Purposes and Goals
Curriculum and Pedagogy is centrally responsible for sponsoring and coordinating community-based teaching and curricular projects developed in the undergraduate and graduate schools of the Main Campus in partnership with the community.  Our first principle is that disciplinary inquiry enhances the quality and deepens the commitment of students' work in and for the community, while that work furthers their understanding of the course material and the intellectual methods of the field.  We therefore seek to build a curriculum and support pedagogies that integrate rigorous disciplinary and interdisciplinary study with community-based intellectual work, ultimately to enhance students' engagement with fundamental questions of social justice. 

Within the Center for Social Justice, OCP assumes three major responsibilities.

1. To promote, expand, and integrate community-based intellectual work within the curriculum. OCP supports the development of courses and units within courses that connect community outreach to the work of the course and the discipline; it works to extend the sites of such courses to include as many departments and interdisciplinary programs as appropriate; and it works to coordinate these courses through the development of a minor/certificate program. 
   
   
2. To support faculty in developing community-based courses and pedagogies.
   OCP supports the highest quality of community-based intellectual work by sponsoring, often in conjunction with other campus programs (e.g., CNDLS) workshops, symposia, seminars, and individual consultations that strengthen the connections between work in the classroom and work in the community.  In this effort, we remain committed to the principles of faculty autonomy and academic rigor.  Faculty members contributing courses determine what to study, how to study it, and why to study it.  Courses are designed and assessed primarily on the basis of the rigor required by disciplinary (or interdisciplinary) standards and the quality of the students' preparation for, and reflection on, their community-based work.
   
   
3. To foster continuing conversation about Social Justice in Georgetown's curriculum and individual courses.
   The curricular and pedagogical goals of the Center for Social Justice exist, as our Mission Statement clearly expresses, "to advance justice and the common good."  OCP has a special concern with realizing Georgetown's commitment to educating students "to be responsible and active participants in civic life, and to live generously in service to others."  (Georgetown University Mission Statement)  To that end, OCP plays a crucial role in enhancing the University's consideration of the Social Justice Report .  It also reaches out to other programs and departments (e.g., the Main Campus Program on Justice and Peace,the Law Center's Clinical Programs, the Medical Center's Kennedy Institute of Ethics) to support the integration of justice issues within the University's educational mission. 

For more information, please contact Kathleen Maas Weigert