working with the Noble Network of Charter Schools in Chicago, Illinois. Going into the fellowship, there was a lot to think about, and I honestly did not know how to process it all in the beginning of the summer. I was extremely overwhelmed with having moved into an unfamiliar space while also managing preparations for getting to work the next day and the work itself. This fellowship has been a huge learning process on the actual work side, but also on a very personal and individual level as well. I am not even halfway through my time here and I have learned so much about the work that I am doing and myself individually.
At Noble, I am a Government and Community Affairs Fellow, where I work under the Senior Community Organizer in the office. Our main focus over the summer when schools are not in session, is to maintain parent involvement as well as foster relationships with community organizations and elected officials in the area. It is important to gain these relationships in order to best serve our students with different, more accessible services. Parent advocacy is one of our biggest focuses, because we recognize the importance of involved parents and guardians in students’ educational careers. I have become much more comfortable communicating with parents and other community members throughout this experience as well. I have had to work on the more professional skill of being able to hold meetings with strangers as well as the more informal skill of just being a personable human being that a parent would feel comfortable communicating to. Throughout all of my experiences here, I have begun to foster a well rounded level of knowledge about this kind of work and hope that this experience helps guide me in my future endeavors. One experience that I want to speak on specifically is a women empowerment lunch that my supervisor invited another fellow and I to this past week. We were able to go because a prominent figure in the community was being honored there and had invited my supervisor. Something that I admire about my boss is her ability to foster such genuine relationships, where suddenly somebody that she has grown closer to is inviting her to something like this. The event was extremely inspiring for me personally. The focus was not only on networking and communicating with people that Noble could potentially partner with in the future, but also how I personally could grow in the future and follow in some of these women’s footsteps. The fact that I had the opportunity to attend something like this for the place that I work was really amazing for me because it shows the priorities of the network and how they value women empowerment and specifically my personal growth. The event was organized by Tragil Wade, Dwayne Wade’s sister, and we talked to her about partnering in the future. She was completely open to the idea and gave us her contact information. That is the kind of work that I want to be doing. I want to be able to work with other powerful women to support the communities around me, and that is what I saw a lot of women that were being honored that day doing. Conflict and Communication There were some days that I felt conflicted with my personal morals around the education system, but any time I felt anything, my thoughts were widely received and we were always allowed to talk about it. That is one thing that I really respect my office for, because nobody is afraid to say what is rubbing them the wrong way. Everybody is very communicative and I feel that is a skill that I will be able to use in any kind of setting moving forward. Hi, my name is Katie and I'm a rising junior studying Urban Studies and Earth Systems. I'm one of the Urban Studies Fellow and I'm interested in issues of cultural preservation in urban communities, environmental justice, and racial justice. Before this, I had never really worked a 9 to 5 office job. This summer is a complete contrast to the last; prior to this, I was working at a farm in Pescadero doing farm work and product design work. I lived in a tent and nearly 20 miles away from any stores. Now, I am in the center of urban life and seeing urban design, issues, and planning in practice. The combination of being in a bustling, lively city and doing more administrative tasks meant that my summer would be different in a lot of different ways. This summer, I’m working at the Center of Urban Pedagogy, a non-profit that uses the power of design and art to increase meaningful civic engagement.CUP collaborates with designers, educators, advocates, students, and communities to make educational tools that demystify complex policy and planning issues. I have several goals this summer: I want to gain a better sense of design that I can use in organizing and communication of different issues that impact urban communities, I want to learn how to be a better educator and learn what it’s like to teach with accessibility in mind, and I want to see how artists, educators, and urbanists can collaborate to solve widespread urban issues. I’m incredibly excited for my internship and have enjoyed the work that I’ve done so far. For the first two weeks of my internship at CUP, I worked primarily in the office, helping to organize our different pamphlets and equipment. I worked from mainly an administrative standpoint, which helped me better understand the inner workings of a non-profit. There’s a lot of turning gears that I’m not aware of and it’s interesting to see all of the behind the scenes work. CUP partners with a lot of different community organizations, artists, designers, and stakeholders to produce their work. Getting involved in different capacities, whether it be helping with design input or helping teach classes, has taught me a bit about each realm of the worlds that CUP intersects with. Working on youth education These last two weeks, I’ve been working in the Bronx instead of CUP’s office in Brooklyn. CUP has many different programs up their sleeve, but their youth programs are truly exceptional. CUP creates pamphlets and posters using design to tackle different urban issues. The two youth programs, City Studies and Urban Investigations allows students, non-profits, and teaching artists to collaborate on a project of their own. Students learn different skills including art, interviewing, and journalism to produce a product of their own. Check out this link to view all of our different projects and collaborations that we've done. City Studies is unique in that it is a short term but intense camp for students who would have otherwise had no summer programming. You can check out some of the older City Studies by clicking this link. Unlike other prior City Studies, our final product would be a website. This allowed a lot of freedom for me and the Teaching Artist. The City Studies that I worked on was a collaboration between CUP and the Wildlife Conservation Society to help South Bronx students answer the question of “Who has access to nature and who decides?”. Students from Fannie Lou High School and KAPPA International came together to work collectively on this project. This gets at the core of environmental justice issues in the Bronx and asks students to explore the issue of why low income and or people of color communities have less access to nature. They explored issues of accessibility, urban greenery, conservation, and activism. The way my supervisor framed my work to me was: instead of teaching kids about issues in their communities, CUP wants to give tools to the students to give them a sense of agency in civic engagement. I am particularly interested in alternative forms of education, ones that are more transformative and teach students how to be engaged civic participants. I thought it was a really unique approach of allowing students to explore the power of art and design, giving them the power to ask questions to people who are making a big difference in the community, and allowing them to explore the issues themselves. Over the course of the two weeks, students explored different mediums of art like collage stop motion to stencil graffiti. I think CUP does a great job with political education and gives students who are in many other ways discouraged and disengaged from the systems of civic engagement, a sense of agency and an immense set of skills to communicate the changes they want to see. This has made me rethink what good service is in the realm of education and how to create wide platforms and curriculums for all sorts of different issues. I helped build the curriculum for this project and facilitated daily tasks; I enjoyed seeing the students change and grow every day as they built their set of skills and confidence. Art in the city |
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This blog is authored by Stanford University students engaged in summer fellowships through the Cardinal Quarter and the Program on Urban Studies. All writings and thoughts belong to the Fellows and do not represent the opinion of the sponsoring programs.
In the summer of 2000, the Haas Center and the Program on Urban Studies began offering the Urban Summer Fellowship Program. These fellowships focus on issues affecting urban life in the United States. Additionally, the Program on Urban Studies offers its own summer fellowships. 14 Urban Summer Fellowships and 4 Urban Studies Fellowships were awarded in 2017. Both Urban Summer and Urban Studies Fellows have the opportunity to spend a summer working at an organization addressing urban issues (e.g., architecture, community organizing, urban planning, education, and civil rights).
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