Summary

About

Source: Website

The Next System Fellows are the newest additions to Mason’s prestigious undergraduate Arlington Fellows program. Their fellowships involve:

• Internships with a partner organization, union, or research group, or with Mason’s own Democratizing NOVA project.
• Preparation for a career in social and public service, organizing, research, technology development, cooperative and social entrepreneurship, teaching, and more.
• Learning about and engaging directly with real world next system projects such as worker cooperatives and solidarity economy initiatives, community owned enterprises and services, campaigns for abolition and political democracy, transition and resilient communities, democratic and sustainable technologies, non-violent conflict resolution and restorative justice projects, and more.
• Joining a cohort of students taking four courses together for 15 credits:
  • Social Change and the Next System
  • Power, Politics, and Society
  • Big Data, Technology, and Society
  • Internship Practicum (6 credits)

Web Links

• Website

Courses

Students admitted as Next System Fellows enroll in three classroom courses and a six-credit internship course for a total of 15 credits. This coming Spring of 2023, our Fellows and faculty will meet for three sessions in-person on Tuesdays on the Mason Square campus in Arlington. We will also meet twice on Thursdays: Once online and once in person on the Fairfax campus.

We are now preparing our course program for the 2023 Next System Fellows. The program will build on lessons learned in our first (very successful) year. Our 2023 course offerings will look a lot like what we offered in 2022:

These courses may also significantly help Next System Fellows advance toward completion of their major, minor, and some concentrations. For instance, the Internship Practicum course may fill the Capstone requirement. We encourage you to talk with your undergraduate advisor.

Note that students who have already completed any of the three regular classroom courses (the first three listed above) can opt out of taking those again.

Social Change and the Next System

GOVT 319, SOCI 395, SOCI 633, CULT 860

This has been the core seminar for the Next System Fellows. See the “About Next System Studies” page to get a sense of materials covered.

Power, Politics, and Society

GOVT 319, SOCI 340

The power to maintain or to change our society shapes our lives. Where does that power come from, how does it function, and how can we exercise power? Gain a critical understanding of concepts of relational power, state formation, governance, elites and masses, social classes, the racial state, patriarchy, hegemony and resistance, revolutions, social movements, corporate power, nationalism and citizenship, transnational networks, global capitalism and the world system.

Big Data, Technology and Society

CDS 290, INTS 375, GLOA 398, GVPT, SOCI 391

In this course, we explore the new technologies, social relations, and practices emerging in the course of the latest waves of the data revolution as contested terrains in a struggle between digital authoritarianization and digital democratization. In particular, we consider how this immediate struggle is shaping the conditions for the emergence of the next system.

Internship Practicum

SOCI 416 or the equivalent in ANTH, INTS, GLOA, GOVT, GVIP, EVPP or another program

This course involves independent scholarly research grounded in a student’s internship or other supervised practice. Students enrolled in this course produce a term research project, maintain a research journal, and meet with their supervising instructor and other enrolled students in order to receive constructive feedback.

A major component of a Next System Fellowship involves an internship with a partner organization, union, or research group, or with Mason’s own Democratizing NOVA project.

In the process, Fellows gain practical experience and skills and build networks that advance them toward a rewarding and meaningful post-college career. They also make important contributions to building a better society in the here and now.

Admitted Fellows choose from one of two internship tracks:  

Track 1: DNOVA – On this track, a Next System Fellow interns with the Democratizing NOVA (DNOVA) project at Mason’s Center for Social Science Research. DNOVA is a new community-engaged civic research project of the Center for Social Science Research (CSSR) dedicated to deepening democracy in northern Virginia (“NOVA”). DNOVA interns begin each week with a Monday team meetings on the Fairfax campus. Each intern develops a research portfolio and partnerships in a particular democratization area. Interns work together to build campus-community events, resources, and networks.

• DNOVA (note that Fellows are automatically enrolled as interns in DNOVA)

Track 2: Partner Organization – Another excellent alternative involves securing an internship with a partner organization (see list of confirmed partners, at right). To do this, a Next System Fellow must apply for an internship with the organization of their choice, and notify us that they have done so. We will follow up with our partners to confirm that the applicant has been accepted into the Fellowship and to discuss collaboration. For those admitted Fellows who seek yet fail to secure an internship with a partner organization, the DNOVA internship remains as a fallback – you will have an internship either way.

In addition to an internship, each Fellow enrolls in an Internship Practicum course (in Sociology, this is SOCI 416, but students can take a version of this course through other programs as well). Next System Fellows take this course for 6 credits, completing 270 hours of internship work over the semester, and perform independent research related closely to their internship experience.

• ¡Alianza, Presente!
• Code for NoVA
• CODEPINK
• Communities United
• County of Fairfax, VA
• The Democracy Collaborative
• The Democracy Convention
• Democracy Policy Network
• FairVote
• Institute for Policy Studies
• Move to Amend
• Poor People’s Army: Economic Human Rights Campaign
• Public Citizen
• Presente.org
• Virginia Solidarity Economy Network
• U.S. Solidarity Economy Network