This course is designed to investigate social conditions such as poverty, social isolation, and segregation, as well as ascribed characteristics of gender and race that are predictive of a battery of contemporary chronic diseases and causes of premature death. The course will be designed and instructed around student community engagement with local non-profit organizations that serve social needs directly and indirectly related to health.
This course challenges you to engage in near-peer mentoring while examining how race, poverty, and other socioeconomic dynamics have shaped the educational opportunitites available in historically segregated and economically distressed urban communities. We will work with students at BEST Academy, an all-boys public high school in Atlanta's Westside. Each Georgia Tech student will be paired with one BEST student. The pairs will meet at least once a week and spend the semester working towards goals that help the BEST student prepare for college.
