Community Economic & Social Development

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Our Community Economic & Social Development Program

Algoma University’s four-year Bachelor of Arts in Community, Economic, and Social Development (CESD) is the only undergraduate program of its kind in Canada!

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Community, economic, and social development provides students with the tools and knowledge to make meaningful change within their community and the world around them. This distinctive interdisciplinary program integrates several disciplines including CESD, social work, sociology, political science, geography, economics, and business administration. Due to the broad-based structure of the program, students will develop a holistic perspective of the world around them and develop the knowledge and understanding to work to advocate for positive change, fight for economic and social equality, and defend human rights, with a specific focus on smaller urban, rural, northern, and Indigenous communities. Students can also minor in environmental sustainability and social justice and globalization.

In students’ third-year of study, they will complete a 150-hour work placement, while in their fourth-year, they will be required to complete a 300-hour placement and a major paper or project. Students have been placed in organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, the Children’s Aid Society, Batchewana First Nation, Garden River First Nation, NORDIK Institute, United Way, Ontario Trillium Foundation, and more. These placements allow students to apply concepts, theories, and methods from their coursework in the community, advocate for change, and implement new analytical strategies, making the degree action-packed and very hands-on.

Graduates will be eligible for certification by the Economic Developers’ Association of Canada (EDAC) and the Council for the Advancement of Native Development Offices (CANDO). Graduates from the CESD program have gone on to work in the local, provincial, and federal government, not-for-profit and cooperative agencies, youth development agencies, rural and urban economic development associations, have worked as researchers, advocates, and more graduates have also been accepted into prestigious graduate programs in geography, education, sociology, sustainable development, and community economic development.

To learn more about course options for the CESD 2020 Spring Institute, please click here (PDF)

What You Can Expect

Hands-on learning, a close-knit campus community, and caring faculty.

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Be a changemaker in your community

Fight for social and economic equality, defend human rights, and bring about positive change – that’s what CESD is all about.

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Get hands on experience

In your third and fourth year of CESD, students will participate in a 150-hour and 300-hour field placement, which will apply concepts, theories, and methods learned in the classroom to real life. You’ll get real hands-on working knowledge, and valuable experience to add to your resume.

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An interdisciplinary Career

With courses in CESD, social work, political science, geography, and business administration, students will earn a well-rounded and holistic degree that opens them up to countless career paths. Your options are endless with a degree in CESD.

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Spring Institute

The CESD Spring Institute provides education and professional development in Community Development with a specialized focus on northern, rural and Indigenous communities. They offer unique university course credits that can be applied to a degree at Algoma U, professional development for those already working in the field, and interactive, hands-on learning experiences.

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The Animator (CESD News)

The Animator is a quarterly newsletter created and published by the CESD program. By subscribing to the newsletter, students receive valuable, up-to-date information, of everything happening within the program.

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The CESD Club

The CESD Club is run by students and supporters of CESD. The club commits to undertaking campaigns and initiatives to raise awareness of, and attempt to redress, local and global issues. These initiatives include developing The People’s Garden on Algoma U’s campus, performing ongoing academic research on a range of community concerns, and coordinating an international learning exchange with the community of Intag, Ecuador. To contact the CESD Club, please email cesdclub@clubs.algomau.ca.

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NORDIK Institute

Created with the help of CESD Professor Dr. Gayle Broad, NORDIK has been instrumental in investigating key issues which directly affect Northern Ontario. Students can become involved with NORDIK in a variety of ways, including as volunteers, interns, summer student programs, work study programs, and through graduate studies supervision. For more information, please visit NORDIK’s website. LEARN MORE

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The People’s Garden

The People’s Garden is an initiative started and maintained by the CESD program, in partnership with the Algoma U Student Food Bank, Student Services, and Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig. The People’s Garden was undertaken in an effort to address student food security, as well as to provide an arena for fun on-campus events and community-building activities.

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Community Based Delivery

The CESD Department has been delivering Community Based courses in partnership with communities and organizations for more than a decade. Past Community Based Partnerships included working with Chippewas of the Thames First Nation, Atlantic Policy Congress (APC) of First Nations Chiefs Secretariat, Kenjgewin Teg Educational Institute (KTEI), Fort Albany First Nation and Sagamok Anishnawbek First Nation. Our current partner for the First Nation Social Service Administrators Certificate is The Ontario Native Welfare Administrators Association (ONWAA).

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Meet our Faculty

Our CESD faculty are experts in the field. Get to know them!

Dr. Sheila Gruner

Associate Professor

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Dr. Laura Wyper

Department Chair, Community Economic and Social Development, Assistant Professor

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Sean Meades

Director of Research, NORDIK Institute, Lecturer

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Melissa Jones

Community Economic and Social Development Program and Learning Support Coordinator

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Dr. Laura Wyper

Department Chair, Community Economic and Social Development, Assistant Professor

Assistant Professor

laura.wyper@algomau.ca

705-949-2301 ext. 4811

Office: SH 421

I was born in Sudbury and largely raised in Sault Ste. Marie, so I have spent summers on Goulais River, Goulais Bay, and Lake Superior kayaking, canoeing, and swimming. I’ve also spent a good deal of my time walking local hiking trails, camping at local provincial parks, and sitting on the Robertson Lake cliff tops while working a student summer job in my early twenties. This has given me a love for this land, an understanding of indigenous sovereignty, and a consciousness of my place in this history as someone of settler ancestry who sees reconciliation as our way forward.

I spent more than a decade away from the area related to my studies and my work as I have a Bachelor of Health Sciences in Midwifery from Laurentian University, a Bachelor of Education from Trent University, a Master of Arts in Adult Education and Community Development from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto, and a PhD in Adult Education and Community Development with a specialization in Comparative, International and Development Education from OISE, at the University of Toronto.

I have worked in community development for more than twenty years in women’s health care, informal community-based adult education settings, and formally within adult education for the Algoma District School Board (ADSB) at Northland Adult Learning Centre as a Literacy and Basic Skills Instructor and then a Program Coordinator for three of their adult education programs. From 2012 – 2017 I worked for both ADSB and at Algoma University (AU) in the Community Economic and Social Development (CESD) Department. My CESD work has included both part-time and full-time faculty positions with a complete move over to Algoma University in January of 2018 for a full-time contract position.

Because of my background I have a commitment to Northern Ontario in relation to place-based development and I love working at Algoma University in what I consider my ‘home’ community. Outside of my university work I put into ‘praxis’ some of the activism I teach in courses like: Environment and Community Resilience, Sustainable Community Development, and Community Advocacy and Social Justice, for CESD.

As most of my degrees, besides my Bachelor of Health Science degree, were acquired while raising my daughter and working fulltime, I have an appreciation and understanding of adult learners who often have full plates, and a respect for the work I see from students in the classroom. I love meeting, working with, and learning from students and other faculty, and I look forward to meeting all new students!

Sean Meades

Director of Research, NORDIK Institute, Lecturer

Phone: 705-949-2301 ext. 4235

Algoma University, Room SH418

sean.meades@algomau.ca

Prof. Sean Meades is a Lecturer in the Department of Community Economic and Social Development and Director of the Northern Ontario Research Development Ideas and Knowledge (NORDIK) Institute, a community-based research group that emerged from the program’s longstanding record of community engagement.

Meades was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland and raised in the small community of Flatrock before relocating to Sault Ste. Marie with his family in 1995.

He completed his B.A. (Hons) in Gender and Women’s Studies and Linguistics at Dalhousie University and M.A. in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at York University. He is a PhD candidate in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at York University and his research focuses on political economy of language policy, discourse analysis, cultural and heritage policy, land-use planning and community economic development in northern, rural and Indigenous communities.

After returning to Sault Ste. Marie from Nova Scotia, Meades worked in popular education as an anti-homophobia and safe-sex educator with the Access AIDS Network. He later joined the team at NORDIK first as an intern in 2008. During this time, he took Anishinaabemowin and Anishinaabe Studies courses through AU and Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig, which led to a number of years volunteering and working with Shingwauk Education Trust.

Meades’ community involvement has included work with the LGBT2SQ community, anti-racism and Anishinaabe solidarity causes, cultural policy, and urban sustainability. He is currently the chair of FutureSSM’s Arts and Culture Action Team and serves on a number of Committees of Council for the City of Sault Ste. Marie.

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“In my fourth year placement, I organised an advisory committee for the Soup Kitchen to change into a Community Health Centre. It was such a great experience. The placement allowed me to bring the skills I had learned in class and apply them to the centre. I was given freedom to explore and develop new projects and analyse how effective other plans were. I was subsequently hired by the Soup Kitchen.”

Allyson Schmidt

MA, Sociology, BA, CESD

“I loved the passion in the students at Algoma. I did a lot of social and environmental activism and volunteer work while at school, from gathering like-minded individuals to tackling today’s issues on campus with the CESD Club to helping grow organically produced food, free to the student population. This all added to my future and my degree. It stretched me as an individual and gave me the hands on experience that I needed to solidify what theory was learned within the classroom.”

Carly Breckenridge

BA, CESD

“We receive a lot of hands-on experience and placement opportunities outside of the classroom, which really helps to apply what we are learning in real-life situations.”

Johnathan Lalonde