Can education transform your life and change your world? Explore how liberal education empowers students to question themselves and their society, through critical engagement with classical and contemporary philosophical and literary texts. Discover how liberal education teaches skills that can help you develop your personal, professional, and civic lives. Fulfills Foundations - Philosophy and Literature.
Spring/Summer 2024 - Online Fall 2024 - Hybrid Winter 2025 - Hybrid
Explores how the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class, religion, and physical abilities affect the material lives and media representations of various cultural groups in the United States. Engages historical and current debates regarding issues of immigration, meritocracy, segregation, the economy, the environment, and identity. Fulfills one of the Foundations - Social and Behavioral Sciences. Fulfills Cultures - U.S. Diversity. Offered fall and winter semesters.
Spring/Summer 2024 - Online Fall 2024 - Hybrid Winter 2025 - Online
This course is a survey of selected interdisciplinary research methods. It includes comparative analysis of research methods used in natural and life sciences, social sciences, and the humanities, with a focus on integrative and problem-solving methodologies. Procedures for evaluating data, sources, and findings are reviewed. Offered every semester.
Spring/Summer 2024 - Online Fall 2024 - Online Winter 2025 - Online
An interdisciplinary study of those ideas that stimulate the creative processes and innovation in information and technology in a diversity of human practices, including, but not limited to, artistic, philosophical, scientific, and entrepreneurial endeavors, with a focus on practicing innovativeness and creativity in a variety of areas. Part of the Information, Innovation, and Technology Issue. Offered every year. Prerequisite: Junior standing.
Fall 2024 - Hybrid Winter 2025 - Hybrid
Introduction to concepts related to the construction, expression, propagation, and understanding of meaning in a diverse society. Emphasis on multidisciplinary perspectives underpinning authentic individual and/or collective agency per dialogue, democracy, and other critical forms of praxis. Offered once or twice per year, depending on demand.
Fall 2024 - Online
An interdisciplinary examination of basic interpretations of dialogue in a diverse world. This course engages the theory and practice of dialogue through personal reflection, integration, and action. Students develop this relational art for personal, professional, and civic lives, and understand its implications for the possibility of a democratic life. Offered fall and winter semesters.
Students will examine their own identity by means of personal and critical reflection through works selected from literature, mythology, philosophy, art, film, and music. Students will gain insight into their own life journey and the life journeys of others, empowering them to be themselves more fully in the world. Part of the Identity Issue. Offered every semester. Prerequisites: Junior standing and fulfillment of general education Foundations - Writing.
Drawing on interdisciplinary approaches to globalization, the course critically examines the forced and/or coercive global transfer of people, the traffic and trafficking of humans, through historical and contemporary perspectives. Topics may include migrant smuggling, forced labor, slave trade, sex workers, voices of survival workers, and self-advocacy in survival communities. Part of the Globalization Issue. Cross-listed with HST 319 and HRT 319. Offered fall and winter semesters. Prerequisite: Junior standing.
Design Thinking is an iterative, project-based, problem-solving process valued in organizations both locally and internationally. As interdisciplinary teams, students in this course will use the Design Thinking process to better facilitate the chaos of innovation by collaborating with stakeholders to meet real-world needs. Part of the Information, Innovation, and Technology Issue. Offered fall and winter semesters. Prerequisite: Junior standing.
This interdisciplinary course draws on scholarship in the fields of sociology, literature, history, anthropology, LGBTQ, cultural, and gender studies in order to teach students about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer complex identities (identity formation and development), identifications, and the social, political, historical, and cultural problems underpinning these constructions. Part of the Identity Issue. Offered once a year. Prerequisite: Junior standing.
How do our ideas about nature shape our relationships to the natural world? This course examines global influences on ideas of nature, as expressed in science, religion, philosophy, literature and art, and the resulting effects on human relationships with the natural world, and on natural systems globally and locally. Part of the Sustainability Issue. Course offered winter semester. Prerequisite: Junior standing.
Fall 2024 - Hybrid
A study of how professional identities and work lives develop globally and historically as well as throughout ones' individual lifespan, looking at how professional choices are shaped by intersectional identities and global social/economic forces as portrayed in literature, film, art, and social analysis. Part of the Globalization Issue. Offered every other year. Prerequisite: Junior standing.
An examination of the theory and practice of leadership in social change movements, focused on developing personal and organizational capacities for leadership in a liberal education context. Students identify a contemporary social issue and create an action plan for resolution, addressing that issue with at least one action step. Part of the Information, Innovation, and Technology Issue. Offered fall and winter semesters. Prerequisite: Junior standing.
Fall 2024 - Online Winter 2025 - Hybrid
This course offers an interdisciplinary exploration of the relationship between power structures and food. In navigating social, historical and environmental factors that shape current food systems, the course examines political dimensions of food from differing cultural perspectives. Part of the Health Issue. Offered every semester. Prerequisite: Junior standing.
Fall 2024 - Online Winter 2025 - Online
An interdisciplinary approach to the ways in which mediated mass culture produces meaning in contemporary American society as examined through a variety of critical lenses such as political economy and sociocultural analyses of the organization of the mass media, media content, and audience reception studies of film, television, and/or music cultures. Part of the Information, Innovation, and Technology Issue. Cross-listed with SOC 366. Offered every year. Prerequisite: Junior standing.
Spring/Summer 2024 - Online Fall 2024 - Online
A variable topics course emphasizing the practice of liberal studies in relation to a contemporary problem, issue, or theme. May be repeated for credit.
This variable topics course examines the life and work of a visionary person or persons outside the U.S. whose theories and/or actions have effected deep change. The impact of these visionary ideas and actions result in paradigm shifts within global cultures, institutions, societies, and worldviews. May be repeated for credit. Fulfills Cultures - Global Perspectives. Offered once a year.
A variable topics course that focuses on the life and work of a significant contributor to the American mosaic and thereby the United States' vision of diversity. Fulfills Cultures - U.S. Diversity. May be repeated for credit. Offered winter semester.
Students will contrast classical and contemporary statements on liberal education in relation to the principles and core courses on which the program rests. Students will develop and present their senior theses. Offered winter semester. Prerequisite: INT 301.
