Frequently Asked Questions

Our mission is to create student-informed innovations in teaching and learning at UCI. Our group is inspired by the writings of Freire in understanding liberation as praxis and education as being the foundation for cultivating critical consciousness amongst students. We are dedicated to researching and developing learning and training resources for departments in all disciplines to integrate social justice/equity topics within curricula, department programming, and research. The formation of this group comes as recognition that classroom underachievement is due to the lack of student access to vital resources as opposed to a lack of a desire to learn. We work to enhance the integrity of education at UCI by identifying and transforming academic policies that inhibit student passions towards liberative educational practices.

• Institutionalize the popular education model, a student-oriented and student-guided model which values differences in individual experiences.

• Create “engaged scholarship” that is participatory, visionary, and committed to the pedagogical politics of justice.

• Develop common “critical consciousness”: create a liberating holistic education model that gives the most marginalized students access to knowledge about their own placemaking and existence.

• Equip a new generation of UCI-taught researchers, practitioners, activists, artists, and professors to help create a much brighter future for all of us.

• Reframe priorities and mission objectives in individual UCI departments.

SASI employs undergraduates from all fields. Graduate students and faculty are free to collaborate with us but are not hired to the SASI team at this time.