ABSTRACT
The engagement of college and university students in the study of neighborhoods and communities can be a valuable resource in producing knowledge and disseminating this information to people affected by the process that is occurring in gentrifying neighborhoods and communities. It can also serve as a beneficial social learning strategy for public sociology students. The use of students in this manner follows the tradition of the Chicago School of Sociology team of urban scholars of the early 20th century, particularly Robert E. Park, who taught University of Chicago students to view urban communities as social laboratories and, through immersion and ethnographic study, to emerge with empirical analysis that could be used to improve the observed communities. This essay explores how today’s college and university students can be enlisted in this respect to conduct research on gentrifying communities and to disseminate this information to community leaders with the goal of contributing to urban community planning and policy that seeks to revitalize neighborhoods without displacing marginalized sub-populations. Connecting sociology to the various publics in this process can produce new knowledge about gentrification, engage social justice programs that can benefit citizens in gentrified communities and enrich student education through service learning.
