05/11/2026
In television, a crossover episode brings two audiences together. For shows like “Abbott Elementary” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” or “Rugrats” and the “The Wild Thornberrys,” a crossover allows characters from separate worlds interact in unexpected ways, often toward a common goal.
SBS faculty members Sadiyah Malcolm-Wallace, sociology, and Bridgette Davis, public policy, 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?”
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 faculty and their respective courses are housed in different disciplines, but in essence, they both look at deeply interconnected questions about young people’s lives.
Read more about this unique teaching innovation: https://www.umass.edu/social-sciences/news/crossover-episode
