For most Tufts students, trips to Boston's Chinatown are accompanied by sushi, sake bombs or long rides on the Fung Wah bus. But for Jumbos enrolled in Tufts' Building Bridges program, visits to Chinatown are part of a broad effort to improve and influence the community there.
Building Bridges - now in its eighth year at Tufts - is affiliated with an American studies course about active citizenship in the urban community. Throughout the semester, students in this class have been attending weekly seminars at Tufts and then spending three hours per week volunteering in various community programs in Boston's Chinatown.
On Dec. 6, between 50 and 60 ninth-grade students from the Josiah Quincy upper school in Chinatown will come to Tufts to take part in the Building Bridges program. Sponsored by Tisch College and the American studies program, Building Bridges is a program aimed at exposing these students to college life and inspiring them to pursue higher education in the future.
In the process, the program has allowed the Tufts students involved to get a first-hand look at issues of culture and politics in the Chinatown community. Professor Jean Wu, who teaches the active citizenship course, said it also helps fulfill a responsibility that Tufts has to its community.
"The students in the course are placed in different non-profit organizations in Boston Chinatown," Wu said. "Tufts has actually taken over a lot of the property of Boston Chinatown, so we feel like there's a responsibility to that community."
According to Wu, the goal of the active citizenship course is to instill Tufts students with awareness, knowledge and the skills to make life-long commitments to helping the community and working toward greater social and racial justice.
Emily Cohen, a graduate student who is a teaching assistant for the class, said that the active citizenship course differs from conventional Tufts classes in that it brings students out of the classroom and teaches them a more hands-on approach to learning about social justice.
"[Being a TA is] an exciting job because it really brings together the idea of community service ... with a justice component," Cohen said. "It's not just service for the sake of service, but it's part of a movement toward social justice and community justice."
Junior Andrew Niemtzow in the active citizenship course said that the community service-based component of the class is its most attractive aspect.
"The best thing about [the class] is that it combines outside work with the things you learn instead of just learning from reading and discussion," Niemtzow said. "We get to actually experience it - and get a whole new view of Chinatown."
Each student in the class participates in a different internship or community service job in the Chinatown area. Organizations include the Josiah Quincy elementary and high schools, as well as public health offices, community advocacy programs and youth development programs.
"I'm at the Boston Chinatown neighborhood center three hours a week," Niemtzow said. "It's mostly immigrant teens and teens in the area, and I'm helping them with college counseling work."
The class' final project of the semester will be to host the Josiah Quincy school's ninth-grade students for the day at Tufts. Josiah Quincy's student population is predominantly Asian-American, African-American and Latino, and most of the students are children of immigrants.
The visitation day, Wu said, is meant to encourage the young students to see college as a viable option and to understand that pursuing a college education is something that anyone can do.
"Almost all of [the students] have first-generation immigrant parents, so for many of them even understanding what college is or how to even access it ... is not readily available like it is for most of the students at Tufts," Wu said.
The students in the active citizenship class organized the visitation day's events. This year there will be a scavenger hunt for the high school students as well as panels made up of admissions representatives, students and faculty.
At the end of the day, the ninth-graders will eat dinner at Dewick-MacPhie Dining Hall and watch performances from musical groups and performance groups on campus.
"It's probably the most fun part of the day for them," Wu said. "It helps them see college students, and sometimes there are games in the dining hall to help them talk to the college students."
After the visitation day, the students from Josiah Quincy will be encouraged to keep in touch with the Tufts students and continue to think about furthering their education, Wu said.
"We want to send them away with things to remember the campus by but also remember some of the issues that are brought up," Wu said.
Cohen emphasized the importance of the program and its role in the community.
"I think it's really exciting college access work that we're doing with the youth at Josiah Quincy," Cohen said. "It brings together not just the service work that people are doing at the school, but really what Tisch College is about and what Tufts is about in terms of justice and access."
Cohen explained that the visitation day is part of a long-term plan.
"I hope that the students at Josiah Quincy have a very positive experience at Tufts, and that it will really turn them on to college education and higher education - whether it be at a school like Tufts or any sort of academic environment," Cohen said.
