Art & Social Change

SOCO/PS/CST 23200
Meets: W 5:00–7:00pm
Instructor: Mike Hebbeler

Students will work with a South Bend neighborhood to explore a structural challenge and, with the guidance of a local artist, respond to this challenge alongside community members in creating an artistic piece that serves the good of the neighborhood. This seminar will also provide a “hands-on” experience as students are exposed to practices of participatory research methods and the art-making process.

Contemplative Leadership Practicum

SOCO 23916
Meets: T 6:00–6:50pm
Instructor: Rev. Dr. George LaMaster

Studying the theory and practice of contemplative leadership, students reflect on their leadership experiences on and off campus. This course is restricted to students in the Corde Scholars Program.

The Costs of Fast Fashion

SOCO 23918
Meets: T/TH 11:00–11:50 am

(Jan. 13–Feb. 26)
Instructor: Anne Lally

Taught by a veteran of the global apparel industry, this one-credit practical course explores “fast fashion.” This revolutionary approach to clothing manufacturing is taking the world by storm, based on unimaginably low prices that make clothing, essentially, disposable. Read more...

Discernment & The Common Good

SOCO/PS/CST 33961
Meets: F 10:30am–12:00pm

(Feb. 12–Apr. 23)
Instructor: Felicia Johnson O’Brien

This course provides undergraduate students an opportunity to reflect on their undergraduate education and to explore their respective vocations as it relates to the common good. Whether considering a change in major, deciding on postgraduate plans, navigating a relationship, or seeking greater intentionality in daily life, students in this class will accompany each other as they consider their vocation, learn different methods of discernment, and develop practices to listen and respond to these callings. Read more...

Human Rights Advocacy: The Blueprint

SOCO 33316/63316
Meets: WF 9:15–10:45am

(Mar. 4–Apr. 3)
Instructor: Monalisa

This interdisciplinary course equips students in Strategic Human Rights Advocacy- an innovation driven approach to solve society’s most wicked problems. It gives students a blueprint to identify rights based issues with precision, contrast them with competing claims and propose creative solutions. The course journeys through multiple case studies of human rights violations that grew from local to international and thus equips students with the building blocks of advocacy. Read more...

McNeill Winter Plunge

(Includes winter break experience!)
SOCO 23917
Application deadline: November 2
Meets: Immersive experience Jan. 5–8, 2026; class Jan. 24th, 1:00–3:00pm; plus one additional non-traditional January class meeting (date/time TBA)
Instructor: Ed Jurkovic

The McNeill Winter Plunge consists of a three-day immersive experience that takes place over winter break, followed by a one credit S/U course in the Spring semester. The program invites business majors interested in being virtuous leaders to step outside the classroom and into the realities of being unhoused. Read more...

NDBridge

(Includes summer break experience!)
SOCO 23915
Meets: TH 5:30–7:30pm

(Feb. 5–Apr. 23)
Instructor: Ryan Juskus

What does justice look like? How are injustices created and perpetuated? What is my responsibility to promote justice and the common good? How can research contribute to these goals? In this required course for students selected to participate in the NDBridge summer program, students are equipped to answer these questions as they develop a framework for encountering people in marginalized communities and understanding the challenges these communities face. Read more...

Organizing Power & Hope

SOCO/PS/CST 33965
Meets: TH 6:00–7:30pm
Instructor: Mike Hebbeler

This course will take place in a local neighborhood and students will learn fundamental concepts and skills of community organizing alongside residents of South Bend. Together, neighbors and students will learn the art of organizing through relational meetings, house meetings, power-mapping, and research actions. The culmination of the course will include participation in a public action with local officials addressing a pressing issue in our community. Through a series of trainings and hands-on application, students will build public relationships, amplify their voices, cultivate power and leverage it for justice.

Proximities: Arts of Dignity

(Includes spring break experience!)
SOCO 23205
Meets: Sat., Feb. 28th, 1:00–3:00pm and Sat., Mar. 28th, 1:00–3:00pm, plus immersive experience March 9–13, 2026 
Instructor: Geneva Hutchinson

This one-credit S/U course explores how the arts can be utilized as a tool to promote justice and the common good. In order to bridge bridge theory and praxis, the course will involve a 5 day immersive experience to Philadelphia, PA over spring break to engage with community organizations and local artists who are navigating the art world through a lens of justice. Read more...

Proximities: Environmental Justice in Cancer Alley

(Includes spring break experience!)
SOCO 23206
Meets: Sat., Feb. 28th, 1:00–3:00pm and Sat., Mar. 28th, 1:00–3:00pm, plus immersive experience March 9–13, 2026 
Instructor: Katherine Comeau

This one-credit S/U course examines the structure of environmental racism and the impact on people and their communities, how faith leaders and organizations address the risks of climate change, community resilience, and strategies for adaptation and mitigation. In order to bridge theory and praxis, the course will involve a 5 day immersive experience to New Orleans, LA, and nearby “Cancer Alley” during spring break. Read more...

Proximities: Justice at the México-U.S. Border

(Includes spring break experience!)
SOCO 23204
Meets: Sat., Feb. 28th, 1:00–3:00pm and Sat., Mar. 28th, 1:00–3:00pm, plus immersive experience March 8–13, 2026 
Instructor: Felicia Johnson O’Brien

This one-credit S/U course examines why migrants leave their home countries, what they encounter at the border, responses from U.S.-based citizen and faith groups, and the effectiveness of U.S. enforcement policies. Read more...

Proximities: Whole Person Healthcare

(Includes spring break experience!)
SOCO 23203
Meets: Sat., Feb. 28th, 1:00–3:00pm and Sat., Mar. 28th, 1:00–3:00pm, plus immersive experience March 9–13, 2026 
Instructor: Jhaylee Busby

This one-credit S/U course examines the U.S. healthcare’s intersections with poverty, housing, addiction, and migration. We will do so through the lens of Minnesota’s healthcare system, recently ranked as one of the best in the United States. What structures are in place that support people’s flourishing? Where are there gaps? Why? Read more...

Race, Sport and Identity

SOCO 33966
Meets: M 12:50-1:50pm

(Jan. 12–Apr. 20)
Instructor: Keona Lewis

Throughout this course, students will examine the social and cultural aspects of sport through an exploration of the unique ways that race and identity influence sport participation, access and engagement. This course will engage topics such as: Sport and Identity; Identity, “Success” and Resilience; Media Imagery, Identity and Power; and Race in American Sport.

Social Concerns Summer Fellowship

(Includes summer break experience!)
SOCO 23202
Meets: W 5:30–7:30pm

(Feb. 11–Apr. 29)
Instructor: Sam Deane

This course will prepare students for an 8-week immersive summer experience where they will work alongside a community organization.  During their summer students will explore their vocational aspirations, consider the dynamics and drivers of injustice and conduct original research in collaboration with their community partners. Preparation for summer will include vocational discernment and cultivation of basic research skills. Eight weeks of summer travel is required. Application required.

Doing Justice

SOCO/PSIM/CST 30573
Meets: M/W 3:30–4:45pm
Instructor: Daniel Graff

Put your education to work for justice. The study of justice—discerning how to know what is right, just and fair—is an ancient, multi-disciplinary pursuit. This interdisciplinary course offers students a foundational understanding of this rich theoretical tradition while also providing them with the research tools and skills to both explain and indeed respond to today’s most challenging questions of justice in the areas of environment, labor, incarceration, migration, poverty, and technology. Read more...

Gender @ Work in U.S. History

SOCO 30606/PS 30636
Meets: T/TH 9:30–10:45am
Instructor: Daniel Graff

Gender has been fundamental to the organization of nearly all human societies, but what gender has meant in terms of identity, opportunity, and economic activity has varied widely across time and space. This course will explore gender at work in US history, taking a chronological approach to show gender’s evolution and ongoing intersections with class, race, age, religion, region, and sexuality from 1776 to the near present. Read more...

Housing & the Common Good Research Lab

SOCO/PS/CST 30953
Meets: T/TH 2:00–3:15pm
Instructor: Margaret Pfeil

This course will devote the first part of the semester to establishing an account of the historical roots of the current affordable/low-income housing crisis in the United States, paying particular attention to the local St. Joseph County context. It will also introduce students to the housing “continuum of care” in the City of South Bend. Read more...

Mass Incarceration Research Lab

SOCO/PS 33312 and SOCO 63312
Meets: M 6:00–8:30pm
Instructor: Samuel Sokolsky-Tifft

This research lab will employ an interdisciplinary approach to research on a range of issues related to mass incarceration. Collaborating with faculty, scholars, activists, practitioners, those impacted by systems of incarceration, and other classmates, students will develop, refine and implement a research project which contributes to the overall body of scholarship on incarceration. Read more...

Introduction to Catholic Social Teaching

CST 20610/PS 20610
Meets: MW 11:00am–12:15pm
Instructor: Suzanne Mulligan

The primary goal of this course is to familiarize students with the tradition of Catholic social teaching with a view toward developing skills for critical reading and appropriation of these documents. We will examine papal, conciliar, and episcopal texts from Rerum novarum (1891) up to the present time, identifying operative principles, tracing central theological, ethical, and ecclesial concerns, and locating each document in its proper historical context. Read more...

Introduction to Poverty Studies

PS 23000
Meets: MW 2:00–3:15pm
Instructor: Connie Mick

In this gateway course, we ask: Why are people poor? We take an interdisciplinary look at poverty to better understand the forces that maintain poverty and the forces that resist it. From sustainability to social entrepreneurship, from economics to creative writing, we explore a variety of mindsets and methods for understanding, representing, and assessing poverty. Read more...

Poverty & Justice: Inside-Out

PS 47003/SOCO 67003
(Application deadline: November 3)
Meets: F 11:00am–4:30pm (includes travel time)
Instructor: Connie Mick

Lawyer and social justice activist Bryan Stevenson says, “In too many places, the opposite of poverty is not wealth, the opposite of poverty is justice.” This course will consider this claim as we advance our understanding of how to abolish poverty in the United States. Matthew Desmond’s book Poverty, By America will provide a foundation for our discussion based on the experience in the room and additional books and readings that will challenge and expand our collective knowledge. Read more...

Poverty Studies Research Capstone

PS 47000
Meets: Scheduled with advisor
Instructor: Connie Mick

Special studies with one of the Minor’s affiliated faculty. In this case the student will produce a product (manuscript, work or art, composition, poster board display of research results, etc.) that can be displayed, and will present this product to the members of the PSIM at a special colloquium held in the spring semester of each academic year. Students meet with their faculty advisor individually.

Pursuing Justice & the Common Good

SOCO 33350
Meets: T 5:30–8:00pm
Instructor: Ryan Juskus

What does pursuing justice look like in the real world? What does it take to sustain a commitment to pursuing justice amid everyday challenges, opposition, and different visions of the good? How does a commitment to the common good differ across a range of professions, careers, and vocations? How can research contribute to the common good? This interdisciplinary course equips students to answer these questions about the practice of pursuing justice and the common good through engagement with the fields of ethics, theology, history, politics, science studies, anthropology, sociology, literature, and the arts. Read more...

Senior Capstone: Catholic Social Tradition Minor

CST 48001
Meets: W 5:30–8:00pm
Instructor: Suzanne Mulligan

The Capstone Course is the culmination of the CST Minor. This course draws together your understanding of Catholic social teaching, and aims to facilitate a piece of critical research that builds upon the learning of the minor. Classes will combine structured reading, peer-to-peer learning via in-class presentations, and focused presentations that explore each student’s area of research. Read more...

Technology & Justice

SOCO/CST 30570
Meets: T/TH 12:30–1:45pm
Instructor: Megan Levis Scheirer

Explore the responsibility inherent in using, creating, and developing new technology. Students will begin with the following questions: What is justice? How does Technology promote or reduce justice? Does it do both? We will engage these questions through ancient frameworks such as the thinking of Aristotle and through modern frameworks outlined in Catholic social teaching. Read more...