[UConn Stamford]

Instructor: Lori Gresham, Ph.D. 

Honors students are able to enroll without a permission number. Non-Honors students who are interested should email kaitlin.heenehan@uconn.edu for more information. 

Mondays, 3:35-6:05pm, UConn Stamford, in-person

This course invites mid-career Honors students to explore their personal intellectual interests, to expand their knowledge of research approaches within various fields of study, and to examine topics with a diversity, equity, and inclusion lens. As an interdisciplinary seminar serving Honors students of many majors and led by scholars from a variety of disciplines, an important goal of the course is to cultivate comparative conversations across fields of specialization.  The successful student will present sophisticated and developed ideas in a manner sufficiently generalist to promote learning and innovation across subject areas. Students will also create a plan of action to expand their learning and build their skills and knowledge beyond this course. This plan will include individualized goals for completing the Honors thesis and learning goals for beyond graduation. This course will help support students within a community of scholars as they pursue Honors undergraduate research at UConn Stamford.  

Sample course schedule for fall 2023 (subject to change):

Week 1 – Welcome & Getting to Know You

Week 2 – Guest Speaker from the Library, Using the CRAAP method to assess sources, Brainstorming areas of interest with “Mind mapping”

Week 3 – Faculty Speaker Panel #1 (A panel of faculty members/experts will describe research in their field, including how DEI informs current research)

Week 4 – Faculty Speaker Panel #2

Week 5 – Guest Speaker from Enrichment Programs/Advising, Developing a Learning Plan

Week 6 – Guest Speaker from the Writing Center, Writing within your discipline

Week 7 – Honors Alums Guest Speakers Discussion of their Honors theses and careers

Week 8 – Guest Speakers on the Important of Life-Long Learning

Week 9 – Discussion on Research presentations from various disciplines

Week 10 – Who Has a Seat at the Table? The importance of representation in all fields

Week 11 – Minority Voices in Literature

Week 12 – Student TED Talks

Week 13 – Student TED Talks

Grading will be based on Participation/Engagement and Assignments. Assignments are likely to include: Attending a Getting Started in Undergraduate Research workshop, Identifying reliable sources assignment, creating a Quick Guide for writing within your own discipline, writing Reflections, presenting a “Ted-Talk” style presentation, and crafting a future Learning Plan.

[UConn Stamford]

Instructor: Richard Watnick

Instructor consent required. To request a permission number, email Professor Watnick and include the name of a faculty member in your field who would recommend your participation.

This seminar has multiple faculty session leaders from different departments. There will be a guest session leader for approximately 10 of the weekly meetings, and the other meetings are for open discussion. The topic of the course will be finalized after considering the interests of the students who enroll; past topics include Ideas and Actions and Globalization, Culture, & Current Challenges. Professor Watnick organizes the course and attends all meetings. Each session leader assigns reading material ahead of time and then presents before opening up discussion.

Sample topics from Spring 2019 (Where are we? How did we get here? Where should we go from here?):

• Jerome Sehulster (Psychology): Self‐fulfillment and maturity
• Joel Blatt (History): Uncovering Rosselli’s ideas and actions and its relevance now
• Chris Bruhl (President and CEO of the Business Council of Fairfield County): Implications of Stamford’s location on policies and strategies
• Mark Boyer (Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Geography): Adapting to climate change: Managing threats in uncertain times
• Susan Nesari (Honors student): Respecting refugees: Evaluation of integration practices by Connecticut service providers
• Fred Roden (English): Harari’s 21 lessons for the 21st century
• Yonatan Morse (Political Science): Authoritarianism
• Charles Yarish (Ecology & Evolutionary Biology): Harvesting and maintaining the Sound
• Ricardo Salazar (History): The crisis of Argentine gradualism

50% of your grade is based on the open discussion in class and on HuskyCT as well as the additional discussion of the topic on your final exam. The other 50% of your grade consists of a term paper or project on a topic in your major under the supervision of a faculty member in your major. You and your faculty supervisor will decide upon the topic and nature of your project so that you can progress in your area of interest. Your faculty supervisor will determine this portion of your grade. Professor Watnick will help you connect with a faculty member if needed.

Instructor: Johann Peter Gogarten

Recommended preparation: At least one 2000 level course in MCB.  

Instructor: Myron Minn-Thu-Aye

Prerequisites: MATH 2710 and instructor consent.

This course applies mathematics to shed light on problems in the realm of politics, both domestic and international. We begin with a study of voting systems, including both electoral and legislative processes. By formalizing notions of fairness, we will work towards theorems that will inform just how fair we expect elections to be. Our discussion of fair division will revolve around the problem of distributing seats in the U.S. House of Representatives among the fifty states. We will explore various apportionment paradoxes (e.g. how could an increase in the total number of seats lead to a reduction in the number of seats assigned to a particular state?) through history anddetermine whether these are avoidable in the future. The development of methods to measure the political power of voting blocs and coalitions will inform our analysis of the apportionment problem and lead us to investigate political conflict via game theory.