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Eighth College Eighth
  1. Eighth College
  2. Critical Community Engagement
  3. CCE Course Descriptions

Course Descriptions 

Inaugural class of Eighth students and staff standing in a crowd and smiling

The Critical Community Engagement (CCE) Academic Program is designed to guide Eighth College students through a process of learning more about frameworks of ethical community partnership and methods of engagement, community care, structural inequities rooted in racism, and their own relationships to the communities that matter to them. Each course in the CCE series emphasizes a different concept essential for collaborating with communities.

Incoming first-year students take a four-course CCE sequence (CCE 1, 2, 3, and 120). Transfer students take a two-course sequence (CCE 110 and 120). General descriptions of each CCE course and specific section information for CCE 120 themes can be found below. 

Beginning Fall 2026, each CCE course will be offered every quarter. 

CCE 1: Critical Approaches in Community Practice

In CCE 1, students reflect on their assets and gifts to understand asset-based community development, reflect on figures and collectives involved with social justice in specific contexts (such as student activists from UCSD’s history), and work in groups to develop ideas for action products that support the communities they care about. Students will reflect on their learning after each core assignment to consider how key terms like assets, social justice, and community are relevant to their lives.

CCE 2: Methods for Ethical Community Engagement

In this writing-intensive course, students are encouraged to notice that certain kinds of knowledge are historically privileged and that we have ethical choices to make when we write and research about communities. Students learn to recognize and write from their positionalities, ask key questions informed by participatory action research (PAR) methods, and tell the stories of communities’ ongoing engagement with social justice. This course also emphasizes the writing process and guides students through drafting, giving and receiving peer feedback, and revising. 

CCE 3: Elements of Community-Engaged Collaborative Research

In this second writing-intensive course, students engage with ideas, research, and communities with greater depth. Students are positioned as members of a research collective tasked with researching and writing in response to a central question related to Pro-Blackness and antiracism. Students will develop their own research questions, employ Participatory Action Research (PAR) practices to amplify marginalized voices, and translate their findings for a public-facing audience.

CCE 110: Foundations for Community Partnership (for transfer students only)

This course is designed to prepare transfer students for critical community  engagement by introducing both foundational concepts and community-facing writing skills. Students will integrate course material with their lived experience and collegiate academic history in preparation for community partnership and project design.

Launching in Fall 2026 

CCE 120: Community Partnership and Project Design

This course focuses on putting the skills acquired in CCE 1-3 or CCE 110 (for transfers) into practice by acting. This project-based capstone course gives students the opportunity to design, develop, and deliver a project in collaboration with local community partners. Attendance is required for lecture and fieldwork sections (e.g., A00 + A01).

CCE 120 Themes for Spring 2026

Liberty and Justice for All? Practicum on Prisons & the Right to Literacy

  • A00 Lecture: MWF 1:00-1:50 pm 
  • A01 Fieldwork: W 2:00-2:50 pm
  • B00 Lecture: MWF 2:00-2:50 pm
  • B01: Fieldwork: W 3:00-3:50 pm

From Theory to Action: Engagement in the Borderlands

  • C00 Lecture: TTh 9:30-10:50 am
  • C01 Fieldwork: W 9:00-9:50 am
  • D00 Lecture: TTh 11:00 am-12:20 pm
  • D01 Fieldwork: W 10:00 am-10:50 am

Food and Climate Justice

  • E00 Lecture: TTh 2:00-3:20 pm
  • E01 Fieldwork: W 11:00-11:50 am
  • F00 Lecture: TTh 3:30-4:50 pm
  • F01 Fieldwork: W 1:00-1:50 pm

Summer 2026 Course Offerings

Summer Session 1

  • CCE 1: TTh 2:00-4:50 pm | Ash Merryman
  • CCE 120: TTh 11:00 am-1:50 pm | Kassy Lee

Summer Session 2

  • CCE 2: TTh 8:00-10:50 am | Davíd Morales
  • CCE 2: TTh 11:00 am-1:50 pm | Angela Mendoza
  • CCE 120: MW 11:00 am-1:50 pm | Nancy Nguyen
Last updated February 2026