Spring, Summer, & Fall Westmont in San Francisco
Make the beautiful and challenging city of San Francisco your classroom!
At Westmont in San Francisco, you’ll spend a semester with a living-learning community open to all majors while interning in the city and studying an exciting curriculum focused on global studies. Join 20-25 students living in an historic Victorian mansion in the heart of the city, where you’ll work for organizations serving populations such as the homeless and refugees or for financial and technology companies. Take classes in economics, sociology, theology or literature that satisfy general education requirements and offer effective and meaningful Christian engagement with the poor and the marginalized throughout the world. Grapple with the big questions: Who am I? Who is my neighbor? What is God calling me to do? The community gathers on Tuesday evenings so professors and students can cook for each other and worship and read Scripture together. Our students report that their transformational experiences have shaped their lives well beyond college.
Outstanding faculty, leading researchers, and public writers eager to integrate faith with rigorous academic work and Christian practice teach a range of course, including these offerings (past and current):
- Faith, Poverty, and Justice
- Faith, Culture, and Diversity
- Studies in Literature: the Environment
- Studies in Literature: Plagues and Epidemics
- Community, Spirituality, and the Way of Jesus
Application:
Open to students of all majors, sophomores through seniors.
SEMESTER:Fall 2021 & Spring 2022 Application
Westmont in San Francisco Forms
Email wsf@westmont.edu if you would like to learn more about the program, or schedule an appointment session with a WSF staff member: WSF Info appointments
WSF offers acceptance on a rolling basis.
The recommended deadline for Fall 2021 is March 15, 2021.
The recommended deadline for Spring 2021 is October 15, 2021
SUMMER:
Due to the overwhelming response for our Summer program, we are no longer accepting applications. We encourage you to consider a semester in San Francisco!
About the Program:
Community
The Student Experience
Community Living
An elaborate Victorian mansion, the Clunie House is located on the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park a few blocks from the famous Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Its unique setting (only three miles from downtown and four miles from the Pacific Ocean) allows you to immerse yourself in life and culture of the city. Using nearby public transportation, you can explore the city's many attractions and commute to various internship sites. The Haight-Ashbury, Inner Sunset, Inner Richmond, Japantown, Pacific Heights and Castro districts are minutes away. Golden Gate Park begins directly across the street and features green space and areas for outdoor recreation. Pursue endless possibilities with the city of San Francisco at your front door!
Student Internships
At the beginning of the semester, training sessions with the COVE staff will prepare you to search for an internship and equip you with skills such as resume-writing and interviewing that you'll also find helpful in your professional endeavors after college. You'll meet with professors to identify possible internships in San Francisco, and you'll complete three interviews at various placement sites before choosing an internship.
Required Courses
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.
Elective Courses: Spring 2020
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.
Elective Courses: Fall 2021
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.
Aims of the course:
- To explore the relationship between nature, literary imagination, and the history of earth stewardship in the U.S., including reflection on how we have, as culture spoken and written about the natural world, and how our language shapes our understanding of it and behaviors toward it.
- To understand the roots of some of the assumptions about nature (both useful and dangerous) imbedded in American mythology.
- To reflect on the current role of writing, storytelling, poetry, and other imaginative and creative work in the cause of sustainability and global survival.
- To reflect on biblical texts related to care of the created order and how echoes of biblical language and story have shaped American perceptions and policies..
Fulfills GE Reading Imaginative Literature and GE Writing/Speech Intensive and ENV Studies Humanities Elective; taught by Dr. Marilyn McEntyre
Great Literature of the Stage explores the intersection of dramatic texts, theatrical methods, and personal and cultural context that – when fused together – comprise the art of the stage. The course focuses on American plays written by People of Color and Women over the last 100 years or so, and engages ways to think critically about what it means for Christians to be alive in this moment in the early 21 st century, and to participate in challenging, robust stories about culture, identity, and change. The course involves a wide variety of methods, approaches, and practices: we will read plays, talk about plays, write about plays, create exercises out of plays, present scenes from plays, and attend numerous plays together. We will explore the many ways that drama and theatre reveal, show, and present the nature of human identity, and the internal and external forces that give rise to, and shape it.
This course satisfies major and minor requirements in the Theatre Arts Department, and
two GE's: Working Artistically and Reading Imaginative Literature.
Course is taught as an intensive by Dr. John Blondell.
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.
Faculty & Staff
With over twenty years with Westmont in San Francisco, Brad is the Director and Professor of Urban Practicum. He was a student the program and has been a faculty member since 1990, thus providing him with a unique depth of insight and experience around what makes a semester in San Francisco so transformative.
Kristen oversees the marketing and operations of the program. After spending a year and half with the program in 2016-2018, she is so excited to be back!
Sophie joined the Westmont in San Francisco staff in August 2019, after being a participant Spring 2017. Sophie contributes to building community with students at the Clunie House.
Bruce is the program director of the Certificate in Social Impact Analytics. He is a highly esteemed writer and scholar, and an advisor and builder of church, parachurch, and nonprofit programs. His new book Shrewd Samaritan: Faith, Economics, and the Road to Loving our Global Neighbor was published in 2019 by Thomas Nelson (HarperCollins).
Adjunct Faculty
Marilyn teaches Studies in Literature: Environment, and Studies in Lit: Plagues & Epidemics.
Program Costs
The cost of the program matches the cost of a semester on Westmont’s campus (tuition, fees, room and board). Yes, financial aid applies even if you have studied abroad already or plan to go abroad in the future. Consider a semester in San Francisco as Westmont off-campus housing.
Find additional information about Westmont in San Francisco, contact ocp@westmont.edu or visit the Global Education office in Kerrwood Hall. For non-Westmont student, contact your study abroad office.