For most students, classes never go beyond the reading material. But for students enrolled in Alternative Student Break-sponsored classes for Winter Quarter, the learning continues once the textbook is closed.
The 14 students enrolled in each of the two classes will take an ASB trip over Spring Break to experience first hand the issues they discuss during the quarter. The classes will focus on sustainable development and U.S. correctional systems.
The classes are part of ASB’s rapidly expanding alternative breaks program, which students said offers experiences they never could get while laying on a beach or sitting in front of the television. ASB trips are geared toward service learning, and attempt to combine an emphasis on community service with an opportunity to meet a wide variety of Northwestern students and become more involved in campus life.
“We try to bring back what people do on their trips to the campus,” said ASB Program Coordinator Lauren Taiclet, a Medill senior and former Daily photo editor. “Most people come back with greater awareness of an issue they didn’t understand before they left and with a greater connection to students on campus.”
One class will focus on how the correctional system works as one part of the whole criminal justice system, said Greg Allen, a McCormick senior and ASB education co-chairman, who will also lead the class. Key issues will include the treatment of women in prison systems, the effect of race on criminality, prison overcrowding, the death penalty and rehabilitation.
Allen’s class will take a trip to a midsized U.S. city to work with people who are on probation and re-entering their communities looking for jobs and houses.
“The point of the trip is for kids in the class to learn more about the issue hands-on,” said Allen. “It’s taking the topics we’ve been talking about and seeing how those topics play out in real life.”
Lindsay Pool, Education senior and ASB education co-chairwoman, will lead the class on sustainable development. The class will study how the United States and other economic powers affect developing countries, with an emphasis on Latin America.
Pool, a Daily columnist, said her class might take a trip outside of the United States to Mexico or Costa Rica, although such plans still are awaiting final approval. Another option would be to take a trip somewhere along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“What we’re trying to do in the trip is to get a real-life, hands-on version of how sustainable development is or is not taking place in global society,” Pool said. “It’s a really beneficial learning experience, with readings, lectures and discussion. Then you can actually get out into the community and see how (the education) can be applied, and it makes the learning experience much more valuable.”
Although the educational aspect of the ASB trips is important, participants said the most appealing aspect of the programs is that they allow NU students to meet, live and interact with one another in a different environment.
“I went because I wanted to meet a lot of new people,” said Weinberg sophomore Dean Schraufnagel, whose trip to Oregon last spring focused on removing foreign plant species from the local ecosystem. “The work was fun because you’re with a bunch of people who are cool and who want to do the work also. It was an amazing trip, and I’m doing it all the four years that I’m here.”
