On May 6, SiD welcomed 19 students to Detroit at our spring/summer 2019 cohort orientation. Since then, our students have started classes & internships, talked to alums about their experiences in the program, and gone on countless class trips and tours. While Stephen Ward’s Detroit History class has learned from local historian Jamon Jordan (Black Scroll Network History and Tours), visited the Birwood Wall & Birwood House with community organizer Kim Sherobbi, and gone on the “From Growing Our Economies to Growing Our Souls” tour with Rich Feldman/the James & Grace Lee Boggs Center; Diana Copeland’s Grassroots Community Organizing for Environmental Justice class rode bikes to Oakland Ave Urban Farm and drove through Delray/the Marathon Oil Refinery area with local environmental justice activist Emma Lockridge. Click here to learn more about tours and trips in this summer’s additional (new) elective class, Creative Detroit: Arts Movements in the City, as we welcome Ujijji Davis as a guest Lecturer in the spring program.

While spring classes are almost over, internships are just ramping up. Among the internship sites this year are new community partners Transit Riders United and Street Democracy;  returning community partners include Grandmont Rosedale Development Corporation, InsideOut Literary Arts, the ACLU, Alternatives for Girls, Goodman & Hurwitz, P.C., City of Detroit Planning and Development Department, Detroit Justice Center, 482Forward, EcoWorks, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, Central Detroit Christian Community Development, Southwest Detroit Community Benefits Coalition, United Community Housing Coalition, and ProsperUs Detroit.