Human service institutions include the police and legal system, the educational system, the system of health and medical care, the welfare system, social work agencies, the local community and its organizations and associations, churches and other spiritual and fraternal organizations. Taken as a group, these institutions care for the needy, control the troublesome, and socialize the young. This course provides a survey by giving descriptive cases of human service institutions at work and by presenting specific major issues of concern in different ones.
While the course gives a description of human service institutions it also talks about why society needs these institutions and how we create and change policies that shape and affect them. This is the field of policy analysis and it provides the overarching perspective that structures the course.
In addition to formal presentations about the various human service institutions, the course also includes a series of required, targeted field experiences. These are intended to introduce students to human service institutions and to bring their dilemmas into sharper focus and each students must participate in four of them. My intention is for each of the experiences to be 1-4 hours in length. Some of the most interesting opportunities, however, require several visits to the setting (two visits each two hours in length, for example). Students will respond to a specific writing assignment keyed to each setting. Each setting is intrinsically interesting so they will be easy to write about. They also illustrate specific conceptual points from the readings.
This course is a core requirement of the Human Services Concentration in sociology. It is meant as the first half of a two course sequence, the second one being SOCI/ANTH 201, Field Methods, which next will be offered in Spring, 2008 with Michelle Johnson as instructor . Field Methods provides an overview of qualitative research and places students in community settings where they observe, write, and often help to solve problems. Field experiences are an essential part of the introduction to human service systems just as the overview provided by SOCI 215 is necessary. These courses are meant to be preparatory to a variety of 300-level and 400-level courses we offer that deal with specific human service institutions.
Writing Assignments for Field Experiences