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ETHN XXX The Medicine Cabinet:
Transformational Health Practice Lab

Reflection on Designing a Mutually-Beneficial Community-Engaged Learning Syllabus

This course provides a critical intervention in science and health education by creating space for traditional, ancestral, and Indigenous knowledges. Students will learn from queer, trans, Indigenous, Black, and Women of color perspectives and practices that understand health, well-being, and transformation as ongoing bio-psycho-social-spiritual processes. This course is intended for students pursuing medical and healthcare careers, are curious about critical understandings of health and medicine, and/or interested in developing culturally congruent health and well-being practices for themselves and their communities.

This course introduces students to Transformational Health Practices (THP) in action through direct service-learning in community gardens in the Sacramento region. Students will work with community partners to gain practical learning experiences in ancestral and traditional medicine and medicine-making, including growing, cultivating, and preparing their own culturally congruent medicine cabinets.

Learning about the CSU-CEL Taxonomy was important to building this course. Before this FLC, I had a limited understanding of the different dimensions to community-engaged learning (CEL). The taxonomy expanded my understanding of CEL. For example, I found the implementation spectrum very useful. Evaluating the essential elements of CEL on a spectrum allowed me the space to find the balance that feels right for my course and to account for the context and nuance shaping community needs and partnerships.

View a draft of my syllabus here.

Evidence of Instructional Change
"When we take care of nature, nature takes care of us," Jessica Hernandez, Fresh Banana Leaves (2022) [Image of a Prairie Sage Plant]	We are nested in a web of interdependence, healing involves tending to all of our relationships.	Designing balanced, reciprocal and collaborative courses.

Moving Forward

I plan to create more CEL courses here at Sac State, specifically courses in Ethnic Studies focused on health, science, and well-being. I am currently co-leading a team developing health-related coursework in Ethnic Studies and Women and Gender Studies. The Transformational Health Practice GE Pathway hopes to build a series of courses for students interested in traditional, ancestral, and Indigenous approaches to health. Our team plans to develop CEL coursework as part of this GE Pathway. Understanding the parameters and processes of CEL at Sac State will help me 1) craft a variety of offerings to meet both student and community needs, and 2) plan and strategize for timely and smooth curricular processes that meet my own and my team’s project timelines.

Faculty Biography

I am a scholar-poet & counselor in training, and currently an Assistant Professor of Chicanx and Latinx Studies at Sac State. My work centers the lived experiences, needs, and traditions of Chicanx and People of Color, particular that of queer, fat, disabled, women, and displaced people. I strive to be a heart-led scholar-practitioner guided by principles of love, compassion, liberation, and decolonization. My goal is to help people be free and heart-led!

Profile picture of Melina Juárez

Sponsors
This work was supported by the Community Engagement Center.