CEWIL Project Spotlight: SSH 505 - Making the Future

Through the lens of social change, one TMU course has positioned students as leaders in their communities. Administered by the Leadership Lab, which recently merged with the Brookfield Institute to form the Dais (external link) , SSH 505: Making the Future, is an upper-level liberal course offered by the Toronto Metropolitan Faculty of Arts that focuses on areas such as public policy, health, democracy, personal leadership, transformative change, diversity, and public engagement, and challenges students to imagine change in these fields and what role they could play in that change.

The course is part of a three-round funding initiative aimed at supporting work-integrated learning in post-secondary institutions and is administered by the CEWIL iHUB, or the Co-Operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning Innovation Hub. This project is also supported by the Experiential Learning Hub, a resource area within the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching. 

Students from across faculties can participate in the course, in which they can engage in democracy/voter outreach initiatives led by the nonprofit youth organization New Majority (external link) .

Students work with the nonpartisan youth mobilization organization to develop connections to governments in order to advocate for youth priority issues such as climate action, and mental health. They also get the opportunity to engage in direct and indirect voter outreach.

So far, the project has seen participation from nearly 50 students. According to Karim Bardeesy, Executive Director of the Dais, co-founder of the Leadership Lab (external link) , and co-teacher of the course, the project has been steadily improving with each round of funding, and he hopes to see even more improvement and greater reach moving forward. 

“Sometimes you only find out about CEWIL funding as the semester is starting, so we want to build a bigger program that connects students to knowledge in advance. The course builds democratic skills and increases voter participation, initiative, and knowledge. Everyone needs this! New Majority partners with them and gives them the skills they need for their whole lives!”

Holding true to the nature of experiential learning, the Making the Future course is emblematic of the TMU undergraduate experience in that it connects students with people and places in the world that are applying the skills and knowledge they are studying in the classroom. 

For Karim Bardeesy, the value that courses like this bring to students is unmatched, and provide a frontline experience that allows students to not only perform tasks, but to connect to something bigger than themselves, and venture beyond the standard experience that comes with taking on a job to supplement their education. 

“This is a different nature than a lot of students’ first and early jobs. A lot of TMU students have those jobs and continue to have those jobs, but the frontline experience of not just serving the customer and doing the work prescribed, but doing something that requires imagination creates a larger sense of common mission and common cause, that’s very valuable,” says Bardeesy.