First Year Seminar

There Is No Planet B

Faculty: Ally DeGrassi & Marshell Edney

This seminar focuses on ways to live sustainably when human interactions deplete our planet’s resources, because there is NO Planet B. Researchers found that college student’s environmental awareness was “suboptimal” and they showed little to no willingness to offset environmental damages. Several implications can be drawn from these revelations such as, students are not 1) aware of various environmental impacts, and 2) willing to change their behaviors to reduce these impacts. Learners will explore the questions, “What environmental issues exist and what can be done to reduce negative impacts”. Learners will compare their own behaviors and interactions with the planet to interactions around the world to become better global citizens.

Ghost Stories and Legends

Faculty: Ginger Garver

Enter the land of banshees, pookas, wendigos, and golems. Our class focuses on ghost stories and legends from around the world. We will see how common American tales have their origins in other lands. We will gain an appreciation of how “we are the stories we tell” as these reveal the hopes, dreams, and dears of every corner of the globe. Students will learn to recognize the distinct culture of each country as well as the common themes of each story.

Global Perspectives on Mental Health

Faculty: Hanaa Unus & Erica Penn

Have you, or someone close to you, ever experienced a life altering event that left you stretching your head, unsure of how to process the experience? More and more individuals are dealing with events, abrupt or gradual, that so significantly alter their lives and impact their ability to reach their fullest potential. Research from all corners of the world, provides new and improved methods for addressing mental health concerns. This course will review the research and study the various types of therapies that are healing people all around the world. This class will include informative hands-on experience through class outings including a nature trail, horse farm, and art studio.

How Do You Peel a Banana

Faculty: Kim Pineda

This course uses American advertising to examine the construction of race, ethnicity, and gender from the late 19th century to the present, particularly the historical contexts contributing to stereotyped portrayals in advertising. We will examine the relationship between major shifts in cultural and political landscapes and how advertising portrayed those shifts in terms of race and gender. Throughout the semester, we will relate the old to the new by focusing on persistent patterns of meanings that reoccur in advertisements and what these patterns tell us about the development of particular racial and ethnic stereotypes and gendered norms. We specifically question the images advertising personifies as an American ideal and ask who is included, excluded, and what are some implications of that inclusion and exclusion.

Bringing Multicultural Picture Books to Life

Faculty: Diane Schnoor & LaTasha Do’Zia

This seminar, Bringing Multicultural Picture Books to Life: Theatre for Youth, focuses on the ways that youth theatre and the world of children’s picture books intersect to provide mirrors that reflect who we are, as well as windows to develop empathy for other perspectives and experiences. This fast-paced, arts-infused, high energy course focuses on how to creatively communicate to and with multicultural audiences and experiences. Students will reflect on the importance of what it means to share and amplify stories, their own and those of others, as well as on Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop’s work about mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Approaching children’s stories and stagecraft through the lens of windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors prioritizes diversity, honors many cultures, and promotes empathy.

Communicating in a Global Society

Faculty: Yolanda Gibson & Dahlia Ashford

This seminar, Communicating in a Global Society, is designed to help students learn how to communicate with individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds. Students will examine their own cultural identity as well as cultures around the globe as it pertains to values, beliefs, language, media, and traditions. Utilizing various aspects of intercultural communication theory, students will address how these cultural indicators manifest through communication and how societies use communication in different ways.

Globesity

Faculty: Salli Hamilton

This seminar focuses on what is considered by many experts as the biggest looming healthcare crisis.

Sports as a Political Tool

Faculty: Brian Wigley

This seminar, Sport as a Political Tool, focuses on the intersection between sport and political, social, and historical movements. Sport is often seen as “just a game”, but a closer inspection demonstrates how sport both reflects and alters political and social realities throughout the world. Students will learn about instances wherein sport – both positively and negatively – has been used or leveraged as a political tool, and reflect on ways sport-related events and policy can change how we see our world.

All the World’s a Stage

Faculty: Courtney Reilly

Beyond enjoyment and entertainment, the arts broaden our perspective and bring meaning to our lives — they give voice to human struggle, tackle challenging questions, provide space for reflection, and connect us to our own humanity. This course will explore how the arts impact and connect us on an individual and global level. Through active participation, research, and reflection, we will experience the performing arts — participating in, observing, and discussing a broad range of artistic responses to global issues. We will reflect on how we experience the arts and how those experiences are shaped by our own world view. In particular, we will explore how the arts have been used globally as a tool for social justice and how artists use social practice as a technique for fostering creativity, building community and impacting change. 

No Lie Can Live Forever: Confronting the Historical Legacies of Deception, Indoctrination, and Denial

Faculty: Jonathan Noyalas

This seminar will examine the ways in which governments, organizations, and other parties, at various moments in history and around the globe, have created false narratives, ignored historic reality, utilized indoctrination, or demonized certain racial or ethnic groups for the purpose of promoting racial superiority. Additionally, this course will examine the legacies of those efforts at asserting racial superiority and explore the ways in which governments and groups might be held accountable and a more inclusive and diverse historical landscape be established to promote a more complete understanding of the past. Students in this course will engage in a variety of learning experiences, including, but not limited to discussion, personal reflection, immersive learning experiences, and presentations.

Empowering Women Advancing Sport

Faculty: Ashley Smeltzer-Kraft

The United Nations officially recognizes that participation of women and girls in sports challenges gender stereotypes and discrimination and can therefore be a vehicle to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. The first international conference on women and sport was held in Brighton, England in 1994. As a result, the Brighton Declaration was endorsed to provide the principles that should guide action intended to increase the involvement of girls and women at all levels and in all functions and roles. Despite growing participation of women in sport in recent years, increased representation of women in decision making and leadership roles within sport has not always followed. This class will examine the barriers to girls and women in participation and leadership.

 This course requires not only your participation but your willingness to help facilitate and maintain a supportive classroom environment where every student’s perspective is honored and heard.  Be open.  Be inquisitive.  Be thoughtful.

The Power of Public Art

Faculty: Abi Gomez

This seminar, The Power of Public Art: Visualizing the Voice, focuses on visual art applications as extensions of individuals and communities. What does it mean to have a voice?  How does voice transcend language and culture?  Can someone have a voice without uttering a word?  What is community?  Where do communities exist?  What is art?  What is public art?  Where and how does public art exist?  Can public art create community?  Can public art affect social change and accelerate social justice? 

In The Power of Public Art: Visualizing the Voice we will explore these questions and others by looking at visual art in the public sphere created in response to local, national, and global social justice issues.  Students will engage in a variety of personal experiences including, but not limited to: public art site visits, public art critiques, and presentations of personal favorites.

What Does a Scientist Look Like

Faculty: Beth Cantwell

In this course, students will explore discrimination and underrepresentation of groups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Institutional biases affect a wide range of historically marginalized groups, including female, Black, LatinX, indigenous, and LGBTQ scientists. In addition, this course will address social structures that discourage participation of some individuals in scientific inquiry, while encouraging others even at a young age. Students will present research on successful scientists from underrepresented groups and identify ways to address inequities in the STEM fields. We will watch movies and documentaries that highlight notable minority scientists, and participate in discussions on these and other, lesser known, individuals. This course will take a global view on this issue, considering how scientific communities differ from country to country, and how regional biases shape those communities.

Slowing it Down – Walks & Pilgrimages

Faculty: Tracy Fitzsimmons & Bethany Galipeau

Do you like to walk or bike?  Do you move briskly or meander or charge through life?  Do you have a sense of purpose or calling, do you chart an exploratory path, do you rely on spontaneity to guide you?  Across the world and across centuries, people have participated in intentional walks, and such intentional walks and bike rides are gaining in popularity in recent years.  People may reflect on the act of walking (or biking), they may reflect while walking or they may use walks to clear their minds. What makes a walk a pilgrimage? Through this class, we will study walks and pilgrimages from the Camino de Santiago to the Hajj to the Char Dham to the Appalachian Trail.  Together and individually, we will do several active walking (or biking) assignments.

Marriage and Sexuality in Islam

Faculty: Younus Mirza

examine how Muslims understood sex, arranged sexual relationships, and structured marriage contracts. Special attention is paid to how Muslim women were placed within sexual relationships and how they navigated different cultural and religious rules to their advantage.  Attention is also paid to modern attempts to reform Islamic law in an effort to seek greater gender equality.

“F” Words: Examining Worldviews Through Objects and Narratives

Faculty: Jess Clawson, Ting-Yu Chen, Kelley Crawley, Kathy Evans, Bryan Pearce-Gonzalez, Karrin Lukacs, Matt Corr, Devon Taylor, Amy Sarch, Leann Curley, & Charles Maybee

What does your clothing or what you had for lunch say about you? This course uses “show and tell” as a tool for us to learn from and to express ourselves to others who may view the world through a different lens. In each unit students will “show” an object or ‘tell” a story relating to an “F” word (Food, Fashion, Fiction, Faith).  We start with what that object or story means to the individual, and then broaden our scope to examine how anything can have meaning attached to it that is beyond the individual. How might our approaches to things like food, fashion, fiction, and faith exclude others?  What does what you eat say about who you are?  What does a piece of clothing say about who you are not?  What does the book you’re reading say to the person next to you? How is your worldview shaped (or not) by religion? Together we’ll focus on questions like these and encourage you to find your own “F” word.

This course will be delivered in a hybrid format, which means that the class will meet in person in the classroom as well as virtually via an online platform.