SS2021 MC384: Metropolitan Societies. This course had 23 students and was taught remotely; it was taught as a student-led civic engagement project, supported by a grant (though none of the money was spent in this course, but a follow up over the summer of 2021). This is an SRP upper division selective that I have taught almost every year since 1997, however, I did something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT this year, first because I had funding from MSU’s Regional Economic Innovations to do a community engagement course, and secondly, because it required that I teach Detroit remotely. It turned out to be a highly rewarding and engaged and collaborative class with exceptional productivity. I was contacted in Fall 2020 by a Detroit colleague, John O’Brien, former executive director of the Northwest Detroit Neighborhood Development (NDND) in Brightmoor, Detroit (and a dad of two SRP alumni) for help with a community development research project. John and I applied and received a $2500 grant for the semester (and summer) of 2021 for the “Brightmoor Neighborhood Stability” study, a Student-Led, Faculty-Guided Technical Assistance project supported by the MSU EDA University Center for Regional Economic Innovation (REI) program. I reorganized the course radically, so that on Mondays we studied and discussed texts on Detroit and the Brightmoor neighborhood as per my usual class. While I usually devote more readings to the history of Detroit city and metropolitan area relations, I pared this down to accommodate the added research components that were always a fundamental component of the class, but students did this research on their own in the past, whereas this semester, it had to be organized in collaborative group work, and as we were remote, more class time had to be devoted to accommodate this work. Wednesdays were devoted to research and “labs” where students learned and applied research skills such as Social Explorer, mapping, US Census work (always a part of this class), but also guest lectures (zoom) from the community. We would have benefited from taking our usual bus tour of Detroit and the neighborhood as we have in past course iterations, but this wasn’t allowed because of Covid concerns. I did go with two students who took their own cars to do a photo essay of the neighborhood and to meet with John. Other students took it upon themselves to do a site visit by car on their own initiative. Instead, we had eleven guest speakers zoom into class to present Detroit or Brightmoor data, students got the chance to meet and hear from Brightmoor residents directly, to hear about their concerns – almost working as collaborative interviews or focus groups. Based upon the concerns of the residents we heard from, students worked in groups to complete nine different project that were presented as policy briefs and given to REI as part of our report as well as to Brightmoor NDND. Students also worked drafting on a resident survey (we could not administer it because of cost considerations, but we are working on trying to find funding to advance this component of the research). The grant money paid for quantitative analysis of tenancy data audit for NDND by the Center for Statistics at MSU during the summer of 2021. Students reported that they had a chance to make a difference and to develop and apply their expertise. Many learned new skills – policy briefs, interviews, survey construction, interviews, social explorer, US Census work. One student told me that he got a job in Chicago (he graduated in August 2021) because he could demonstrate data analysis and mapping skills he learned from Social Explorer. For my part, the increased role as “project manager” for his course took more time than the traditional way I have taught it in the past (but gaining time in not having to organize the usual Detroit tour).