UNIV 1784 Sections

Frederick Biggs

This seminar will ask you to consider the changes that AI is bringing to research and writing in your fields of study. My own are early medieval English literature (for example, Beowulf) and the teaching of grammar—I’m completing a book to replace The Elements of Style—and so some of what we cover may be drawn from these areas. However, your main contributions, which will take the form of weekly discussion board posts and a final brief presentation to the class, may be related to any field which interests you.

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.

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. It is also about wonder, fulfillment, and common sense. It is about keeping an open mind, defining your interests, embracing your values, expressing your ambitions and aspirations.

The Great Books is a phenomenal collection of great authors and the Great Books experience is organized around The Syntopicon – an index to the Great Ideas (including 102 great ideas). Examples of great ideas are: BEAUTY, DEMOCRACY, HAPPINESS, JUSTICE, TRUTH, WISDOM. Other examples are: GOVERNMENT, HISTORY, MATHEMATICS, PHILOSOPHY, PHYSICS, THEOLOGY. Often, the best way to consider the IDEAS is how to relate to other ideas and how they differ, so one might want to look at and compare DEMOCRACY, MONARCHY, OLIGARCHY, TYRANNY and DESPOTISM. You might want to compare writings on LOVE, HAPPINESS, DESIRE, TEMPERANCE, VIRTUE and VICE. You might want to read the ideas about MEDICINE, LAW, ART, HISTORY, POETRY, SCIENCE.

If you are thinking about the health professions, the “calling” usually comes from a confluence of the ideas of science and service. You have a fascination to learn and know as much as you can about the magnificent machinery of the human body, from cells to tissues to organs to organ systems to populations. You have a desire to discover new science. You also have a thirst for personal fulfillment through service to others. All callings and professional inclinations emerge from the comingling, juxtaposing, or clash of great ideas.

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. Through exploration of The Great Ideas, each of you will open windows to recognizing your own interests, strengths, ambitions, and dreams. There are so many wonderful historic and inspirational figures to hear from and to contemplate on their contributions to the great conversation that is in each of us.

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.

Jennifer Schaefer

Beloved or dangerous. Ordered or chaotic. Modern or backward. What motivated these conflicting descriptions of Latin American cities? Why were cities like Buenos Aires, Havana, Mexico City, and Rio de Janeiro so important as sites of political and economic power? This course answers these questions by exploring the histories of Latin America cities from the colonial period to the present. It considers how urban spaces shaped people’s identities and daily lives and how these cities became places of national and global influence.

Edward Weingart

In addition to being a polymath and widely regarded as the archetype of the renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci defined the intersection of Arts and Engineering. This course will explore Da Vinci’s artwork and inventions, how the two fit together, and examine how we can apply the two together in today’s world. Projects will include recreating a scale version of one of Da Vinci’s machines and creating your own design inspired by his work.

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.

Robert Thorson

Did you know that Earth isn't fragile? That petroleum is as organic and natural as spring water? That radioactive decay allows life to exist? That climates come from underground?

Each day, the climate crisis floods us with a tsunami of information and misinformation through media hyperbole, partisan politics, and the clicks we share. Staying afloat without going bonkers requires knowing how the Earth works, what its history has been, and how this knowledge can be put to good use. This course provides the whole-earth context needed for dealing with the uber issue of our times.

Once each week we will gather to take campus field trips, discuss podcasts, read excerpts, synthesize thinking, and support one another toward the goal of becoming more effective planetary citizens.

Ryan Talbert

The World Health Organization defines health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. As such, racial health disparities are systematic, inequitable, and avoidable differences in health across socially defined ethnoracial populations. This course will explore the study of racial health disparities using insights from sociology, public health, medicine, and social epidemiology. This course will include discussion of (1) theories, arguments, and methods of the sociological study of health; (2) the social distribution of health, illness, and access to care; and (3) the promotion of health equity and amelioration of health disparities.

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.

Sam Best

Description TBA

Bruce Blanchard
Lauren Corso

College students often encounter new, and sometimes scary, health issues. This course will discuss health issues relevant to college students and the role of the clinical laboratory in unmasking these medical monsters.

Robin Greeley

Social justice movements consistently turn to art in order to get across their message and work for positive change. Equally, artists regularly lend their skills to creating artworks that further social causes across the political spectrum. This seminar looks at the relationship between art and social justice around the world, probing movements as diverse as BLM, Occupy Wall Street, the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, climate change protests, human rights campaigns, LGBTQ+ activism, and today’s global democracy movements.

Elaine Choung-Hee Lee

Fundamentally important skills required for success at work, strong leadership and team skills, and management of the path to goal achievement are often acquired through life experiences and great mentors, but not always formally available to students and trainees early in their careers. This course will introduce you to professional and leadership development with focus on: 1) defining and maintaining both long-term and short-term vision for your career and goal setting, 2) problem-solving at work, school, and in your life, 3) managing relationships at work and in school, 3) applying organizational/behavioral psychology principles to your life and leadership success. The topics in this course will help you navigate tough school and work situations, challenging relationships with people at work, and start the study of leadership principles and strategic plans towards excellence. The teaching approach includes lecture, guest speakers, open discussion about problem-solving in leadership, project management, and academic/work performance case studies, and case-study reviews.

Diego Valente

We live in a world where quantum information technology is more ubiquitous than ever, penetrating new areas of multidisciplinary research and industry such as data security, telecommunication systems, banking and financial markets. This course aims to develop basic literacy and basic understanding of concepts, ideas and the terminology utilized in the field of quantum information and quantum computing. We will review at first some of the underlying principles of quantum mechanics and the weirdness that challenges our intuition and observations of the macroscopic world we live in, but that also helped propel us into the 3rd Industrial Revolution: The Digital Revolution. We will then introduce some of the basic principles of a quantum computer and review what makes them fundamentally different from their classical counterparts. The last part of the course will survey applications of quantum computing and quantum information in various areas of society.

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

What is a witch? Dorothy’s murderous nemesis in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz? The affirming force in Wicked? The child-snatching crone in Hansel and Gretel? Marvel’s Scarlet Witch? Why can’t we make up our minds? I hope to have some fun in this course reading, viewing, and discussing witches from fiction and culture as we consider how witches have carried forward in history as symbols of both empowerment and threat. Assignments will vary and include prompts for reflection and creative response, “show and tell,” short presentation, and in-class work (solo and group).

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.

David Atkin

This section of UNIV 1784 provides an introduction to the role of digital media in the American political process, particularly their influence on socio-political change. Topics include the relationships among digital media and legacy media, major political institutions, and citizenry; the interplay of the media, interest groups and the policymaking process. The class encompasses contexts ranging from ongoing policy debates to empirical surveys of technology adoption and influence in the realm of politics and journalism.

Nicholas Leadbeater

Did you know that molecules that are used as life-savers can also be life-threatening when placed in the wrong hands? With components of forensic science and criminal investigation, in this course we will take a look at the nefarious side of well-known chemicals like adrenaline. No chemistry, forensic science, or law background is required – just an inquiring mind. We will work our way through a book of case studies and, in so doing, make some startling discoveries about human nature and the astounding capability of chemists to put the pieces of a puzzle together leading to the conviction of people who thought they had committed the perfect crime!