Welcome to JRLC's Good Trouble Academy
John R. Lewis College offers a myriad of community-engaged leadership opportunities to train students to get into “good trouble” or, in other words, to develop knowledge and skills in activism and community-engaged leadership.
The Good Trouble Academy (GTA) is a chance for students affiliated with John R. Lewis College to be honored at graduation for participating in experiential and academic opportunities relating to our college theme of Social Justice and Community. Learn more by exploring the Canvas course with the menu above and for questions, please contact coco@ucsc.edu.
The Five GTA Pillars
The design of the Good Trouble Academy is based on five principles distilled from the life and work of John R. Lewis.
Pillar 1: Students are Change Makers
Social change happens through complex, often incremental, activism. As a site of pedagogical praxis, the college combines the sharing and production of knowledge with reflection and action. Students learn to locate themselves in the arc of history. They learn that exemplary figures, whether public leaders or everyday people, have worked together, across difference and generations, with patience and perseverance, to create a better world. Our goal is that students become, and continue to be, the vanguard of such efforts.
Pillar 2: Commitment to Justice
John R. Lewis exemplified an unwavering commitment to recognizing the necessity of transformation among individuals, communities, and social structures. He stressed the need to confront -- with nonviolence -- racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of dehumanization. Our goal is that students will be moved and empowered to intervene to create a more equitable and just world.
Pillar 3: Courageous and Interconnected Community
John R. Lewis often spoke of Beloved Community, reflecting a deep relationality, and interdependence. At John R. Lewis College, we strive to create a community in which diverse identities, opinions, and beliefs can thrive, where we uplift our shared humanity and recognize the indispensability of all life. Our goal is to foster a courageous and interconnected college community through the practice of transcommunality, a concept developed by UCSC Professor Emeritus John Brown Childs that draws from Kingian non-violence and the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois Confederacy.
Pillar 4: Empowering engagement
Often we frame university learning as “receiving” an education, as if it is a passive endeavor, rather than demanding an education, which reflects empowered engagement. This demand is of oneself, e.g., attending to metacognitive and reflexive work; as well as a demand of the institution, e.g., to meet its obligations of intellectual rigor as well as a duty of care. Beyond campus, there is civic engagement, the responsibility to contribute to the public good towards a better future for all. Engagement means empowering of all those involved in ongoing cooperative action, which in turn, can lead to transformation. Our goal is to empower our students to engage in these varied ways, from confronting our own foibles and biases, to seeing the work of societal change as a larger purpose beyond themselves.
Pillar 5: Sustaining Oneself in the Struggle
John Lewis wrote, “There is joy in searching for the truth, in finding what matters to you, and helping improve the world so that it is a more peaceful place.” He demonstrated how to be a resilient, lifelong agent of positive change in the world, someone who built a movement of love and nonviolence as a model of the world he sought to create. One’s own well-being, hope, and faith supports the ability to persevere in the face of adversity and suffering. Our goal is to provide students with the skills and ability to nourish and nurture themselves, to create a college community that embodies our values and aspirations.