Summer 2023 Course Offerings

Instructor: Dr. Jason Ware, Clinical Associate Professor, Honors College

Credit Hours: 3

Distance Learning: July 10 – August 13, 2023

Course Description:

In this course you will take an idea and blow it up. You will “blow it up” to better understand its elements and its connections to various ways of creating knowledge. Then, you will take the resultant pieces and use them to construct a research plan that’s inclusive of at least two forms of inquiry. The primary learning objective is to create a research proposal from some idea, observation, or problem that interests you, so that you can implement the plan as you launch your undergraduate academic journey. Your time in this 5-week online course will revolve around your idea and your exploration of creative ways to do something with it.

Instructors:Dr. Muiris MacGiollabhui, Visiting Clinical Assistant Professor, Honors College

Credit Hours: 3

Distance Learning: May 15 – June 11, 2023

Course Description:

This course is a writing-intensive course in which students learn how to find, evaluate, and use credible information, how to express themselves well in a variety of different written genres, and how to write for different audiences.

This course meets the core requirement for written communication and *may* be used as a substitute for English 106 or 108. Consult your primary advisor.

Instructor: Dr. Shawn Parkison, Limited Term Lecturer

Credit Hours: 3

Distance Learning: July 10 – August 4, 2023

Course Description:

This course is a writing-intensive course in which students learn how to find, evaluate, and use credible information, how to express themselves well in a variety of different written genres, and how to write for different audiences.

This course meets the core requirement for written communication and *may* be used as a substitute for English 106 or 108. Consult your primary advisor.

Instructor:Dr. Pete Moore, Clinical Assistant Professor, Honors College

Credit Hours: 3

Distance Learning: May 15 – June 11, 2023

Course Description: 

Exploring Place is an interdisciplinary creative writing course, that offers students a novel approach to experiential learning in the environmental humanities. It is an examination of place and people with learning outcomes tied to the cultural, social, and historical dynamics that influence communities and relationships in the location of investigation. Students will select the place that will serve as the subject for their session-long analysis. Students can expect to receive instruction in creative writing methods— primarily documentary poetics and creative non-fiction—as well as mentorship in developing their unique plans for place-based study—the creation of reading lists and site visit itineraries.

To provide a framework for students’ research and writing, the course will begin by establishing fundamental concepts about the relationship between culture and place, as can be found in the literature of place, cultural studies, cultural geography, anthropology, and narrative approaches to social sciences. Some of the key questions that students will explore include: how do we recognize the cultural meaning of places? What is the cultural significance of the way places make us feel? How do places shape our relationships to others and the way we understand ourselves? What can we learn about people and their culture based on the places that are meaningful to them and the stories they tell about those places? The relationship between place, people, and culture is nuanced and complex, and learning about it through our own experience and the experiences of others can lead to profound new views of the world and our place in it. Based on the primary and secondary research that students will conduct, they will produce a work of documentary writing that tells the story of the place, people, and culture they explored, as well as what they learned about themselves along the way.

Instructor: Dr. Nathan Swanson, Clinical Assistant Professor, Honors College

Credit Hours: 3

Distance Learning: July 10 - August 4, 2023 

Course Description:

This course is an examination of the cultural, social and historical dynamics that influence communities and relationships of a site. Blending independent study and distance learning, in this experiential learning course, the student and the instructor work together to design an individualized, in-depth study of the place in which the student is located. This study will be attentive to the social, cultural, political, economic, and other forces that have shaped this place historically and today, while also focusing on community life and the relationships between residents, institutions, organizations, and others. Exploring Place offers students the opportunity to better understand the people and places around them, expand their worldviews, and increase their self-awareness as they engage within these spaces and understand their place in them.

Instructor: Dr. Melissa Chomintra, Assistant Professor, Libraries & School of Information Studies

Credit Hours: 3

Distance Learning: May 15 – June 11, 2023

Course Description:

Historically, space has been used to marginalize and disadvantage. For example, redlining, lining, food deserts, impacts from climate change, and access to healthcare. In this hands-on course, students will learn foundational geographic information systems (GIS) skills and techniques in order to understand space through the application of critical theories. We will review recent literature on the topic of GIS and social justice to identify how GIS and maps can expose oppression and inequality. Students will apply critical race theory through the practice of critical cartography to analyze a course-related topic of their choosing and use GIS tools to create an ArcGIS Storymap.

Instructor: Dr. Melissa Kovich, Limited Term Lecturer

Credit Hours: 3

Distance Learning: May 15 – June 11, 2023

Course Description:

Discover science-based techniques to increase the well-being of individuals and communities and discover how to incorporate this knowledge into your everyday life. In this course you will learn about the history of well-being, including definitions, measurement, and current research. Students will assess their personal well-being levels with use of relevant scales and tools. A variety of techniques will be introduced to increase personal well-being. Community well-being will be explored through concepts from social sciences, health sciences, and public health, serving to increase the understanding of well-being as an important concept relevant to individuals and communities from various perspectives.

Instructor: Dr. Katie Jarriel, Clinical Assistant Professor, Honors College

Credit Hours: 3

July 10 – August 13, 2023

Course Description:

Students in this course will work in small teams to design an imaginary world using the perspectives of multiple scholarly disciplines to build every detail. From geology, you will shape continents. From cartography, you will map the environment. From mythology, you will inscribe the earliest legends of the people who settle the landscape. From anthropology, you will form cultures, and from political science, civilizations. From science and technology studies, you will develop technological systems. For the final project, you will develop a roleplaying game and guide your classmates as they explore your world’s challenges, cultural norms, and ways of life.

This course is founded on the principle of decentering, a strategy in which you embody another’s perspective and, in so doing, throw into contrast the social, cultural, and environmental forces that shape your own understanding of the world. While this course is about building imaginary worlds, it is also about challenging the assumptions of your lived experience in this world to better understand and empathize with its inhabitants.

You can expect to gain from this course skills in teamwork and collaboration, interdisciplinary and innovative thinking, and connecting, synthesizing, and transforming knowledge. Class days will alternate between small group discussion and creative groupwork assignments.