Mirror Sites:
CSUDH Habermas UWP

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Latest update: April 26, 2001
jeannecurran@habermas.org

Project: Dear Habermas: A Journal of Postmodern and Critical Thought
Devoted to Academic Discourse on Peace and Justice

Three and a half years ago we opened our Internet Site in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Students have gradually taken over the writing of the journal, and we are recognized internationally. We received this notice in Spring 2001: "Schoolsnet (www.schoolsnet.com), the UK’s leading education website for parents, pupils and teachers, informing you that your site is one of those chosen by our team of teachers to be part of our web guide. . . . The thousands of sites in our web guide are selected and reviewed by education experts, who only choose the best, most useful sites." The Dear Habermas site has close to a thousand hits every week, as a social science teaching site.

In April 2001, six students from CSUDH and two from the University of Wisconsin, Parkside, met in Reno to present two joint sessions on social justice. In April 2000, over a dozen students met at the same conference in San Diego, and were invited back this year, after presenting in Fort Worth, Texas, the previous year. The students majored in Public Administration, Political Science, Criminal Justice, Psychology, Sociology, and Human Services. The Professor who brings her students from Wisconsin every year is a CSUDH graduate who went on to get her doctorate at Berkeley, and has since chaired the Department of Sociology at Wisconsin and established a Criminal Justice Program.

Because we do not have adequate technology in our classrooms, our students are forced to try to understand references to the site with no computer available to them in the classroom. In the 1998 round of ASI Tech Grants, we were awarded a grant for a laptop computer that would have permitted us to have the site in classrooms, and meeting rooms. We don't need to use the site in those locations, but we do need to access the site so that we can verify that we are all able to locate the site information. That is important because we teach all of our site-related courses with summaries and access to information that goes way beyond the text. Students rely on this information for their comments and journal production. Dr. Karber suggested that we reapply for a laptop this Spring, to enable more effective teaching with the site, and to improve the alternatives for workshops and presentations that will enable more faculty to incorporate these teaching techniques.

For more effective inclusion of students into the actual production work, we also intend to apply for an additional computer in the Moot Court/Dear Habermas office, so that students can begin to help with the actual production work of the journal. We are planning to teach them to upload materials and maintain the site during the Fall Semester of 2001. Estimated budget: $10,000.

A copy of the 1998 Proposal is attached.