Service Learning and Partnerships Specialist
Ruthie joined the Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain in 2017. In her capacity as Service Learning and Partnerships Specialist, her work focuses on deepening the capacity of faculty and students to understand and act on equity as central to the creation of sustainable communities. Specifically, she supports course and project development around themes such as Water, Green Infrastructure, & Citizen Science; and Equitable and Sustainable Development. She is a graduate of the inaugural Transformation Alliance Academy which trained participants to organize stakeholders around equitable transit-oriented development. Her recent sustainability-related public scholarship includes the 2018 Saporta Report piece, "Citizen Scientists Gathering Information to Inform Policy Decisions in West Atlanta." Before coming to Serve-Learn-Sustain, her research and teaching engaged equity at the intersection of race, power, and education in the American South. Her book, Students of the Dream: Resegregation in a Southern City, documents the erosion of educational opportunity in metro Atlanta schools and how to address that deepening crisis; it was published by Harvard University Press in 2017. This background in educational equity research equipped her to nurture the projects of the K12 Education Working Group, a working group of the RCE Greater Atlanta. RCE Greater Atlanta was acknowledged by the United Nations University in 2017 as a new Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development. The K12 Education Working Group endeavors to connect educators, nonprofits, government agencies and industry around the common mission of sharing and augmenting sustainability-focused curricular resources and programs and nourishing networks of educators dedicated to robust and inclusive sustainability education for all students. Her volunteer work around equity includes service as the Secretary of the Board of Marietta YELLS (Youth Empowerment through Learning, Leading, and Serving) and as the Co-Director of Tutor Recruitment for Common Good Atlanta. Ruthie has a PhD in American Studies and African American Studies from Yale University.
Courses Taught
Spring 2022
GT 1801
This course brings together students from six metro Atlanta institutions to provide them with a unique opportunity in cross-institutional community building, community partner engagement, and professional development, under the auspices of a global communities theme.
Spring 2021
CP 8881 (C1), CP 4811 (C1)
This short course focuses on the origins, successes, and uses of Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD).
Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018, Fall 2017, Fall 2016
SLS 3110
When does technology improve communities? When doesn’t it, and why? How can you improve your chance of having a positive long-term impact on communities? How is designing technology for communities different from designing technology for consumers?
Spring 2017
ENGL 1102 N1, ENGL 1102 F5
In the course, we take a compelling ride through the major student movements of the post-war period, beginning in 1960 and making our way up to the present day.
Fall 2016
ENG 1101 E2, ENGL 1101 L6, ENGL 1101 L7
This course will introduce you to the city at your doorstep: you will begin to watch Atlanta and listen to it in ways that enrich your time here and better equip you to make sense of, and perhaps even make long-lasting change in, your adoptive city.
