Jennifer McKinney

Hosting a Tent City: Student Engagement and Homelessness:

In response to increasing homelessness in our city, Seattle Pacific University invited a homeless encampment (Tent City) to reside on our university campus for three months. This provided an opportunity to engage students on issues of poverty and inequality. Building from a service-learning model, we devised course work around homelessness and applied research. Students took a two-quarter course sequence to become knowledgeable about homelessness and sociological research methods in order to collect field observations and conduct interviews with Tent City residents. Based on student reflections, stereotypes about homelessness were challenged and social distance between students and people who were homeless was reduced. Student exposure to homelessness through faculty-guided research is an effective tool in developing a sociological imagination and an important step in fostering agents of social change.

From Charity to Change

Seattle Pacific University brought a “tent city” to campus to help students engage with and better understand the challenges facing homeless populations.