Critical Community Engagement

Students Painting Mural at School

Program Objectives

Eighth College has ambitious and actionable learning objectives that are characterized by the following:

A foundation of ethical practices
Recognition of our humanity as it transcends across disciplines
Prioritization of social and emotional well-being of students and community
Intellectual curiosity
Ambitious reciprocal and respectful efforts inside the classroom and outside to achieve transformation as we seek to solve historical and imminent challenges facing our communities – locally and throughout the world

UC San Diego students, and those in Eighth College particularly, are in a unique position to critically reflect on and put into action their connections to those at UC San Diego, the region, and more broadly the world. The reflection process requires courage, humility, and self-awareness. Our program cultivates conditions for reciprocity, ethical relations, and strong interpersonal communication skills (including advocacy for self and others).

UC San Diego students and those in Eighth College especially must have a deep understanding of the factors that have historically led to discrimination, structural and institutional racism, social exclusion, intentional and unintentional marginalization and harm to diverse communities. These conditions have in part also created mistrust among diverse communities to broader social institutions.

Eighth College's general education program prioritizes awareness of how historical factors interplay with current conditions in order to work collectively towards community-centered solutions to today’s most challenging problems. This includes preparation for responding to those that will arise in future moments.

The multi-disciplinary curriculum of Eighth College seeks to build students’ abilities to engage with diverse communities using a holistic approach to well-being by addressing not only physical health, but emotional health, social support by creating community within the college, and to foster intellectual curiosity that considers how prior and current approaches are rooted in an ethical approach to engaging community members and partners as part of the discovery process and strategies to create bold solutions to diverse global and local challenges.

The Critical Community Engagement (CCE) Academic Program is a four-course sequence 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. The current plan is that each course in the CCE series emphasizes a different concept essential for collaborating with communities.

Course Descriptions

Critical Community Engagement 1 - Offered Fall, Winter, and Spring

In this course, 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.

Offered Fall*, Winter, and Spring Quarters

*Denotes the "off-cycle" quarter for the course. While offered in this quarter, there will be fewer sections taught and limited seats available. Most students will take the course in one of the other two quarters

Critical Community Engagement 2 - Offered Fall, Winter, and Spring

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.

Offered Fall, Winter, and Spring* Quarters

Critical Community Engagement 3 - Offered Fall, Winter, and Spring

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.

Offered Fall, Winter*, and Spring Quarters

Critical Community Engagement 110 - Starting in Fall 2026

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 the 2026-2027 academic year for transfer students only

Critical Community Engagement 120 - Offered Fall, Winter, and Spring

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.

Offered Fall, Winter, and Spring Quarters, Starting Fall 2025