Community and Urban Transformation Bachelor Degree (BA)

Overview

The Community and Urban Transformation program examines the city as a dynamic environment, taking a globally engaged and regionally responsive, social scientific approach. Its scope spans both traditional issues of urban studies, such as planning and development, and the contemporary concerns of community development that focus on understanding and transforming the urban experiences of the disadvantaged.

The CUT major leads to a four-year Bachelor of Arts (BA), while its minor study complements other programs at Booth UC. Courses cover a range of relevant issues and topics informed by and geared towards self-transformation in the urban context.

As a practicable theory, self-transformation moves from a top-down to a strategically collaborative model grounded in the resilience of community membership. In addition to Booth’s core curriculum, based upon a broad foundation in the arts and humanities, CUT course content touches on issues specific to Winnipeg, Canada, having to do with youth, poverty and homelessness, the Indigenous experience, and immigration, and extends to global issues having to do with international development, human rights, and health and diversity.

Students will become equipped with the techniques and strategies to address urban social issues by learning in community, building intercultural knowledge, and gaining conflict transformation skills, and by pursuing leadership development, spiritual formation, and vocational discernment.

Studying at Booth

Through academic rigour, experiential learning and research, public events, and collaborative partnerships in Winnipeg and beyond, CUT educates students for lives of servant leadership in an increasingly urban world.

Learning Objectives:

The Community and Urban Transformation program seeks to equip students with the theoretical and practical skills needed to critically assess urban social issues and synthesize interdisciplinary evidence within the institutional framework of the Salvation Army and Booth University College and its existing faculty strengths.

This includes the theological values of the Wesleyan-Methodist tradition, and the regional specificity of Winnipeg, its denizens and surrounding area. CUT majors gain mastery of social scientific (sociological and interdisciplinary) knowledge and practices in the following ways, including:

• How the social sciences contribute to a critical understanding of social relations – This entails being able to: describe how sociology, for example, is distinct from other social sciences; and to apply sociological principles and concepts to understand one’s own and others’ personal experiences in a social context.
• The nature, relevance, and interrelatedness of key social scientific concepts, gaining mastery of the following: agency, identity, and self-transformation, symbolic interaction, cultural studies, social change, and socialization; social structure, problems, institutions, inequality and justice, and globalization; democracy, socialism and global capitalism; race, gender, sexuality, health, ageing and health care; family, population, and the life course; crime, deviance, law, and social control.
• The place of theory in the social sciences and the place of the social sciences in theory, including religious systems such as Christianity – This entails, in the first instance, the ability to: define theory and understand its role in building interdisciplinary knowledge; compare and contrast foundational theoretical perspectives, and apply such theories to understand urban social reality. In the second instance, this entails consideration of research as it is used in system-specific knowledge production; its supportive or critical role; and comparatively across various religious and non-religious knowledge systems.
• The role of evidence and methods in community and urban research – Students learn to: identify and distinguish key methodological approaches; understand the role of methods in building scholarly knowledge; interpret and communicate research material; understand the skills and knowledge base required for independently carrying out a research project.
• The application of research knowledge in and through community-based collaboration – Students gain applied experience as they: perform a range of social scientific research in and through the program’s practicum requirement and participatory research; locate and access original published research; conduct ethical research independently through faculty and community-based, collaborative partnerships; interpret and communicate research within and outside the university college, including with those who may be unfamiliar with sociology.
• Preparedness for graduate studies in anthropology, sociology or other social sciences, law, education, social services, the criminal justice field, theology or other professional fields.
• A range of marketable skills, including technical reading and writing; self-management through the conduct of applied research and analysis; and effective oral communication.

Interested in Applying?

Start your online application today. 

Interested in a Minor in Community and Urban Transformation?

Considering a minor in the CUT program? The requirements are: 18 credits from the following: CUT100 The Social Life of Cities (3),  SOC100 Intro Sociology (6), SOC210 Social Problems (3),  SOC380 Social Theory (3),  BHS200 Research Methods (3),  CUT200 Pre-Field Seminar (3), CUT 301 Urban Practicum I (3); CUT395 Selected Themes in CUT (3); CUT390 Independent Study in CUT (3); ETR395 Educational Travel: Selected Themes (3)