Community-Oriented Digital Engagement Scholars (CODES) is for motivated students in all fields and majors who want to use their general education credits to work alongside community organizations to study and address the world’s most pressing problems.
CODES students will take a set of core courses emphasizing interdisciplinary research and problem-solving methods together in their cohort. They will meet each semester in research-team courses facilitated by their mentoring professor and a community organization to address major social problems in our region such as food insecurity or immigrant alienation. Students will take their education beyond the walls of the classroom and into the St. Louis region.
The teams will use interdisciplinary methods to analyze, visualize, and share their work with the broader public using data mining, mapping, storytelling, networking, and cultural analytics. In this way, the program gives students firsthand experience applying twenty-first century career skills including collaboration, systems thinking, and innovative approaches to digital communication. In this innovative, community-based program, students will learn the important skill of negotiating the civic responsibilities they bear toward others in both physical and digital spaces.
General Education Requirements for CODES Students
CODES students are required to complete a general education program that combines the requirements outlined in University policy 1D1 – University-wide Criteria for the Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Bachelor of Science (B.S.), and Professional Baccalaureate Degrees – with the following 28 credit-hour curriculum. SIUE’s Community-Oriented Digital Engagement Scholars program requires 28 credit-hours of general education coursework. These requirements fall into two categories: the CODES Research Teams and the CODES Core.
| Year | Summer | Fall | Spring | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | Two-Day Orientation |
CODES120: Research Team (3 hours) CODES 121: Communicating Globally and Locally (3 hours) |
CODES122: Research Team (3 hours) CODES 123: Research and Systems Thinking (3 hours) |
Teams develop materials to help community organization elucidate and communicate the problem. |
| Year 2 | One-week research seminar |
CODES 220: Research Team (3 hours) CODES 221 and 221L: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Scientific Method (4 hours with supporting lab credit) |
CODES 222: Research Team (3 hours) | Large-scale problem map and plan |
| Year 3 | 2-week research seminar | CODES 320: Research Team (3 hours) | CODES 320: Research Team (3 hours) | Culminating digital collaborative project |
| Year 4 | 2-week research seminar | CODES 420: Research Pro-seminar (1 hour) | CODES 420: Research Pro-seminar (1 hour) | Individual capstone projects |
CODES Research Teams (18 hours)
In each semester of the first three years, students will meet in intensive research teams comprised of five students, a faculty mentor, and a community partner. These teams will focus on a “wicked” or seemingly unsolvable problem such as nutrition and food access, the challenges of intergenerational communication, and poverty’s manifestations across rural and urban environments. The level of difficulty the research teams undertake will grow with students, and the curriculum will be intentionally organic, transforming each year based on student and faculty interest and community need. Students and faculty will work together to structure a series of readings from diverse fields such as history, literature, anthropology, and sociology that supports their work, and they will meet twice weekly to study their problem using critical thinking, writing, and qualitative research methods. In products at the end of each year, research teams will apply a variety of digital methods, including data mining, mapping, storytelling, networking, and cultural analytics.
CODES Core (10 credit-hours)
CODES students are required to take CODES 120: Communicating Globally and Locally and CODES 123: Research and Systems Thinking during their first year at the University. These courses are designed to help student research, map, and conceptualize global problem and their impact on our region. In these courses students will also learn how to write and speak using interdisciplinary, multi-modal forms of communication. In their second year of instruction, students will take CODES 220: Interdisciplinary Problem Solving and the Scientific Method and its accompanying lab, in which students will learn how scientific modes of inquiry can apply to the problem they are investigating in their research teams.
Students must also satisfy the following requirements through their major, minor, or additional coursework:
- a course in the physical or life sciences
- a mathematics, statistics, or quantitative reasoning course
- a theater and fine arts breadth requirement
Additional Requirements
CODES Summer Seminars
Students will participate in a one-week research seminar in the summer preceding each year of the program where they will choose community partners, learn from peer mentoring, and share their research outcomes.
Fourth Year Pro-Seminars (2 credit hours total)
During a CODES student’s final year of course work, they will enroll in two one-hour seminars to work on their capstone project and consider future career goals with their CODES mentoring faculty
Course Articulation
The CODES curriculum is designed to be holistic, with students meeting the overarching goals of the University’s general education program throughout the four years of their participation. However, if a student choose to leave the program early for any reason, the articulation plan below demonstrates how courses in CODES will count toward general education completion.
| Year | Fall | Gen Ed Articulation | Spring | Gen Ed Articulation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 |
CODES 120: Research Team (3 hours) CODES 121: Communicating Globally and Locally (3 hours) |
ENG 101 ACS101 humanities breadth first year transition |
CODES 120:Research Team (3 hours) CODES 123: Research and Systems Thinking (3 hours) |
ENG102 Social science breadth Info and communication in society breadth US cultures Experience |
| Year 2 |
CODES 220:Research Team (3 hours) CODES 221 and 221L: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Scientific Method (4 hours with lab credit) |
Life or physical sciences breadth Lab experience |
CODES 220: Research Team (3 hours) |
global cultures breadth RA101 |
| Year 3 | CODES 320: Research Team (3 hours) | Interdisciplinary studies | CODES 320: 3 hours (research team, repeatable) | |
| Year 4 | CODES 420: Research Pro-seminar (1 hour) | CODES 420: Research Pro-seminar (1 hour) |