1. A Different View: How Can We Change the World?
Students will participate in a United Nations Simulation with teams from other universities throughout the world, each representing a different country. Millersville’s team will represent Spain. The semester begins with an in-depth study of Spain, its history and its culture; past civilization and how it informs its present-day civilization; its politics and foreign policy. Students, working in teams, will investigate some of the major problems facing the United Nations, such as world health, the global environment, terrorism, conflict resolution, the refugee problem, and world trade. Students will then enter the negotiation and decision-making phase through interactions with teams from other universities using the ICONSnet online communication system via messaging, conferences, writing and considering proposals. At the conclusion, time will be spent debriefing, discussing achievements and what we learned about Spain and the other countries involved in the debate, especially the US.
2. Cultural Understandings, Cultural Misunderstandings?
Ever since its foundation in 1776, and even before then, the United States has attracted immigrants from all over the world. With the Statue of Liberty greeting Europeans entering Ellis Island and The Golden Gate Bridge greeting Chinese and other Asians into San Francisco, the United States has become a mosaic of people, cultures and hope. Through a study of French culture, students will build an awareness of how cultural differences can profoundly impact people and identify global diversity issues which should be addressed.
3. The Amish and the Media
Explore the intersections of the Amish and the media by studying both the representations of the Amish in the media as well as Amish efforts to represent themselves. After an introduction to Amish history and culture, the seminar will explore ways in which the Old Order Amish have been represented in a variety of mainstream media (feature and documentary films, television programs, poetry, non-fiction narratives, tourism) for non-Amish audiences. The course will then move beyond the Amish as mediated images to the Amish as actors—that is, as agents who produce and consume their own media, create and transmit their own representations of Amish life (newspapers, magazines and other publishing enterprises). These texts will provide a useful window for exploring larger issues about culture and identity in the mediated landscape of contemporary American life.
4. Biodiversity and the Sixth Great Extinction
This seminar will introduce students to biodiversity, an exciting current global issue, by providing the biological and geological background to understand it, introducing the actions that humans are taking to prevent losses of biodiversity, and to allow freedom to choose examples of different concepts to present to the class. Human actions are reducing biodiversity which includes species diversity (number of species), genetic diversity and ecosystem diversity. Scientists have coined the accelerating loss of biodiversity as the “sixth great extinction,” since the present estimated extinction rate is similar to the five previous great extinctions know from fossil records. The fifth resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs. This course will provide background on biodiversity, analyze how humans impact biodiversity and consider how humans can restore and prevent biodiversity losses.
5. Liberty and Justice for All: The Promise
of American Education
This seminar explores questions of fairness, justice, and equity in education. What should all children know and be able to do and who gets to make that decision? Should education be considered a civil right? Whose responsibility is it to insure quality education? What is your responsibility as a citizen for students in your own community? What is your responsibility to all students, especially in communities where schools have failed to provide students with equal opportunity for success in society? We will seek answers to these questions by examining the familiar (schools) from different and often challenging perspectives. Students will read, research, discuss and present various aspects of education inequity framed within the social issues of race, class, gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. By analyzing their findings, students will develop their own understanding of American education helping them to become more informed and involved citizens.
6. The Great IQ Debate
In recent years, social scientists have made considerable advances in the areas of learning and intelligence. Yet, much remains unknown and that which is known is often debated. For example, how do we adequately measure IQ? How relevant is IQ in determining success? Do educational products really facilitate intellectual growth? This seminar will explore these questions as we take an interdisciplinary approach to examine human intelligence.
7. Homes and Homelessness
What is a “home?” What elements—both physical and psychological – make up the experience of home? How does one come to feel “at home” in a new place? In contrast…what are the social/emotional, economic and psychological consequences of being without a home? Who are the homeless? Why are people homeless? In this course we will attempt to answer these and other questions by studying the concepts and realities of “home” and “homelessness.” The course will also offer a service learning opportunity as students investigate the problem of homelessness here in Lancaster County.
8. The Deindustrialization of the
United States: Jobs Today, Gone Tomorrow
During the early 1980s a debate on deindustrialization began in the United States. Was America losing its industrial base to other nations? If so, why, and what would that mean to America and its citizens? With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the disappearance of a bipolar world, the emergence of the Indian and Chinese economies, and a federal government trapped by an obsolete trade ideology and preoccupied with the War on Terrorism, America’s national economy has been radically transformed in less than a decade. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics new results indicate the United States currently has the new jobs-created profile of a third world nation as a result of outsourcing. Outsourcing has also contributed to the explosion of the U.S. trade deficit over the past decade. If these trends are not altered in the near future, what will the future of America be? What will the future of the middle class be? What type of world might emerge from such a pattern of economic activity? What do these trends mean for Western civilization? If you are interested in exploring these and similar questions, this seminar is the one to choose.
9. What turns you on? Minds, Motivation, and Learning
The purpose of this seminar is to engage in an examination of the complex concept of motivation and how it is related to success in our academic, professional and personal lives. Through an exploration of theoretical and practical approaches to motivation, students will engage in a critical analysis of their own motivational profile and develop an understanding about how to best respond to their characterizations in order to succeed.
10. Public Health: Science and Art in Action
This seminar will encourage students to consider a real-world public health issues as they apply to themselves as individuals, peer groups, communities, national and global issues. Through the lens of history, philosophy, literature, culture, law, ethics, informatics, applied health and mathematics students will examine disease prevention and health promotion. Throughout the class, students will be challenged to evaluate personal views on health in terms of population health and public policy.
11. Culture, Science and Mathematics
in the Pre-Columbian Americas
An introduction to the study of the Pre-Columbian Americas, part of the broad interdisciplinary field of Native American Studies. The emphasis will be on the role that science and mathematics played in the culture of these indigenous groups (including the Aztec, Incan, Mayan and other Native American groups). The course will explore the Pre-Columbian world through the eyes of our ancestors, as well as through our classmates. Special attention to the science of archaeoastronomy and mathematics in which all of the great cultures of antiquity have left a mark.
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