About the Center
The Center for Equality and Justice (CEJ) enables CLU to broaden its reach into the community, support organizations with similar goals, and help students find meaningful service learning opportunities. By addressing some of the key issues of our times — social inequality, economic justice and diverse cultural identities — the CEJ offers practical assistance to community-based organizations working with underrepresented groups as it furthers CLU's mission and contributes to contemporary thinking about equality and justice.
The CEJ aims to be an agent of productive change in the region, applying an integrative approach to societal challenges. It stimulates community-based research that can aid community collaborations in taking action to remedy disparities and further the goals of social justice. The Center for Equality and Justice continually seeks more effective ways to share ideas and knowledge, and to act as a nexus for Ventura County's academic and activist communities.
See a short video about the Center for Equality and Justice here.
Goals & Outcomes
The mission guides the CEJ as it aims to develop teaching, research, and service by becoming a nexus for collaboration and interdisciplinary collegiality. The Center is outcome-oriented: producing curriculum (with an emphasis on service-learning), fostering campus-wide and community-based collaborations for co-curricular events, and serving as a resource to connect community-based members with local researchers (with a focus on involving CLU students in research projects).
The Center brings together students, faculty and staff who seek to channel their scholarly and activist passions into working collaboratively with others to make a difference with and for the residents of Ventura County and the surrounding counties.
Through critical engagement with social problems and scholarly issues, California Lutheran University can build on its tradition of academic excellence to contribute to the Lutheran tradition of higher education which seeks to "educate leaders for a global society who are strong in character and judgment, confident in their identity and vocation, and committed to service and justice.
Leading the Way for Social Change
The Center serves as a nexus for community-based research and dissemination of findings to effect social change. The institutes will conduct projects under the auspices of the Center for Equality and Justice in order to facilitate wide ranging community partnerships that include non profit organizations and local academic institutions. In addition, the institutes interrogate both traditional learning and service learning in its quest to inspire students to pursue careers as wide ranging as, immigration law, inner-city teaching, public health, and law enforcement.
Both the two institutes and the VC Collaborative are dedicated to developing strong bonds between the academic and local communities; however, each has a distinct mission. The Center aims to achieve social change by utilizing web-based technology to coordinate the university's community outreach efforts. By centralizing the teaching, service and research efforts of CLU and other academic partners focused on promoting equality and justice, the Center's activities will foster collaborations to aid communities of Ventura County who may currently be disconnected but share common goals.
Target Audiences
Our target audience is social service agencies and concerned citizens, researchers, students and volunteers. Since issues of equity and social justice affect underrepresented groups disproportionately, we believe that these groups — comprising more than 25% of the county's population — are the greatest beneficiaries of our efforts. Annually, up to 800 students from CLU, California State University Channel Islands and the community colleges will be involved, along with 15 different community organizations.
Partnerships
The CEJ has already formed relationships with California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI) and Moorpark College and plans to expand relationships to all local colleges as well as relevant unaffiliated social researchers. In addition, members of the Faculty Steering Committee currently serve on the boards of the Central Coast Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE) (Dr. Greg Freeland) and El Concilio (Dr. José Marichal). Dr. Adina Nack is a member of Ventura County's HIV/AIDS Coalition, and serves on the United Way of Ventura County's new Health Focus Team.
Plans also include collaboration with the County's Obesity Prevention Task Force and the United Way of Ventura County's Connections Focus Team.
