Spring, Summer, & Fall Westmont in San Francisco

Fulfills GE Serving Society

This 8-unit course is centered on participation in an internship related to the professional and vocational interests of each student. Internship opportunities exist for students of all majors. The amount of major credit received is determined by departmental guidelines and the type of internship selected. Components of the course include attendance at all placement orientation workshops during the first week of the semester (for Fall/Spring only); interviewing with at least three agencies/organizations prior to selecting an internship site; development of a detailed learning contract in consultation with one's site supervisor; and engagement with regular reading and writing assignments aimed at the reflective integration of theory and praxis.

The internship is accompanied by a required weekly seminar.The purpose of this required seminar is to enable students to critically engage and reflect on their daily internship experiences in renewed faith-based ways. The course is designed to foster a deeper understanding of personal-vocational identity. Through guest speaker presentations and shared dialogue on common workplace dynamics, this course seeks to help students discover what it means to live faithfully amidst a range of complex and diverse settings while integrating a Christ-centered perspective

“Introduction to San Francisco” is a one-unit course providing essential background and context to help students understand the history and diversity of San Francisco, especially the challenges and opportunities facing specific neighborhoods of this  city where they will be living, learning, and working for a semester. Students will engage with the presence and influence of “The City” in our world by becoming more confident navigating this particular city, San Francisco. As students become accustomed to navigating this city, they will deepen their encounter with the urban world. Students will gain knowledge and experience of the city’s diverse social and cultural communities through field trips, interviews, reading, and neighborhood studies.

The literature we’ll be reading in this course explores not only matters of historical interest, but matters we need to be reflecting on now, as we navigate the social, political, and medical complexities of the current pandemic.  Questions we’ll be addressing as we read include how people have coped with widespread suffering, and who has told their stories; what complicates efforts to tell those stories; what are some recurrent themes in those stories; in what ways are pandemics always political; how they challenge existing authority and class structures; how churches and other faith communities responded to pandemics; and how have readings of the Bible shifted in times of plague or pandemic.  

Fulfills GE Reading Imaginative Literature and GE Writing/Speech Intensive and ENV Studies Humanities Elective; taught by Dr. Marilyn McEntyre 

This required hybrid course will serve as the shared focal point of our WSF semester theme: spiritual formation in community. In collaboration with the Newbigin House, a local Christian study center, this course is focused on helping students develop the spiritual and theological wisdom for life with God, focusing on all of life as time- and place-bound in order to shape the ways we approach telling our stories, sharing life together, reading scripture, and building a life of prayer and contemplative practices—the expectation being that students will discover that spirituality in the way of Jesus is always an inward, outward, and cross-cultural journey. Part of the course will involve an online component facilitated by the Newbigin House faculty and part will involve a weekly cohort seminar class facilitated by the WSF faculty. Students may take this class for 2 or 4 units with reading/assignment workload determined accordingly.

Taught by Professor Brad Berky

This course invites students to cultivate a deeper awareness of, and engagement with, cultural difference and diversity - particularly in relation to the urban context of the San Francisco Bay Area which will serve as the living-learning laboratory for an integrative exploration into the themes of empathy & compassion; intercultural intelligence & competency; and social privilege & inequality from a distinctively Christian worldview perspective.

Fulfills GE Understanding Society; taught by Professor Brad Berky

This course is designed to help Westmont in San Francisco students stay active and healthy while offering opportunities to explore the landscapes, streetscapes & local opportunities for indoor physical activities throughout the City.  Involvement in this course will give students practice in exploring new urban spaces, in minimizing your impact on resources, and in discovering how some forms of exercise can help navigate the stress of urban living.

Fulfills 1 unit of PEA GE credit; taught by Professor Brad Berky

As needed, students may take courses at City College San Francisco to fulfill their academic requirements. Please note this may require arriving earlier or leaving later in the semester to accommodate the CCSF academic calendar. Students must get consent from WSF faculty before enrolling in courses. More information can be found on the City College of San Francisco website.

An exploration of the ways of knowing provided by narrative, poetry and drama. The course invites us to see how literature reveals things we cannot know except by inference or by metaphor. Further, by encouraging us to practice compassion by imagining the other, the course involves us in ways of knowing that are inherently ethical. Content varies; faculty usually include selections from historically underrepresented writers. Requires at least four formal papers or the equivalent, involving a minimum of sixteen pages of analytic writing.

Fulfills GE Reading Imaginative Literature and GE Writing/Speech Intensive and ENV Studies Humanities Elective and ENG major credit; taught by Dr. Marilyn McEntyre 

This course invites students to cultivate a deeper awareness of, and engagement with, cultural difference and diversity - particularly in relation to the urban context of the San Francisco Bay Area which will serve as the living-learning laboratory for an integrative exploration into the themes of empathy & compassion; intercultural intelligence & competency; and social privilege & inequality from a distinctively Christian worldview perspective.

Fulfills GE Understanding Society; taught by Professor Brad Berky

This course is designed to help Westmont in San Francisco students stay active and healthy while offering opportunities to explore the landscapes, streetscapes & local opportunities for indoor physical activities throughout the City.  Involvement in this course will give students practice in exploring new urban spaces, in minimizing your impact on resources, and in discovering how some forms of exercise can help navigate the stress of urban living.

Fulfills 1 unit of PEA GE credit; taught by Professor Brad Berky

As needed, students may take courses at City College San Francisco to fulfill their academic requirements. Please note this may require arriving earlier or leaving later in the semester to accommodate the CCSF academic calendar. Students must get consent from WSF faculty before enrolling in courses. More information can be found on the City College of San Francisco website.