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WSF Sidebar

  • Westmont in San Francisco
    • Community Life
    • Accepted Students: Next Steps
    • Internships

Spring, Summer, & Fall Westmont in San Francisco

Make the beautiful and challenging city of San Francisco your classroom!

At Westmont in San Francisco, you’ll spend a semester with a living-learning community open to all majors while interning in the city and studying an exciting curriculum focused on global studies. Join 20-25 students living in a community house in the beautiful neighborhood of Pacific Heights, where you’ll work for organizations serving populations such as the homeless and refugees or for financial and technology companies. Take classes in economics, sociology, theology or literature that satisfy general education requirements and offer effective and meaningful Christian engagement with the poor and the marginalized throughout the world. Grapple with the big questions: Who am I? Who is my neighbor? What is God calling me to do? The community gathers on Tuesday evenings so professors and students can cook for each other and worship and read Scripture together. Students report that their transformational experiences have shaped their lives well beyond college. 

Outstanding faculty, leading researchers, and public writers eager to integrate faith with rigorous academic work and Christian practice teach a range of courses, including these offerings (past and current):

  • Faith, Culture, and Diversity
  • Studies in Literature: the Environment
  • Community, Spirituality, and the Way of Jesus

Email wsf@westmont.edu if you would like to learn more about the program or schedule an appointment with a WSF staff member.

Previous
The Fall 2022 Cohort dressed to impress at WSF's 50th Anniversary Gala
The Summer 22 Cohort at their final retreat
Welcome to The City
All smiles at the Saturday morning farmers market!
Make the diverse city of San Francisco your classroom
Front room at the WSF House
Guest lecturers come from all over the area
Good walking shoes are a must
Morning commute
This view never gets old!
Land your dream internship!
next

About the Program:

 

The Student Experience 

Community Living

The WSF House (also called the Jackson St. House) is located in the beautiful neighborhood of Pacific Heights, a few blocks from the historic Presidio of San Francisco. Its unique setting (only three miles from downtown and four miles from the Pacific Ocean) allows you to immerse yourself in life and culture of the city. Using nearby public transportation, you can explore the city's many attractions and commute to various internship sites. The Haight-Ashbury, Inner Richmond, Japantown, NOPA, and the Marina districts are minutes away. The Presidio is 2 blocks away and features 2 square miles of green space and areas for outdoor recreation. Pursue endless possibilities with the city of San Francisco at your front door!

Learn More

Student Internships

At the beginning of the semester, training sessions with the COVE staff will prepare you to search for an internship and equip you with skills such as resume-writing and interviewing that you'll also find helpful in your professional endeavors after college. You'll meet with professors to identify possible internships in San Francisco, and you'll complete three interviews at various placement sites before choosing an internship.

Learn More

Required Courses

IS 190: WSF Internship

Fulfills GE Serving Society

This 8-unit course is centered on participation in an internship related to the professional and vocational interests of each student. Internship opportunities exist for students of all majors. The amount of major credit received is determined by departmental guidelines and the type of internship selected. Components of the course include attendance at all placement orientation workshops during the first week of the semester (for Fall/Spring only); interviewing with at least three agencies/organizations prior to selecting an internship site; development of a detailed learning contract in consultation with one's site supervisor; and engagement with regular reading and writing assignments aimed at the reflective integration of theory and praxis.


The internship is accompanied by a required weekly seminar.The purpose of this required seminar is to enable students to critically engage and reflect on their daily internship experiences in renewed faith-based ways. The course is designed to foster a deeper understanding of personal-vocational identity. Through guest speaker presentations and shared dialogue on common workplace dynamics, this course seeks to help students discover what it means to live faithfully amidst a range of complex and diverse settings while integrating a Christ-centered perspective

IS 188: Engaging the City

“Introduction to San Francisco” is a one-unit course providing essential background and context to help students understand the history and diversity of San Francisco, especially the challenges and opportunities facing specific neighborhoods of this  city where they will be living, learning, and working for a semester. Students will engage with the presence and influence of “The City” in our world by becoming more confident navigating this particular city, San Francisco. As students become accustomed to navigating this city, they will deepen their encounter with the urban world. Students will gain knowledge and experience of the city’s diverse social and cultural communities through field trips, interviews, reading, and neighborhood studies.

  • IS 190: WSF Internship 8 Units
  • IS 188: Engaging the City 1 Unit

Elective Courses:

IS 189: Faith, Culture, and Diversity

This course invites students to cultivate a deeper awareness of, and engagement with, cultural difference and diversity - particularly in relation to the urban context of the San Francisco Bay Area which will serve as the living-learning laboratory for an integrative exploration into the themes of empathy & compassion; intercultural intelligence & competency; and social privilege & inequality from a distinctively Christian worldview perspective.

Fulfills GE Understanding Society; taught by Professor Brad Berky

ENG-006: Studies in Lit: the Environment

An exploration of the ways of knowing provided by narrative, poetry and drama. The course invites us to see how literature reveals things we cannot know except by inference or by metaphor. Further, by encouraging us to practice compassion by imagining the other, the course involves us in ways of knowing that are inherently ethical.

Aims of the course:

  1. To explore the relationship between nature, literary imagination, and the history of earth stewardship in the U.S., including reflection on how we have, as culture spoken and written about the natural world, and how our language shapes our understanding of it and behaviors toward it.
  2. To understand the roots of some of the assumptions about nature (both useful and dangerous) imbedded in American mythology.
  3. To reflect on the current role of writing, storytelling, poetry, and other imaginative and creative work in the cause of sustainability and global survival.
  4. To reflect on biblical texts related to care of the created order and how echoes of biblical language and story have shaped American perceptions and policies..

Fulfills GE Reading Imaginative Literature and GE Writing/Speech Intensive and ENV Studies Humanities Elective; taught by Dr. Marilyn McEntyre 

PEA-041A: Health and Fitness in the City

This course is designed to help Westmont in San Francisco students stay active and healthy while offering opportunities to explore the landscapes, streetscapes & local opportunities for indoor physical activities throughout the City.  Involvement in this course will give students practice in exploring new urban spaces, in minimizing your impact on resources, and in discovering how some forms of exercise can help navigate the stress of urban living.

Fulfills 1 unit of PEA GE credit; taught by Professor Brad Berky

City College, San Francisco

As needed, students may take courses at City College San Francisco to fulfill their academic requirements. Please note this may require arriving earlier or leaving later in the semester to accommodate the CCSF academic calendar. Students must get consent from WSF faculty before enrolling in courses. More information can be found on the City College of San Francisco website.

Acadeum Online Courses

Acadeum is an online consortium of like-minded schools that offer a catalogue of diverse courses to meet academic requirements in an asynchronous manner.

Students interested in potentially taking an Acadeum course should reach out to Brad Berky, bberky@westmont.edu, with the GE they are hoping to fulfill and to learn more about the process. 

Learn more about Acadeum here.

  • IS 189: Faith, Culture, and Diversity 4 units
  • ENG-006: Studies in Lit: the Environment 4 units
  • PEA-041A: Health and Fitness in the City 1 unit
  • City College, San Francisco
  • Acadeum Online Courses

Program Costs

The cost of the program matches the cost of a semester on Westmont’s campus (tuition, fees, room and board). Yes, financial aid applies even if you have studied abroad already or plan to go abroad in the future. Consider a semester in San Francisco as Westmont off-campus housing.

Find additional information about Westmont in San Francisco, contact ocp@westmont.edu or visit the Global Education office in Kerrwood Hall.  For non-Westmont student, contact your study abroad office.

Eligibility

  • Class standing
  • GPA (minimum 2.3 gpa)
  • Application and essays
  • Personal and faculty recommendations

Criteria 

In addition to the general qualifications above, the following are requirements that must be met, with or without reasonable accommodation, in order to complete all essential elements of the program. All participants must be able to:

  • Navigate stairs without assistance.
  • Receive the final dose of the Covid-19 vaccine at least two weeks prior to the commencement of the program. 
  • If eligible, receive the most recent Covid-19 vaccine booster at least two weeks prior to departure if it has been at least two months since your last Covid-19 vaccine or booster. 

Applications

Open to students of all majors, sophomores through seniors. 

WSF offers acceptance for semester programs on a rolling basis. 

Westmont Students: Apply for Summer 23, Fall 23, & Spring 24

Non-Westmont Students: Apply for Summer 23, Fall 23, & Spring 24

Summer Session 2023 Program Information

Email wsf@westmont.edu if you would like to learn more about the program or schedule an appointment with a WSF staff member.

Faculty & Staff

Brad Berky, Associate Director & Internship Coordinator

With thirty years with Westmont in San Francisco, Brad is the Associate Director of Westmont in San Francisco and oversees student internships. He was a student in the program and has been a faculty member since 1990, thus providing him with a unique depth of insight and experience around what makes a semester in San Francisco so transformative. 

Read more

Tirzah Dove, Interim Administrative Assistant

A recent alum of Westmont & of the WSF program (Summer 2021), Tirzah joined staff in May of 2022. She takes care of administrative tasks along with overseeing marketing efforts.

Read more

Ben Gritter, Residence Life Coordinator

Ben joined the Westmont in San Francisco staff in August 2021. Ben contributes to building community and spiritual formation practices with students.

Read more

Adjunct Faculty

Marilyn McEntyre, Ph.D.

Marilyn teaches Studies in Literature: Environment.

Read more

John Blondell, Ph.D.

John will be teaching an intensive course called: Great Literature of the Stage for Spring 2023.

Read more

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