Maymester 2023

Join Thematic Option (Professor Michael Petitti) and JEP as they partner with Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Dr. Rina Camus) for a unique service-learning opportunity. Over eight weeks, from Hong Kong to Los Angeles, we will engage with an array of incredible service opportunities that highlight food justice and class-based concerns across the globe.

In Hong Kong, students will join up with the Poly U student group to work with organizations that focus on elderly and migrant populations when it comes to issues surrounding food justice, including food insecurity, recycling, and promoting indigenous cuisines. Students will also explore the city’s urban gardens and food centers, such as the Chung King Mansion and the Tai Po Market, in order to get a better sense of how food is oriented in an urban environment like Hong Kong. During these four weeks, students will work with various organizations and individuals, in addition to touring the city, so that they get a better sense of the issues surrounding food justice in Hong Kong. In this way, volunteering becomes a way to balance readings, lectures, and discussions about these issues with real world experience.

In Los Angeles, USC students will welcome their Poly U counterparts to Los Angeles and partner with Moonwater Farm (Compton) to deal with food justice issues far closer to campus. Specifically, students will work with groups like the Compton Community Garden to understand how policy issues play into food security for local communities. Furthermore, students will work with a local Compton middle school to install and set-up zip grow hydroponic food resources for the entire school to enjoy. Students will also work closely with community farms in Long Beach to understand cultural narratives and the historical lived experiences of the various diasporas (Filipino, Cambodian, Vietnamese) contributing to the rich South Bay landscape. In addition, students will visit a few culturally significant landmarks in Los Angeles (the Los Angeles River, the San Pedro Community Gardens) to learn more about how they contribute to understanding food justice in Los Angeles (and beyond). In this way, these four weeks will further contribute to a real world, service-based understanding, and a contrast halfway across the globe, to issues of food justice in our world.

Spring 2022

This spring, FIX will be addressing homelessness in Los Angeles. The combination of course-work and service will give you the unique opportunity to collaborate and learn across the schools of USC, helping you recognize and respect the various areas of knowledge and experiences that other students from other academic fields have developed and engaged.

There are two required components and a third optional component to this spring’s FIX:

CORE 499: Interdiscplinary Solutions for Homelessness, a four-unit course in which you will explore the historical rise of homelessness in LA and across the US, focusing on the various causes of homelessness, with a special interest in growing up and into homelessness and the connection to criminal justice and reform efforts. You will learn not just from your professor but from each other, all students contributing knowledge and experiences from their majors, minors, research, and extracurriculars, plus everything gained from your service placement experience. The objective of this cooperative mission is to develop, as a team, actionable proposals for addressing homelessness in Los Angeles with the guidance of your FIX professor and your service site. Your professor will push you to explore the successes and confront the failures of various approaches to tackling the given wicked problem, asking you to read both widely and deeply while integrating guest speakers and visits to critical sites.

FIX service placements will provide on-the-ground experience through the Joint Educational Project, assigning you to work with philanthropic organizations, charities, government offices, religious organizations, schools, companies, or clinics that engage with homelessness. Through your service, you will make a difference as you learn how various groups around Los Angeles have strived to make an impact on what often appear as insurmountable challenges. JEP will ask you to reflect on your service through carefully and thoughtfully designed curriculum as well as critically assess your assignment’s approach to intervention, its position in the city and immediate community, and the benefits and limits of its resources and scale.

Summer Internship: FIX students will have the option of continuing their work with a summer internship. FIX will provide a $3000 stipend so you can continue at your service site as a full-time intern, implementing the action plan that you proposed at the end of the spring course. The stipend is intended to offset the need for other summer employment so you can focus on your site and make a real impact. In addition, you will receive $500-$1000 in seed money to help realize the proposed solution or strategy. Teams working together can combine these funds to have a greater effect.

Spring 2019

This year, FIX will be addressing homelessness in Los Angeles. The combination of course-work and service will give you the unique opportunity to collaborate and learn across the schools of USC, helping you recognize and respect the various areas of knowledge and experiences that other students from other academic fields have developed and engaged.

There are three components to this spring’s FIX, adding up to 4 units total:

CORE 499: Focused Fixes, a one-unit course that provides one discipline’s perspective on the wicked problem, a narrow contextual understanding. Taught by incredible faculty from across USC, there will be multiple Focused Fixes from which you will choose one that speaks to your interests, not necessarily your major. You will join a small group of students in your particular Focused Fix, learning together in an intimate, intensive environment. Your professor will push you to interrogate the successes and confront the failures your chosen emphasis has had in tackling the given wicked problem, asking you to read both widely and deeply while integrating guest speakers and visits to critical sites.

CORE 499: Collaborative Fixes, a three-unit course that brings together all FIX students from across the Focused Fixes. In your Collaborative Fix, you will learn not just from your professor but from each other, all students contributing knowledge and experiences from their majors, minors, research, extracurriculars, service, plus everything gained from the one-unit course and service placement. The objective of this cooperative mission is to develop, as a team, a series of actionable proposals for addressing homelessness in Los Angeles with the guidance of FIX faculty. The semester ends with the class giving a presentation to stakeholders from across USC and Los Angeles, outlining possible solutions. Stakeholders in positions to enact particular ideas may engage FIX students to work with them to implement proposals in a volunteer or paid capacity.

FIX service placements will provide on-the-ground experience, assigning you to work with philanthropic organizations, charities, government offices, religious organizations, schools, companies, or clinics that engage with homelessness. Through your service, you will make a difference as you learn how various groups around Los Angeles have strived to make an impact on what often appear as insurmountable challenges. JEP will ask you to reflect on your service through carefully and thoughtfully designed curriculum as well as critically assess your assignment’s approach to intervention, its position in the city and immediate community, and the benefits and limits of its resources and scale.