In television, the crossover episode brings two audiences into one. In shows like “Abbott Elementary” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” or “Rugrats” and the “The Wild Thornberrys,” characters from separate worlds come together in unexpected ways, often toward a common goal.

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In a mutual mentoring meeting, Sadiyah Malcolm-Wallace, assistant professor of sociology, and Bridgette Davis, assistant professor of public policy, both in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, realized they taught their quite-related courses at the same time, in the same building, on the same days. Jokingly, they asked, “What if we did a joint event with our classes? Like a crossover episode?”

Malcolm-Wallace and Davis are both junior faculty whose research centers young people. Malcolm-Wallace is a youth worker and sociologist, and Davis, a social worker and policy scholar. Their recent joint venture: Youth Programs, Policy, and Praxis: ‘Crossover Episode’ was a collaboratively designed event merging two distinct courses for a single shared learning experience.

Malcolm-Wallace’s course, Sociology of Childhood, examines how childhoods are socially constructed across race, class, gender and geography. Davis’ course, Policy in an Age of Precarity, explores how public policy shapes the life trajectories of young adults navigating instability in education, housing and labor. The scholars and their respective courses are housed in different disciplines, but in essence, they both look at deeply interconnected questions about young people’s lives.

The collaboration grew out of a mutual mentoring grant and shared research backgrounds in youth work. While crossover is a well-established concept in youth media studies, its application as a pedagogical tool for the college classroom offers fresh perspectives in higher education.

But students didn’t just show up—they were instrumental in organizing the event. They identified youth-serving groups in the Pioneer Valley and practiced professional outreach and communication as they extended invitations to campus to join the effort.

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On the day of the event, students came prepared to engage with practitioners as emerging scholars, bridging their semester-long learning experiences into a coherent analysis of how youth workers engage the young people they serve.

“This area is new to me and often feels extremely daunting, but it confirmed for me that work in policy doesn’t need to always be a large ordeal (Congress, mayor, president, etc.) and it is impactful at all levels,” one student remarked.

Another student shared, “One of the most valuable takeaways for me was that students are provided with free legal advice and help from a real attorney through the UMass Legal Studies office. This is something that I was not aware of and don’t think many other students are either.”

“It was incredible to learn about how policies impact local organizations in our very own Amherst,” a third student added.

Beyond discussions of career possibilities and internships, students learned more about how the structural forces shaping youth lives such as adultification bias, economic inequality, federal and state funding shortfalls, and constraints on agency also shape the work of youth-serving organizations.

For Malcolm-Wallace and Davis, students’ ability to integrate theory, research and community engagement is an essential skill, as many students are aspiring lawyers, social workers, education professionals, policy practitioners and more.

They say this pilot is just the beginning and hope to hold more crossover classes in the future.