Philip Hritcko

This course is designed for Honors students interested in healthcare careers.  The U.S. healthcare system is characterized by paradoxes where we have the best and most advanced technology available, yet we have persistent and increasing disparities within our health system.  I will provide an introduction to what it means to be a health care professional in the 21st century, how the American healthcare system functions, and the myriad of opportunities within the healthcare industry for students to consider.  In addition, this course will allow students to explore a broad range of research opportunities that are available at UConn and specifically at the School of Pharmacy.

Vin Moscardelli

Will Donald Trump be re-elected in 2020? In this course, students will do a deep dive into the art and science of election forecasting, with the goal of predicting the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

• Learn – learn the labyrinthine process by which we in the United States select our President
• Forecast – use data to predict the outcome of the presidential election in all 50 states
• Compete – teams of "election consultants" will present their findings, develop campaign strategies for the home stretch of the campaign, and compete to see who produces the "Most Accurate Forecast"

The students who will get the most out of this course are the ones who enjoy working in teams and who are not afraid to make bold predictions. Four years ago, teams of UConn students correctly predicted that Donald Trump would win the 2016 election despite an overwhelming consensus among pollsters and pundits that he probably would not. Are you interested in elections? Do you have the courage to go against the experts? Do you have the discipline to keep your own preferences and biases in check and trust the evidence? If so, this is the course for you.

Valerie Duffy

Taste and smell allow us to interact with the chemicals that drive our behaviors toward food, the environment and each other. Although these senses have not received the attention they deserve, two examples highlight their importance. One of the early symptoms of COVID-19 is loss of the sense of smell and the ability to “taste” food. Furthermore, discovery of the genetic basis of olfaction was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2004.

This course exposes students to the interdisciplinary nature of studying these senses (e.g., from basic biology, to food science, engineering, neurology, psychology, behavior, and health). Classes build on the student’s goals, making connections between their plan of study, the class content, current science and everyday examples through in-class participation with taste and smell examples from our foods and environment. The class culminates with an interdisciplinary project for which students learn how to think creatively about an issue based on their interests integrated with scientific inquiry. The critical-thinking skills developed in this class are transferrable to any field of study.

Jaclyn Chancey

We tend to associate creativity with the arts, but high levels of achievement in any field—including the sciences—require creativity. Research publications, patents, solutions to engineering problems, and all other forms of innovation rely on your ability to go beyond what is already known: to CREATE. Psychological research has shown that creativity is not an innate trait. Join us as we develop the habits of creative people and see how they are applied in STEM fields. You may get a little messy in the process.

Jaclyn Chancey

We tend to associate creativity with fine art, and we only label certain types of writing as "creative" writing. However, a high level of achievement in any field requires creativity. Research and scholarly publications, new business plans, and all other forms of innovation rely on your ability to go beyond what is already known: to create.

Psychological research has shown that creativity is not an innate trait. Join us as we develop the habits of creative people and see how they may be applied in your own life.

Anne Kim

Psy’s “Gangnam Style” was the most-viewed video on YouTube for nearly five years. However you feel about the song, it is an undeniable example of the “Hallyu Wave” and the rise of global interaction with South Korean pop culture. Together, we will learn about contemporary Korean culture through film, drama, music, and media representation. No background knowledge of Korean culture is necessary, but be warned – once you get swept up by a Korean drama, it’s hard to stop after just one episode!

Jennifer Lease Butts

National Lampoon's Animal House is a landmark 1978 film that arguably created the genre of the "college movie." More recent examples like National Lampoon's Van Wilder (2002), Old School (2003), Accepted (2006), The House Bunny (2008), Pitch Perfect (2012) and the sequel (2015), and Monster's University (2013), among many others, follow in similar footsteps. What do all of these films have in common? They are telling a story about college and the college experience. Most of us know that these portrayals of college life are not the full picture of college life, or part of it, or perhaps not it at all. So what is the college experience? In this course we will examine representations of college life in a variety of films and deconstruct film themes. As we do this, we will discuss the college you are coming to know as a new student here at UConn and encourage you to construct your own narrative about your college experience. Assignments include short papers, a presentation, and a creative project. In addition, we will cover basic aspects of film criticism to aid you as you work with these films and their subject matter.

Lindsay Cummings

In this course, we will explore comedic theatre about serious issues. How might laughter expose social injustice and tragedy? When is comedy an “appropriate” response to a crisis? How does theatre, an artform that puts the audience in the same room with the absurd, the ridiculous, and the outlandish, allow us to confront harsh realities? We will read and watch excepts from such plays as Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Lisa Kron’s 2.5 Minute Ride, and Anchuli Felica King’s White Pearl. With topics ranging from police brutality, to visiting the concentration camps at Auschwitz, to racism in advertisement, these texts will help us consider Kron’s claim that “humor and horror are flip sides of the same coin.”

Ken Foote

We are living through a pandemic that spread so quickly and will have such devastating consequences that we have hardly begun to fathom its immediate and long-term consequences. Yet human societies have faced such disasters before. This seminar looks both backward to see how societies have been shaped by past epidemics, and forward to consider how we might recover from the devastation of COVID-19. I’ve taken the title of the seminar from a book by the noted historian William McNeill. During the semester, we’ll read his book as well as writings by epidemiologists, sociologists, medical geographers, environmental scientists, experts in infectious diseases, and a range of other scientists and scholars. We’ll consider the impacts of a wide variety of diseases and epidemics such as cholera, yellow fever, flu, HIV/AIDS, plague, polio, Ebola, smallpox, malaria, potato blight, and others. The point is to consider the impacts of pandemics from a variety of perspectives—medical, historical, environmental, geographical, social—that can help our communities respond in positive ways to the current crisis. Seminar assignments will include a mix of short discussions (synchronous and asynchronous), presentations, readings, and short papers.

Olivier Morand

Students will read a set of seminal papers and works following a path through demography, economics, cosmology, art history, literature, poetry, physics (and more), and discuss their relevance to everyday life. Readings will include “The Anthropic Principle” (Scientific American, 1981), The Tragedy of the Commons by G. Harding, “On the Origin of Religion” (Science, 2009), and extracts from Basho’s poetry.

The instructor portion of this section will be in person.

Leigh Fine, Matthew Yates

The world is in need of leadership, and leadership requires us to interface meaningfully with others. However, collective social action is complicated by myriad social and personal barriers that prevent us from fully seeing and hearing others. Although diversity may be omnipresent – we all have unique stories, identities, and life experiences – few of us may have taken the time to reflect critically on how we engage in a way that honors others’ dignity. Believing that the world – including the UConn Honors community – is in need of inclusive leaders, this Honors first-year seminar will invite participants to: 1) interrogate the role of self in inclusive leadership dynamics; 2) recognize and evaluate the experiences of others; and 3) co-create meaningful, inclusive leadership interventions toward the common good.

Shawn Salvant

In this course, we will study the language and historical circumstances of some of the greatest and well-known speeches in the African American rhetorical tradition (as well as some lesser-known ones). From anti-slavery speeches through recent Ted Talks, African Americans have used their voices to move audiences and shape history. What were the circumstances under which these speeches were given, and what makes these speeches still relevant today? What are some of the rhetorical devices these speech makers use to affect their audiences?  How do these speeches contribute to the long tradition of African American rhetoric and the black vernacular tradition? We'll approach these speeches from a variety of perspectives and analyze them using a variety of methods, examining them as rhetorical performances and historical events, political statements and autobiographical acts, social events and cultural milestones. These speeches mark turning points in African American history and serve as testaments to the power and profundity of individual and collective human voices lifted for the advancement of all people.

Roger Celestin

“What is the point of moving when you can travel so magnificently sitting in a chair?” - J.K Huysmans, Against the Grain

 “What's the point of walking when you can travel by car?” - Bernard Olivier, The Long March

The course will examine a body of travel literature ranging from the Renaissance to the contemporary period and attempt to answer the following questions, among others: has travel – its purpose, its practice, its methods, its meaning -- changed in the past few centuries? From the Romantic affirmation of Self as a means of subverting or criticizing Home, to the English gentleman’s “tour of the Continent” as “finishing school;” from the “going native” syndrome of the “ultimate travelers” to the cordoned-off “mass tourism” of today, what does travel tell us about what we do and who we are?

Monica van Beusekom

What is development? We all think we know what it means: access to clean water, education, health care, and a good source of income. But when we begin to get into the details, differences in the definition of development, disagreements about how to achieve it, and even questions about its worthiness as a goal quickly emerge. This course explores the concept of development and the ways it has been interpreted and reinterpreted over time in the context of sub-Saharan Africa. Focusing on the work of African intellectuals and activists (as presented in TED Talks, essays, and film), we will explore how issues like democracy, gender relations, environment, and global and local inequality make the question “What is development?” far more complex than it first appears.

Jesus Ramos-Kittrell, Graham Stinnett

How does our use of media influence perceptions of who we are? How do feelings and emotions shape the mediation of messages that we send, but also those we receive? How does this communicative act forge meaningful collective ideas and values important to us? Ultimately, how do we establish connections with people whose background is different than ours through these ideas and experiences? This course explores arts and media as platforms with expressive potential, through which people voice out core issues affecting their lives, and challenge their own corporate identities (in terms of class, religion, and politics, to name a few) to find collective spaces of representation that are aesthetically and politically meaningful. Through access to rare historical documents held by the Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, students will explore how people access ideas and sentiments that define who they are, and that make arts and media central to political processes of self-narrativity and representation.

James C. Kaufman, Paul Joseph Barnett

Time travel is a convention that has been used in film almost as long as there have been motion pictures. It has crossed every genre from science fiction to comedy to drama to romantic comedy. Countless movies have attempted to incorporate the concept of time travel into their narrative with varying levels of success and failure. This class will address some of the more common ways in which time is represented in film, some of the most fundamental concepts of time, the psychology impact of time travel, and the paradoxes and complications that could result from time travel. Films such as Somewhere in Time, 12 Monkeys, Looper, and Predestination will be the main focus, but there will be brief discussions of the manipulation of time in many other films.

Keat Sanford

As you embrace the challenge of the undergraduate collegiate experience, you will find it is all about careful observation, experience, honesty, perseverance, reflection, and your wired and learned habits of character and mind. The purpose of this seminar is to orient you to the college experience, to get your feet on the ground, and to start you running with your interests, ambitions, goals, and promises to yourself. We will discuss biographies of exceptional people who pursued careers in the health professions. We will consider historical and inspirational figures such as Hippocrates, Galen, Vesalius, Harvey, Hunter, Laennec, Semmelweis, Virchow, Blackwell, Montessori, Taussig, Farmer and others.

Shannon Weaver

The need to belong has been proposed as a fundamental motive for all human behavior.  Our relationships with others are what shapes who we are as well as drives what we do in our daily lives. This class will explore topics related to the academic field of Human Development and Family Sciences to demonstrate how our connections to people are important for health and survival using the Star Wars series as a place for these discussions. We will examine these various concepts (identity development, intergenerational transmission, attachment, parent-child relationships, friendship, nature vs nurture, love, connection, betrayal and forgiveness, kinship and family by choice) in connection to both what is viewed upon the big screen with characters in the series as well as experiences of fans in these respects.

Amy Donahue

From hiking trips to hurricanes and everything in between, this course will examine what happens when things go wrong, and explore ways we can avoid catastrophe or at least be better prepared to deal with the consequences. We’ll look at different types of disasters and understand what makes them so challenging, and then we’ll learn about strategies we can use to manage them. Well learn about the concepts of threats, hazards, risk, safety, and resilience. We’ll talk about what we can do to prepare and survive as individuals, and we’ll learn about what governments do and why they do it. In the end, you’ll gain some practical skills you can use to keep yourself safe, you’ll have a better understanding of what organizations and communities can do to prepare, and you’ll understand how this fits in to a national emergency management system. Next time there’s a disaster, you will know how to get ready!

Myron Minn-Thu-Aye

Gerrymandering, the drawing of electoral districts to manipulate the outcomes of elections, has generated significant political and legal debate, including in multiple recent cases before the United States Supreme Court. How can gerrymandering be detected and quantified? This is where mathematics enters the picture! We will explore the geometry of electoral districts, the relationship between districting and demographic data, and the mathematics of social choice. Using this lens to study contemporary racial and partisan gerrymandering in the United States requires understanding the interplay between mathematics, politics, and the law. We will lend essential context to our mathematical insights by discussion election law, court opinions, the most recent midterm elections and possibly upcoming special elections, and the significance of the 2020 census.

TBD

TBD.

Paulo Verardi

Vaccines have led to some of the greatest achievements in medicine, such as the eradication of smallpox. With the COVID-19 pandemic, there is extraordinary interest on the vaccine development and approval process and timeline. The instructor (an expert in vaccine development) will first give an overview on the history and types of vaccines, explain the fundamentals of protective immunity afforded by vaccines, review vaccine safety, the vaccine approval process and timeline, and the current vaccine development efforts for COVID-19. The class will then discuss how COVID-19 vaccines will be used to slow or stop the pandemic, and the challenges faced to achieve that goal, such as vaccine efficacy and safety, vaccine manufacturability and delivery, COVID-19 misinformation, and anti-vaccine sentiments (vaccine hesitancy, religious and philosophical vaccine exemptions, compulsory vaccination campaigns). Finally, students will debate the topic in class and individually compose an op-ed (opinion editorial) on their particular, informed points of view regarding a particular COVID-19 pandemic vaccine topic. This is an introductory-level class and students are encouraged to enroll regardless of their science background. The focus of the class will be on discussion and participation, so attendance will be required.

Chris Clark

The first people to be charged with “crimes against humanity” were former Nazi leaders prosecuted at the Nuremberg Trials following World War Two. Nuremberg also aired another new concept, “genocide,” which would soon be defined as a crime by a United Nations convention. Why introduce new crimes for actions, such as murder, that under existing laws would have been illegal anyway? “Crimes against humanity” and “genocide” were developed separately and independently, but by lawyers who had trained in the same place: the Central European city that is now Lviv, in Ukraine. In 1998, the British international lawyer Philippe Sands began to research this coincidence. He found himself unraveling connections involving not just the lawyers themselves, but an important Nazi official, an officer dead in mysterious circumstances, and his own family’s escapes from the Holocaust. In 2016 Sands published the story he had uncovered in East West Street: On the Origins of “Genocide” and “Crimes Against Humanity,” the book we’ll read and discuss in this course. We’ll reflect on law and politics; war and dislocation; family memories and secrecy; on human rights, and on a city that had four different names within the space of a lifetime; on why we should care about these things; and what we can learn from them.

Tom Seery

Society has benefitted greatly from advances in science.  But science is done by human beings and the human factor enters into the process at almost every point.  Although the process of science is intended to be self-correcting, sometimes that takes longer than we would like. It took some time to uncover the true nature of such historical “discoveries” as N-Rays, Polywater, and Cold Fusion.  But the persistence of skeptics eventually won out.  Science is used in our courtrooms and to guide public policy – How do we apply standards to complex and highly technical topics when laymen must sit in judgment? In this course we will talk about some of the monumental failures of science as well as some of the more controversial ways in which science enters the public domain through the use of expert witness testimony, contributions to public policy and government regulation.  Students in the course will work in groups to develop case studies and present their findings to the class.

Susanna Cowan

You might be surprised that a very Connecticut author, Mark Twain, made that phrase famous when he wrote “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is only because Fiction is obliged to stick to Possibilities; Truth isn’t.” A strangely fitting statement for these un-real times; we’ve found ourselves looking to science fiction and fantasy for “realistic” plots that make comprehensible a world upended. Supernatural or speculative elements in fiction seem to pull us away from the world we know, but in doing so they can actually help us see anew or more clearly our most core, and utterly real, foundations: what it means to be human; what motivates us; how we love, fear, hate, desire; who we are at our best and worst; how we move through and impact our world. To explore these ideas, we’ll use easily-accessible short fiction and other online sources. Be prepared to read, view, explore, and share!

Bill Pace

This course presents various aspects of the U.S. health care delivery system, and examines the impact of political ideologies and special interest groups on the current and possible future states of US health care. Students will gain an understanding of how the structural design of any health economy impacts the key results of cost, access and quality.

The course also introduces and compares the health care systems in different countries, and enables students to think critically about what a ‘perfect health care system’ would entail. An overarching theme of this course is a normative question: “Is Health Care a Right or a Privilege?" This course provides a brief history of the US health care system and its evolution, including national health care reform initiatives of the Nixon and Clinton administrations. The currently popular 'Medicare-For-All' debate is analyzed both in terms of various design proposals, and the political challenges of achieving this objective.

Daniel Buttrey

Well, not entirely. In this course, you’ll learn about digital photography while using your camera (phone) as a tool to explore UConn- the people places, and events that will shape the next four years. Time commitments to your coursework can at times can be daunting to say the least, this course provides you with a reason to break away from your desk and give your mind a chance flex some creative muscles. Assignments are designed to get you away from the desk and out in the world. Topics covered will be an introduction to camera operations, compositional techniques, image editing, and creativity theory. Often you’ll feel like you’re getting away with something, maybe even given a passport to trespass. 

Fiona Vernal

Safaris. Pyramids. Tribes. Pygmies. Genocide. Wildlife. What images come to mind when you think about Africa and what are the origins of these ways of thinking about and depicting Africa? In what ways can these images be considered “click bait” and what do these images have to do with the history of marketing stereotypes, tourism, and voyeurism in Africa? Each week we will explore a set of images of Africa drawn from film, magazines, or newspapers and explore the underlying perception of Africa and Africans. Discussion will focus on the origins, evolution, and circulation of particular images of Africa, its history, and its peoples.

Amanda Denes

From hook-up culture to friends with benefits to sexting, sex is a part of the college experience. Whether or not you choose to engage in sexual activity, for many people, thinking and talking about sex and sexuality is a part of both the college landscape and of many young adults’ campus experiences. And yet, sex is often considered a taboo topic and communication about sex and sexuality can be difficult. This course will “break the ice” and explore a range of topics related to sex and sexual communication. We will cover topics such as the benefits and drawbacks of campus hook-up culture, how technology influences sexual relationships and sex education, the complexities of friends with benefits relationships, “pillow talk” or communication during sexual episodes, reasons for choosing not to engage in sexual activity, and how open and consensual non-monogamous relationships function. Assignments will include written reflections, student-led presentations, and a final project.

Online class meetings will involve open and honest dialogue about sex and sexuality as it pertains to material presented throughout the course. Students who do not feel comfortable discussing the course material, which covers topics that are sexual in nature, may prefer to choose a different course. However, some students may find that the online space is more conducive than face-to-face meetings for communicating about such topics.

Peter Kochenburger

Law shapes society and lawyers help shape the law; they are not neutral actors in its development and application.  Laws and legal systems are often authoritative expressions of social values negotiated and then put into practice.  They can, for example, protect unpopular opinions– even those most obnoxious to the majority – or serve as instruments of suppression and oppression.  Most legal systems do both, including ours.  We will explore how lawyers influence and utilize the legal system and what it means to be a lawyer in different settings and areas of law, including human rights, criminal law and representing or regulating businesses. The practice of law is described as a “profession,” but what does that really mean and how do lawyers embody this ideal?  Students will play an important role in shaping this course and selecting some of the topics and issues we will discuss.  

The instructor portion of this section will be in person with a remote stream option.

Keat Sanford

This course provides a broad survey of premedical and predental studies, the preparation for medical and dental school, residence and the professions. The class will address admissions requirements and procedures, academic coursework at the undergraduate and professional school levels, residency training, typical routines of medical and dental practice, and issues affecting the training of physicians and dentists in the United States. The course will follow the chronological sequence of a traditional student and examine how academic, experiential, interpersonal and social skills and professionalism attributes play an integral role in the development of a skilled health professional.  

Michele Femc-Bagwell

This course is designed for first-year pre-teaching students who have been admitted to the Special Program in Education through the UConn Honors Program. In addition to orienting students to UConn and Honors, this course will introduce you to the profession of teaching including pathways into teaching, educational research, and study abroad opportunities. You will be invited to participate in programs and events at the Neag School of Education to experience first-hand the artistry of teaching!

Richard Watnick

The goal of this course is to blow your mind and change the way you think. We know that the meaning of any concept is tied to a context that we must define. Despite this, we fail to internalize this principle and continue to misuse our concepts. This leads to poor personal decisions, a fractured society, and the misapplication of research in all fields. Typically, courses that address this directly are advanced theoretical courses. We keep everything accessible and informal. Our applications match student interest. We can choose to analyze moments in history, (During negotiations after World War I, Woodrow Wilson wished to emphasize self-determination. The lead U.S. negotiator dismissed this as nonsense…) physical therapy (How can following the advice of your physical therapist leave you unable to walk?), human development (Is your brain ready for you to behave maturely?), politics, economics, business, personal relationships, autism, identification of genes, law (why are we outraged by judicial decisions? Can a machine make better decisions?), climate change, and whatever development captures your attention during the semester. Students read one narrative, listen to and view explanations, ask questions, react, participate in classroom discussions and post comments electronically.

Terrence Cheng

We will read excerpts from Orwell’s 1984, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops. We will analyze and juxtapose these texts with our perceptions of, and positions on, the use and functionality of technology in modern-day life. How has technology made our lives better? How has it made things worse? How is life stronger, faster, more insidious, more lethargic or ambitious, because of technology? And how has COVID-19 brought us closer, or removed us farther, from these visions of the world, specifically through the lens of technology? Students will be asked to present on assigned readings, and provide additional/counterbalancing readings of their own selection for these presentations. *Note: assigned texts listed here are subject to change (but probably won’t).