[UConn Stamford]

One semester introduction in game theory. Game theory is a modeling tool that is used to understand and predict strategic behavior in a wide variety of settings, including economic, social, political, and biological. For example, an algorithm is used to match medical school students with residency programs across the U.S. and around the world. Medical school students rank hospitals from their most desired to least desired and hospitals rank the students from their most desired to their least desired. Then an algorithm uses these rankings to match students to hospitals. Medical students sometimes behave strategically by altering their rankings in an attempt to obtain a better match.

In this course students will learn that strategic behavior is ubiquitous. For example, we will study games involving predator and prey settings in the natural world, elections, warfare, and auctions ranging from a Christie’s auction of an antique Greek vase to electromagnetic spectrum rights auctions.

[UConn Storrs]

Not open for credit to students who have passed ERTH 1000E

The planetary potency of humankind requires the naming of a new epoch on Earth’s calendar, the Anthropocene. This tipping point is forcing a paradigm shift in our environmental consciousness, one that embraces the Earth system more holistically and which refutes the false binary separating humans from nature. Ironically, this brave new world is one without wilderness, yet with more wildness than ever before.

Learning how the earth works and what its history has been will reframe the way you think about critical environmental issues: climate change, ecosystem collapse, pollution, natural resources, urban infrastructure, and much more. Earth is not fragile. That designation is reserved for species and communities like ours. The fate of humanity has always been in the hands of geothermal, meteorological, cosmic, and evolutionary processes.

[UConn Storrs]

This course will expose students to a conceptual framework at the intersection of law, economics, and philosophy – what we can call the paradigm of rights and harms.  Working within this framework, you will analyze and debate a large set of controversial social issues.  The goal of the course is to encourage you to think critically and rigorously about such issues and to hone your skills in argument and persuasion.  Students from all majors and backgrounds welcome.

Consider a famous legal case analyzed by the Nobel Laureate Ronald Coase.  A physician sets up an examination room with a wall that is shared by a candy factory.  Noise from the candy machinery makes it impossible for the doctor to examine patients with a stethoscope.  If the candy factory has the right to make noise, the doctor is harmed; if the doctor has a right to quiet, the factory is harmed.  Economists and philosophers have developed ways of thinking about who should get the right – and thus who should bear the harm – in cases like these.  Most if not all controversial social issues take exactly this form: who has the right?  Who is harmed, and in what way?  As we will see, in many of these cases, the harms are immaterial: there is no tangible emission like noise.  I may harm you (make you angry or unhappy) by giving a speech in favor of Marxism or by selling my kidney to the highest bidder – even if you are nowhere in the vicinity and learn of my behavior only through a third party.  Should I have the right to engage in these behaviors?  Or should you have the right to stop me?

Recent syllabus

Note This class has a catalog-level pre- or co-requisite of any 1000-level economics course. We can override this requirement. If you are an Honors student, you may request enrollment by emailing honors@uconn.edu and including (1) your name; (2) your 7-digit Student Admin number; (3) your registration “pick time”; (4) the course number and section; (5) the class number from Student Admin; and (6) confirmation that there are seats available in the course.

[UConn Storrs]

This course uses archaeobotany as a tool to provide instruction on the research process. Each student develops and executes an independent research project using the various microscopes and equipment within the Archaeobotany Laboratory. Archaeobotany, the study of plant use in antiquity, is an inherently interdisciplinary sub-field of archaeology that integrates botany, ecology, archaeology, and social theory to explore a wide range of topics including: 1) the nature, timing, and cause of plant domestication events around the world; 2) the social and environmental dynamics and causes of the transition from hunting-and-gathering to early agriculture; 3) the role that plant-based agriculture, viticulture, or irrigation played in the emergence and collapse of early social complexity, social hierarchies, and the development of the first cities; 4) the ways in which farmers modified plant-based agriculture to suit prevailing environmental conditions and social and economic needs; and 5) the choices that people made in the past to select and procure fuel in order to sustain everyday household activities and emerging craft specializations and industries.

This course integrates lectures on current and emerging trends in archaeobotanical research with hands-on instruction in the use of a range of lab equipment, microscopy, and digital imaging tools commonly found in many labs to address the topics listed above. These tools include: 1) botanical reference material; 2) analytical balances; 3) a muffle furnace; 4) student binocular microscopes; 5) an upright materials microscope with transmitted, incident, and polarized light; and 6) a confocal microscope with NIS Elements imaging software. Hands-on instruction is also provided in the use of a Jeol NeoScope JCM 6000Plus benchtop scanning electron microscope with Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy capabilities for elemental mapping. Throughout the course, students actively engage in the research process by using the tools learned in class to design and conduct an individualized research project. Come ready to explore!

[UConn Storrs]

Obesity is considered a national epidemic and possibly a pandemic as it affects many developed countries around the world. This interdisciplinary course explores the biology of obesity, including genetic predispositions and behaviors that increase obesity risk (dietary, physical activity, social, and psychological); the obesigenic environment, including how communities are physically built as well as the economic relationship to obesity risk; and the policy and ethical implications for obesity prevention and promotion of healthy behaviors and environments for all body sizes. Multi-level obesity prevention approaches that involve the individual, family, organization, community, and policy will be considered. The format will consist of common lectures, weekly discussions, hands-on activities, team projects, and synthesis of material presented.

Note This class is defined in the catalog as open to freshmen and sophomores in the Honors Program. If you are an Honors student who will have 54 or more credits when this course is offered, you may request enrollment by emailing honors@uconn.edu and including (1) your name; (2) your 7-digit Student Admin number; (3) your registration “pick time”; (4) the course number and section; (5) the class number from Student Admin; and (6) confirmation that there are seats available in the course.