Release date: Nov. 20, 2003
Contact: Deb Hammacher, Associate Director, University Media Relations,
at 404-727-0644 or dhammac@emory.edu

Students See Social Ills First-hand During Intensive Field Trip

Students in an Oxford College course titled "Social Problems" will observe the subject matter first-hand during a week-long field trip Jan. 4-12 to a side of Atlanta not found in tourism brochures: the state's death chamber, addiction centers and more.

For the past 22 years, Michael McQuaide, a professor of sociology at Oxford College, a two-year-undergraduate division of Emory University, has brought his "Social Problems" class into Atlanta for a week to observe in reality what the students had before only seen in textbooks. They stay in a hotel downtown and pack into a van each morning for a different field trip.

The week includes visits to places not found in any tour books, such as the Fulton County Drug & Alcohol Treatment Center, Jackson Diagnostic Center (home to death row), Grady Hospital, an Alzheimer's care unit, a day-care center for abandoned babies and the squad car of an Atlanta police officer for an eight-hour shift in one of the city's toughest neighborhoods. They also listen to lectures on topics such as female incarceration, guns and public health, Atlanta's air quality and infants born to drug-addicted mothers.

All in all, not a normal week of school. Since he began teaching "Social Problems," McQuaide has taken more than 400 undergraduate students into Atlanta for the eye-opening experience.

"You know the old adage that emotion gets in the way of intellect? In this case, I think emotion facilitates the intellect. The students can't deny their own feelings," McQuaide says.

Such experiences often leave his students grasping for ways to solve the society's ills. For McQuaide, the flip side to showing students the reality behind the labels of "Drug Addiction" and "Crime" is watching their teenage idealism take its yearly beating.

"I spent a great deal of time talking about positivism. I tried to encourage them not to get disgusted or disheartened by what they were seeing. And I constantly point out the effect one person can have," McQuaide says. "For example Cafe 458, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center, and one of the regular stops of the trips, was the dream of one person who brought that place into existence. So I try to inspire the students in a way that says, 'Yes, your feelings are hurt, but here's what some people have done to make a difference.'"

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