Purdue STS - Plan of Study - College of Liberal Arts

All students will begin the POS with the required ANTH 21000 - Technology And Culture (UCC: STS), which will serve as a foundational course and a common baseline experience. This course is offered every semester, and is listed on the UCC (STS category) and the Cornerstone Certificate plan of study (Science and Technology Theme).

Students will then complete 9 credit hours of coursework from a pool of STS related courses. In order to encourage a maximize breadth of topics, students may only use 1 course from a single department to count toward the certificate.

For the final 3 units, students enroll in a hands-on practicum, internship, or research experience on an STS topic in their home department that will result in a research product that will be submitted to the year-end Undergraduate Research Symposium. Projects will be developed within their home major, but in consultation with the STS Certificate Advisory Committee.

Interdisciplinary Studies

Languages and Cultures

Philosophy

Libraries and School of Information Studies

Political Science

Polytechnic

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course explores the social dimensions of technology from the perspective of ancient, modern, and post-modern society. Topics include the origins of particular technologies; processes of technical development and dissemination; the politics of everyday artifacts; virtual identities; and technologies of the body. Suggested courses (not pre-requisite): ANTH 10000, 20100 and/or 20500.

Learning Outcomes
1. Describe the origins and social consequences of technologies. 2. Analyze technology as a social process and debate the inevitability of technological progress. 3. Interpret the complex interplay between technical fields and social identity. 4. Summarize science and technology over time and across diverse places.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course is designed to provide an introduction to the field of Nutritional Anthropology in which we will examine issues related to diet, health and illness from holistic anthropological perspectives.

Learning Outcomes
1. Develop an understanding of the theoretical basis of nutritional anthropology.
2. Recognize core methods of nutritional anthropology.
3. Describe evolutionary and cross-cultural approaches to the study of food and nutrition.
4. Analyze the intersection of biology and culture in regard to eating practices.
5. Evaluate information on food and nutrition that is shared in the popular media.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course explores the intersections of medicine, science, and culture as powerful shapers of our lives and the world today. Anthropology broadly studies the human experience to help explain how our bodies, biologies, and beliefs inform what “medicine,” “health,” “illness,” and “healing” come to mean in diverse and cross-cultural contexts. The course will cover foundations in medical anthropology by exploring a range of topics and applications.

Learning Outcomes
1. Describe what medical anthropology is and what medical anthropologists do.
2. Analyze the dynamic intersections of medicine, science, and culture.
3. Explain what medical anthropology contributes to understanding the multiple dimensions of health, illness, and healing.
4. Apply anthropological frameworks to real-world examples.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course examines why the ancient past inspires so many theories about aliens, dark conspiracies, lost civilizations, and apocalyptic predictions. Topics include the popularity of pseudoscientific theories in American culture and the historical contexts in which common pseudoscientific ideas have emerged; why they persist in the face of archaeological evidence; and the role of pseudo-archaeology in the growing antagonism toward scientific expertise. Through an understanding of datasets and methods archaeologists use to evaluate claims about the past, the course goes beyond debunking ancient aliens and Atlantis to develop important critical thinking skills to evaluate evidence and recognize pseudo-scientific arguments in the media.

Learning Outcomes
1. Evaluate the difference between a scientific and a pseudoscientific claim about the human past.
2. Explain the techniques and scientific methods archaeologists use for evaluating hypotheses or claims about the past.
3. Examine the role and popularity of pseudoscientific theories in American culture and the historical contexts in which popular pseudoscientific ideas have emerged.
4. Articulate how seemingly harmless fringe theories are entangled with larger narratives of cultural memory and erasure among past societies and their descendants.

Credit Hours: 3.00. Critical Data Studies (CDS), is an interdisciplinary field that addresses the ethical, legal, socio-cultural, epistemological and political aspects of data science, big data and digital infrastructure. This course focuses on current topics in critical data studies scholarship. Particular emphasis will be given to democratic and participatory approaches to algorithm design and responsible data management, curation and dissemination. Students will develop tools and methods to help scholars think critically and identify issues of concern to Local Communities. This is a research and writing intensive course.

Learning Outcomes
1. Engage in current debates surrounding data science, big data and digital infrastructure from an anthropological perspective.
2. Acquire anthropological tools and methods to analyze societal impact of emergent technologies.
3. Learn to demonstrate collaboration, public engagement and scholarly communication skills.
4. Apply anthropological frameworks to novel research problems.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course provides a general overview to the field of environmental anthropology, and surveys key methods, and theories that anthropologists use to interpret human-environment interactions. Topics include culture ecology, agroecology, ethnobiology, political ecology, and environmental justice.

Learning Outcomes
1. Identify and explain the key theories in environmental anthropology.
2. Identify several cross-cultural examples of human-environment interactions.
3. Distinguish between anthropological approaches and other disciplines that study the environment.
4. Apply the theories and methods learned in this course to real world environmental issues.
5. Demonstrate professional skills in research, analysis, presentation and peer review.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course examines health issues and risks faced by individuals around the world, but especially in resource poor geographical areas. We will explore in-depth the gendered, ethnic, cultural, and class dimensions that underlie the patterning of disease and illness worldwide.

Learning Outcomes
1. Describe what anthropology contributes to the study of health globally and over time.
2. Explain how diverse communities around the world define health and organize health care.
3. Analyze the social and historical influences on health inequities.
4. Apply anthropological theories and methods to contemporary health issues.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course examines human universal patterns and cross-cultural variation in pregnancy, birth, and infant care practices, using evolutionary and biocultural perspectives. Students will connect course themes to current events and controversies, such as medical models of birth, public breastfeeding, and parent-infant co-sleeping.

Learning Outcomes
1. Identify evolutionarily novel aspects of the human reproductive pattern.
2. Compare birthing, infant feeding, and infant care practices across human societies using a biocultural framework.
3. Evaluate contemporary medical controversies surrounding pregnancy, birth, and babies critically.

Credit Hours: 3.00. The use of anthropology in practical contexts. What anthropological practice is, how it originated, how it can be applied in non- academic and interdisciplinary contexts and careers. The main contemporary issues surrounding anthropological practice, including training, ethics, relevance, and rigor. For majors and non-majors.

Learning Outcomes
1. Describe applied anthropology and how the field has evolved over time.
2. Analyze the major issues, controversies, and opportunities of applied anthropology.
3. Identify key methods and skills that applied anthropologists use in their careers.
4. Explain how anthropology can be applied in non-academic and interdisciplinary settings.
5. Demonstrate how to prepare for a career in anthropological practice, and/or use anthropology in their future career.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course is about designing for people. You will use anthropological knowledge and skills to better understand human and technology interactions. With students from other fields, you will learn how to apply an anthropological perspective to human centered design and design with the needs of a specific user group in mind.

Learning Outcomes
1. Identify opportunities for innovation that emerge from ethnographic studies and divergent thinking approaches to design.
2. Apply diverse team approaches to address open-ended and ill-defined design problems.
3. Describe and apply ethical decision-making to real-world design settings.
4. Demonstrate documentation of the design process from ethnography through choosing a design idea to make, including fieldnotes, drawings and digital presentation techniques.

Credit Hours: 3.00. (ENGL 39300) This course is the lynchpin of the undergraduate Certificate in Environmental and Sustainability Studies. It will present a series of case studies, core concepts, and problem questions that integrate the following three academic approaches: 1) Human Dimensions and Environment/Sustainability, 2) Engineering and Environment/Sustainability, and 3) Environmental/Sustainability Sciences.

Learning Outcomes
1. Identify, describe, and relate the diverse causes (social, cultural, political, ethical, economic, historical, scientific, and engineered) and consequences of pressing environmental and sustainability challenges, such as climate change, resource scarcity, biodiversity, population growth.
2. Distinguish, paraphrase, and translate different disciplinary perspectives on these key environmental and sustainability challenges.
3. Familiarize themselves with the efficacies, and learn to push the boundaries, of different disciplinary approaches by comparing and contrasting solutions to environmental issues.
4. Combine different disciplinary approaches by synthesizing reorganizing, and reformulating diverse viewpoints.
5. Demonstrate ability to communicate across disciplines on environmental and sustainability problems.

Credit Hours: 3.00. Introductory class to artistic practices on the computer. Students will work with digital still images, sounds, stop-frame animation and HTML-based websites and learn how to connect simple sensors to the computer to control digital images and sounds interactively.

Learning Outcomes
1. Apply key concepts from a variety of new media art practices by relating them to their own ideas developed in this class.
2. Assess their own creative work as well as the work of their peers through group discussions and critiques.
3. Produce a variety of artworks, such as animations, soundscape compositions and basic audio-visual systems by the creative application of technology.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This lecture course provides a historical overview of the development of new media art. In their research, project papers, and practical assignments, students explore issues of media criticism, technology’s impact on culture and society and visions of media utopias.

Learning Outcomes
1. Summarize the key characteristics of new media based on course texts and artistic examples.
2. Analyze and critique new media-related texts and cultural productions through group discussion and oral presentation.
3. Apply project-based methods to respond creatively and critically to the material history and social context of new media.

Credit Hours: 3.00. A survey of the historical development of design from the industrial revolution to the present that examines the influence of new technologies, materials, and style on design practice as well as the role of design in shaping the technologies and things of everyday life. Throughout the course, students will analyze design within the broader social, cultural, and political context of production, consumption, and use.

Learning Outcomes
1. Identify a range of styles from the 18th century to the present.
2. Critically analyze primary source material (artifacts/designed objects, images, and text).
3. Discuss important developments in the history of design.
4. Discuss the social, political, cultural, economic and technological context of design production, consumption, and use.

Credit Hours: 3.00. Students learn to effectively communicate scientific and technical information both verbally and in writing to a variety of audiences.

Learning Outcomes
Will update at a later date.

Credit Hours: 3.00. A survey of the print, broadcast, and film media in their relationship and influence on society. Study topics include: mass communication theories, documentaries, commercialism, news media, media effects and control, feedback, educational broadcasting, and audience analysis.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course provides an introduction to information and communication technologies, including media and computer-related technologies. Basic information and technical literacy skills are developed, while discussing fundamental concepts of mediated communication in 21st century contexts.

Learning Outcomes
1. Discuss implications of new technologies for individuals, institutions, and society.
2. Exercise basic information literacy skills through hands-on exercises involving new technologies.
3. Analyze impact of media technologies on communication behavior.
4. Write and make presentations that include new media technologies.

Credit Hours: 3.00. An examination of mass communication theories and theorists. Readings and discussion of McLuhan, Lippman, De Fleur, Lazarsfeld, Schramm, Stephenson, and other significant contributors.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course will serve as an introduction to the many ways that communication shapes health and health practices. Course content includes: 1) current healthcare structure in the United States; 2) communication in the healthcare organization; 3) provider-patient communication; 4) patient-support provider communication; 5) models of health behavior change and campaigns; and 6) crisis communication and health.

Learning Outcomes
1. Identify and apply theories relevant to health communication.
2. Identify how communication practices shape and affect health.
3. Provide a comparative analysis of issues of diversity in healthcare.
4. Tailor health communication materials to improve health literacy.
5. Design and implement health campaign.

Credit Hours: 3.00. An exploration of how traditional news providers use social media to disseminate information to mass audiences and correct practices using such technologies.

Learning Outcomes
1. Produce professional journalistic stories using alternate formats.
2. Choose appropriate social media to adapt to different audiences for optimal news dissemination.
3. Create social media content by applying basic mobile audio and video editing skills.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course explores the growing area of networks. The class focuses on understanding how social structure influences our everyday life by examining the ways individuals, groups, and entities are tied together. Permission of instructor required.

Learning Outcomes
1. Understand the foundation of social network theory and analysis.
2. Read work in the area of networks.
3. Learn how networks are related to the social phenomena of your own personal interest.
4. Gather basic understanding of gathering network data.

Credit Hours: 3.00. Both historical and contemporary perspectives of the reciprocal influence of new and changing technologies and the processes and practices of communication. The impact of print, telegraph, telephone, radio, and television will be surveyed, along with cable systems, direct broadcast satellites, and videotext.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course examines the content, processes, and effects of communication within the American political system. Designed for students to experience the breadth of the field of political communication, the course emphasizes relevant theories and practical skills.

Learning Outcomes
1. Acquire an awareness and understanding of how and why institutions and agents in American politics communicate as well as use media.
2. Apply theoretical approaches to media effects, journalism, political campaigns, and critical issues of race and gender to practical political communication situations.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course is an introduction to the processes and theories that are used to design both informational and persuasive health communication campaigns. The course will also introduce students to proper evaluation procedures to determine a campaign’s efficacy. Students will be able to contribute to their portfolios by applying theory and primary research in the construction of a health communication campaign plan for a client.

Learning Outcomes
1. Identify and perform the various stages of implementing a health communication campaign through course readings, discussions, and the creation of their final projects.
2. Apply formative research techniques and analyze relevant data in the creation of their final projects.
3. Identify the major theories and their essential components used in building health communication campaigns, and apply their components in course assignments.
4. Assess prior and current campaign efforts to understand their effectiveness and also recognize their limitations.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This class uses literature to explore how technological innovation both enables and constrains creativity. It also explores how technology has been represented in literature, and examines the relationship between literature and new media.

Learning Outcomes
1. Define technology and its implications.
2. Employ multiple approaches to critical thinking well-suited to cultural complexities.
3. Demonstrate written, visual, and technological literacies while working with diverse media.
4. Demonstrate creativity through remediation (moving information from one medium to another) and iteration.
5. Explain the relationship between information and digital media production.
6. Explain and employ multiple critical approaches to narrative and storytelling.

Credit Hours: 3.00. “Narrative Medicine” encompasses stories about the interior lives of doctors and medical professionals, the complexities of medicine past and present, and health-care for patients and their families. Ultimately, this course emphasizes the essential role of rhetoric and storytelling in the face of medical crisis and uses stories about illness and disability to explore the human condition.

Learning Outcomes
1. Explain medicine from a humanistic perspective.
2. Explain contemporary health issues.
3. Define storytelling as an intellectual and empathic discourse.
4. Analyze fictional and factual narratives (stories).

Credit Hours: 3.00. Literary study of nature writing; writing from the natural sciences; and canonical poetry, fiction, and essays through an ecological lens. Introduces students to ecocritical thought and environmental literary history.

Learning Outcomes
1. Demonstrate knowledge of a range of genres, topics, and discursive conventions of literature about the environment.
2. Discuss those genres, topics, and conventions in relation to their diverse historical, cultural, and aesthetic contexts.
3. Produce well-reasoned written arguments about the literature they study based on appropriate use of textual evidence.

Credit Hours: 3.00. An introduction to the detective genre, examining its origins, its characteristics, and its intersections with empiricism, forensic science, race, class, gender, sex, and empire.

Learning Outcomes
1. Be familiar with the generic conventions of, and theoretical approaches to, the detective genre.
2. Use detective fiction to improve students’ historical, cultural, and global awareness.
3. Practice analyzing, interpreting, and synthesizing information within and across texts and other media.
4. Practice successful academic writing, including a debatable thesis, as well as appropriately-selected and presented evidence.

Credit Hours: 3.00. Representative works of science fiction and fantasy examined in relation to both mainstream and popular literature. Emphasis is on technique, theme, and form.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course teaches the practice and principles of technical writing. The course emphasizes rhetorical approaches to research and writing, teaching concepts such as usability and accessibility. Students write diverse technical documents such as memos, technical reports, documentation and websites.

Learning Outcomes
1. Use theories of rhetoric to develop texts, think critically, solve problems, and engage with the needs of diverse audiences.
2. Apply data-driven approaches to specific rhetorical contexts, problems, and situations.
3. Communicate complex technical information, processes and procedures in a variety of genres.
4. Compose effective, industry specific, technical documents that emphasize the importance of usability and accessibility for the rapidly changing field of technical writing.
5. Produce team-written technical projects for specific contexts and industries.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course applies rhetorical principles to the writing of health, hospitality, nutrition and other related fields. It will prepare students to write in diverse modalities for technical, professional and lay audiences.

Learning Outcomes
1. Use theories of rhetoric to develop texts, think critically, solve problems, and engage with the needs of diverse audiences.
2. Apply data-driven approaches to specific rhetorical contexts, problems, and situations.
3. Employ theories and approaches of medical and science writing to adapt to the rapidly changing industries of healthcare and public health.
4. Compose effective healthcare and public health documents with an awareness of the accessibility and usability needs of patients, providers and caregivers.
5. Communicate complex healthcare and public health information while writing both individually and in teams.

Credit Hours: 3.00. Applies principles of effective professional writing to the planning, production, and evaluation of computer user manuals and other writing tasks.

Learning Outcomes
1. Communicate technical knowledge through writing.
2. Think and write about writing in high technology workplaces.
3. Write concisely, precisely, and with economy of language.
4. Become familiar with the best practices and procedures for documenting advanced technologies.
5. Become familiar with adapting technical language and requirements for a non-specialist audience.
6. Become familiar with composing and delivering policies or new procedures to colleagues or co-workers.
7. Become familiar with practical strategies for improving your resume, conduct, and online presence.

Credit Hours: 3.00. Writing Proposals and Grants is a professional writing workshop that teaches students to write workplace proposals and grants in for-profit and not-for-profit companies and organizations. Students will also learn how to write business plans, a specialized form of proposal.

Learning Outcomes
1. Analyze rhetorical situations to determine needs of readers and contexts.
2. Generate new ideas for businesses, products, and services.
3. Organize proposals and grants using various proposal genres.
4. Write in a plain and persuasive style that is appropriate to readers.
5. Design documents in ways that make information accessible.
6. Edit and revise proposals and grants.
7. Work with authors, customers, and funding agencies to sharpen the message of a proposal or grant.

Credit Hours: 3.00. Science and Medical Writing is a professional writing workshop that teaches students how to write in medical and scientific fields. Students will learn the genres and conventions that are used by medical writers and science writers, as well as editors in these fields.

Learning Outcomes
1. Analyze rhetorical situations to determine needs of readers and contexts.
2. Identify the appropriate genre for a writing project.
3. Edit and proofread scientific and medical documents.
4. Design documents that pertain specifically to medical and scientific texts.
5. Create and effectively use tables, charts, and graphics common in the sciences and medicine.
6. Develop skills for working with authors and publishers in scientific and medical fields.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course examines many of the ethical challenges surrounding the design, development, and deployment of medical technologies. Issues will be analyzed from multiple frameworks and perspectives including industry, government, and society. Students will learn and practice identification and analysis of ethical issues. They will develop empathic and decision-making skills designed to prepare them as engineers to deal productively and ethically with issues in professional practice.

Credit Hours: 3.00. The focus is on the multifaceted dynamics of globalization, and its impact on engineering practice and the lives and education of engineers. The course emphasizes engineering and globalization from the perspectives of the emerging Asian economies and Europe, as well as the United States. This course is designed for practicing engineers and engineering educators. It is taught within a learner-centric, highly interactive, collaborative learning environment in which students are expected to learn from the experiences and thinking of each other, as well as from the instructor, and other course resources. The course places emphasis on reading, writing, web-based research, and discussion. Students are recommended (but not required) to have a minimum of two years work experience as a practicing engineer and strong communication skills (self-assessed). Permission of instructor is required.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course provides students with opportunities to study how engineering is intertwined with larger economic, social, cultural, and technological dynamics in an era of intensified globalization. Its major goals are to help students understand and appreciate what engineering is, how engineers are trained, what engineers do, and how engineering and society interact. The course approaches these themes through discussion of: the relation and interaction of engineering, science, technology, and society; the historical origins and development of engineering as a profession; diversity issues in engineering and other STEM fields; engineering in cross-national/cultural contexts; and contemporary challenges related to globalization, ethics, and sustainability. In summary, the course is designed to help students understand what it means to identify as, and/or work with, engineers. Recitation sections and/or independent projects (at the instructor’s discretion) provide further opportunities for students to expand their knowledge and improve their skills in relation to course themes.

Learning Outcomes
1. Describe and evaluate the specific kinds of knowledge and methods typically employed by engineers, including in comparison with other professional fields.
2. Understand the historical development of engineering education and the engineering profession in the United States.
3. Recognize how national differences are important in engineering work, including by comparing and contrasting different national cultures and styles of engineering.
4. Explain the significance of diversity in engineering education and professional practice, including by evaluating competing perspectives on diversity in different historical and sociocultural contexts.
5. Understand contemporary trends and issues related to globalization, ethics, social responsibility, and sustainability, and interpret their significance in relation to engineering education and practice.
6. Demonstrate written communication capabilities at the level of emerging or higher (as defined by the Purdue Core Curriculum guidelines).

Credit Hours: 3.00. Presentation and discussion of common ethical theories, including ethical egoism, legal positivism, utilitarianism, duties and rights, and virtue ethics. Application of these theories to the practice of engineering, including professionalism, codes of ethics, trust and loyalty, confidentiality, whistle blowing, respect for legitimate authority, risk and reliability, and fraud. Examples of application of ethical theory and case studies drawn from across the engineering profession and include discussion of the interrelated technical and ethical issues.

Learning Outcomes
1. Identify and discuss common ethical theories.
2. Describe how these theories apply these theories to the practice of engineering.
3. Analyze case studies of failures of engineering products and organizations.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course examines the kitchen as an architectural space, a place of labor and food production, and an arena for technological innovation in modern American history. Cooking and eating reflect cultural sentiments about modernity, progress, ethnicity, and family, and the politics of how society nourishes bodies.

Learning Outcomes
1. Think historically and critically about the cultural consequences of technologies related to eating and food preparation.
2. Think historically and critically about approaches to the study of national identify and culture expressed through food.
3. Appreciate the circumstances and history of kitchen design in relation to raced and gendered identities, home space, and food preparation.
4. Understand and recognize how assumptions about food production during the late 19th and 20th centuries in the United States reflected notions about labor, modernity, and progress.
5. Understand the difference between secondary and primary sources. Students will analyze and interpret primary documents related to kitchens, cooking, and food preparation. They also will understand the competing and conflicting nature of historical interpretation.
6. Sharpen critical reading, thinking, writing, and discussion skills.

Credit Hours: 3.00. War has been a central component of U.S. statecraft from the war of independence through the war on terror. This lecture class examines the complicated relationship between technology and war from the colonial period through the present day.

Learning Outcomes
1. Gain understanding about the importance of technologies to the development of techniques of war in the context of U.S. history.
2. Contemplate the role of technology in shaping society and of society in shaping technology.
3. Consider ethical questions about the use and effects of technologies in war.
4. Sharpen critical analytical, reading, and writing skills.
5. Sharpen their ability to use primary and secondary source materials as evidence in persuasive written argument.
6. Improve ability to work as a team.
7. Practice public speaking skills.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course examines the long history of efforts in automating human cognition. Historically, the attempts to automate human cognitive functions - from the mere reckoning of numbers to complex decision-making have been entangled with heated debates about what counts as good, proper, and desirable thinking; whose thinking machines should emulate; and whether the thinking of some humans is inferior to that of machines. In this course, we will examine how the invention of calculating machines - analogue and then digital - has developed in tandem with philosophical and scientific theories of human thinking and intelligence. In their turn, the latter developed as a response to changing social, political, and economic currents.

Learning Outcomes
1. Critique the epistemological foundations and ethical implications of past and present approaches to the automation of human cognition.
2. Use primary sources to make arguments about the role of social, political, economic, and cultural currents that have historically provided the impulses for research and development in the automation of human cognition.
3. Assess historical scholarly arguments about social, economic, and political power asymmetries surrounding artificial intelligences.
4. Create websites to use text, imagery, and video content and effectively communicate how social factors have historically shaped the development of artificial intelligence.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course will examine the development of life sciences from 1750 to the present, introducing students to critical problems related to biology and society through the study of primary and secondary sources. The “life sciences” include all the sciences that deal with life as an organic entity. A prominent theme in this historical treatment is the impact of social and political ideas on the life sciences. Topics will include theories of life, the origin of life, taxonomy and classification, theories of development, natural selection, genetics, eugenics, science and religion, the evolutionary synthesis, biodiversity, ecology and environmentalism, sociobiology, the discovery of DNA, cognition and the brain, and gender in science. Students will develop crucial skills in the interpretation of primary and secondary sources, research, analysis, and presentation.

Learning Outcomes
1. Analyze data using historical methodologies to evaluate causal arguments and analyze assertions, assumptions, and explanatory evidence within an essay format.
2. Formulate and write cogent arguments based on research with primary and secondary historical material.
3. Evaluate and employ appropriate technology in the collection and analysis of data used as evidence for the required critical essays.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course introduces students to various approaches to environmental science through time. It considers critical problems related to the environment and society. The “environmental sciences” include all the sciences that deal with the Earth’s physical and organic environments.

Learning Outcomes
1. Analyze data using historical methodologies to evaluate causal arguments and analyze assertions, assumptions, and explanatory evidence within an essay format.
2. Formulate and write cogent arguments based on research with primary and secondary historical materials.
3. Evaluate and employ appropriate technology in the collection and analysis of data used as evidence for the required critical essays.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course examines the history of material cultures of health care in the United States. The class will analyze how technological innovation has become central to medicine over the last two centuries and how we are coping with the consequences, both intended and unintended, of our reliance upon such medical devices. We will look at identities associated with medical devices, the ways in which disease is constructed, how technologies contribute to the naming of maladies, and implications for emergent bioengineering and biotechnologies.

Learning Outcomes
1. Appreciate the circumstances and history of technological innovation in relation to medicine.
2. Understand and recognize how assumptions about health influence the practice of science and development of technologies during the late 19th and 20th centuries.
3. Analyze the design of objects to understand cultural consequences of their use.
4. Develop skills for reading critical historical commentaries and evaluating them.
5. Gain ability to question technological artifacts, practice, and knowledge in historical context.

Credit Hours: 3.00. Scientific and technological innovation has been a cornerstone of American identity. How science and technology matters to gender, and gender matters to science and technology, will be explored through studying amateur and professional scientists and engineers, industrialization, education, sexual division of labor, and home and work spaces in twentieth-century America. Examining technological, scientific, and engineering innovation through the lens of gender reveals changing relationships between men and women in modern America.

Learning Outcomes
1. Appreciate the circumstances and history of technological innovation in relation to gender.
2. Understand and recognize how assumptions about gender may influence the practice of science and development of technologies during the late 19th and 20th centuries.
3. Analyze the design of objects to understand cultural consequences of their use.
4. Develop skills for reading critical historical commentaries and evaluating them.
5. Gain ability to question technological artifacts, practice, and knowledge in historical context.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course explores twentieth-century gender history in the United States through the concept of beauty. Ideals about beauty intersect with politics, economics, technological developments, medical innovations, and nation building. A critical examination of beauty as seen through advertising, pageants, and material culture, yields insight about modern womanhood, everyday life, and identify formation in the twentieth-century United States.

Learning Outcomes
1. Appreciate the ways that beauty has been pursued by individuals, health practitioners, corporations, and media cultures since 1900.
2. Understand and recognize how assumptions about gender have influenced the way that beauty is constructed and experienced at different places and times.
3. Think historically and critically about the culture consequences of technologies related to beauty.
4. Think historically and critically about approaches to the study of beauty in modern American history.
5. Understand the difference between secondary and primary sources.
6. Analyze and interpret primary documents related to beauty cultures.
7. Understand the competing and conflicting nature of historical interpretation.
8. Sharpen critical reading, thinking, writing, and discussion skills.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course examines the history of disease, dying, and medicine in the United States in the 20th century.

Learning Outcomes
1. Identify and explain the relationship between science and culture and interdisciplinarity.
2. Analyze texts and cultural artifacts about medicine.
3. Identify medical practice and how it is informed by context and culture.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course explores developments in scientific, technological, and ecological history specifically in Pre-modern East Asia. In this class, we will read basic theories and methods in the history of science and technology, as well as basic debates and questions that challenge scholars studying the history of science, technology, and the environment in a non-western pre-modern context. We will explore how society, culture, and politics affect knowledge production and people’s engagement with nature, and how these interactions, in turn, shaped society, culture, and politics. All readings are in English. No prior knowledge of East Asia is necessary.

Learning Outcomes
1. Examine, interpret, and explain how personal, political, cultural, economic, and social experiences and/or structures shaped the history of science and society in pre-modern East Asia.
2. Discuss examples of scientific and technological changes and the costs and benefits for individuals and specific societies.
3. Analyze data using historical methodologies to evaluate causal arguments and analyze assertions, assumptions, and explanatory evidence related to the history of science and society.
4. Investigate the diversity of human experience in pre-modern East Asia, explain how social factors such as ethnicity, gender, language, race, religion, sexual orientation, age, culture, disability, and social class, have shaped the development or application of science and technology, including tools and strategies by which societies promote, constrain, or otherwise influence scientific and technical innovation.
5. Identify and explain the major themes of the history of science, technology, and environment, write about the role of science in society, and describe ethical implications of technological and scientific developments.

Credit Hours: 3.00. The purpose of this course is to provide students with a historical understanding of the role public health and medicine has played in American history during the 19th and 20th centuries. How does the health status of Americans reflect and shape the U.S.

Learning Outcomes
1. Understand how and why public health has evolved over the course of the past two centuries.
2. Identify and analyze how scientific beliefs and social anxieties contribute to policies and practices of medicine and health.
3. Develop critical thinking skill to assess the impact of public health reforms on everyday life.

Credit Hours: 3.00. A comparative history of human flight and air power (in Europe, the Americas, and Asia) from its origin in the early inventors and pilots, through its reflection in the popular media, to the global development of civil and military aviation.

Credit Hours: 3.00. The historical interaction between human values and space exploration in the contemporary age, focusing on issues of global interdependence. Topics include the international competition in rocketry, the Cold War in space, the moon missions, space disasters, and satellite technology.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This is a mid-level survey designed to provide students of environmental science with historical background and students of history with the unique perspective of environmental history.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course examines the historical relationship between women and health by exploring a number of critical themes that have affected women’s health in the United States.

Learning Outcomes
1. Analyze the ways in which societal assumptions about gender, health and sickness, along with race and class, help to determine the course of treatment.
2. Analyze the role of primary sources in contributing to our understanding of women’s health.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course explores how Americans have understood insanity and asylums. We analyze historical concepts of insanity, the evolution of asylums, how psychiatrists have debated therapeutics, and how ordinary people have experienced treatments and diagnoses.

Learning Outcomes
1. Gain knowledge of some of the major debates in the history of insanity.
2. Be able to identify a research question, conduct primary source research, and form a thesis.
3. Use a variety of databases to assemble a range of primary sources.
4. Learn to interrogate and compare primary sources for viewpoint and implicit value system.
5. Gain knowledge of some of the major theoretical approaches and frameworks used for studying the history of insanity.
6. Be able to discuss ideas and research in formal writing and in seminar discussion.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course examines the development of science in the United States from colonial times to the present. Emphasis in the earlier periods is placed on comparison and contrast of the American scene with that of Europe. Subsequent treatment deals with industrialization, and maturation of the American scientific community, and the increasing social effects of science. Among those considered are the forces making for urbanization, for greater interdependence among science, industry and government, and for repercussions in intellectual affairs.

Learning Outcomes
1. Examine, interpret, and explain how personal, political, cultural economic, and social experiences and/or structures shaped the history of science and society.
2. Analyze data using historical methodologies to evaluate causal arguments and analyze assertions, assumptions, and explanatory evidence related to the history of science and society.
3. Investigate the diversity of human experience within Western culture, considering, for example, ethnicity, gender, language, race, religion, sexual orientation, age, culture, disability, and social class, and appreciate the contribution of different social groups in science and society.
4. Identify and explain the major themes of the history of science and write about the role of science in society and social implications of science.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course focuses on the various ways that invention, innovation, and design shape the modern world. We will investigate the forms, uses, and meanings of a diverse set of objects, networks, and systems that influence the ways we live. We will explore these ideas through the concepts of consumption, waste, and “smart” to gain a deeper understanding of how material infrastructures influence human existence. This project-based course will use readings, discussions, and critical reflections to inform a series of hands-on projects to understand our roles as designers, creators, and users of science, technology, and material culture. Permission of instructor required.

Learning Outcomes
1. Identify the major themes and issues prompted by the terms invention, innovation, and design.
2. Assess the multiple processes by which people express, institutionalize, celebrate, and contest meaning through designed objects.
3. Appreciate the cultural diversity of the American experience, especially in terms of class, ethnicity, gender, and race.
4. Develop the skills to analyze invention, innovation and design through the use of interdisciplinary source materials, research methodologies, and intellectual approaches.
5. Reach independent conclusions based on research-based analysis and communicate them effectively verbally, in writing, and through project-based assignments.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course examines how science, technology, engineering, and data analysis reshape sports. Traditionally, sports have been understood as competitions between humans. However, recent technoscientific developments have altered this arrangement and have changed the ways sports are played. We have reached a place where heated competitions not only take place on the fields of play, but also within scientific and engineering laboratories. The fundamental question this project-based course will address is: how will new and emerging scientific knowledge and technological innovations transform sports? We will explore topics ranging from football, baseball, basketball, and soccer, to e-sports, fantasy sports, and sports analytics.

Learning Outcomes
1. Identify the major themes and issues prompted by the terms sports, technology, and innovation.
2. Assess the multiple processes by which people express, institutionalize, celebrate, and contest meaning through the play and consumption of sports.
3. Appreciate the cultural diversity of the American experience, especially in terms of class, ethnicity, gender, and race.
4. Develop the skills to analyze sporting invention, innovation, design, and culture through the use of interdisciplinary source materials, research methodologies, and intellectual approaches.
5. Reach independent conclusions based on research-based analysis and communicate them effectively verbally, in writing, and through project-based assignments.

Credit Hours: 3.00. Ninety to ninety-five percent of scientific technical vocabulary and medical terminology come from Latin and Greek roots and affixes. This course will enable students in scientific and medical disciplines to develop a foundational core of Greek and Latin roots and affixes from which they will be able to decipher and easily commit to memory the core terminology in the various sciences and medicine.

Learning Outcomes
1. Know the foundational core of Greek and Latin roots and affixes from which medical and scientific terminology has been derived.
2. Decipher complex and specialized scientific and medical terms based on the knowledge of their Greek and Latin roots.
3. Decipher unfamiliar terminology in their fields by learning how the roots combine dynamically to form words as scientific and medical innovation requires an ever-increasing need for new terms.
4. Enable students to absorb information in their fields more easily by demystifying the complexities of their specialized vocabularies used in their disciplines.

Credit Hours: 3.00. Historical and cultural study of Western medicine, from Mesopotamian origins to the late Roman Empire, based on written texts and archaeological evidence. Addresses the development of rational medical frameworks against the background traditional beliefs about illness as a sign of demonic possession, and charts the growth of the medical profession from individual avocation to institutional practice.

Learning Outcomes
1. Summarize the key forces affecting the development of Western medicine from its origins to late antiquity in the form of an extended essay or paper.
2. Create a compelling, original argument that relates habits of rational thinking about the human body in antiquity to the conceptual frameworks used to diagnose its behaviors.
3. Respond critically to a representative medical text from antiquity in a capstone research project.

Credit Hours: 3.00. Study of the development of the idea of rationality in the West through examination of the evolution of Greek and Roman sciences, with emphasis on medicine and astronomy.

Learning Outcomes
1. Gain a detailed historical understanding of the development of ancient Greek and Roman science, especially medicine and astronomy, against the background of traditional beliefs in magic.
2. Ability to appreciate and intelligently discuss major issues in ancient science as they relate to both ancient and modern views of what is “rational” and “scientific”.
3. Ability to identify specific examples of the influence of ancient science on later western scientific theory and practice.

Credit Hours: 1.00 or 3.00. The main goal of this course is to encourage students to think like global engineers by focusing curricular activities on engineering case studies from a humanistic-engineering perspective. The case studies examined in the course may include past, present, and hypothetical engineering successes and failures; analyses will require engineering skills combined with understanding of cultural perspectives of local communities and cultural context (i.e., sociological, anthropological, and historical information and analyses that contribute to cultural understanding). This humanities-infused approach will encourage students to develop a new mindset–a way of seeing current and hypothetical engineering plans, projects, and impacts through local communities’ pasts and presents, unique values, perspectives, and daily ways of life.

Learning Outcomes
1. Discuss various approaches to engineering problems in class meetings or online discussion boards. 2. Analyze global engineering problems from engineering and humanistic perspectives evidenced in written case study responses and assessments. 3. Apply concepts of systems thinking and design thinking and express them in individual and group activities. 4. Explain the application of humanistic fields of study to engineering problems.

Credit Hours: 1.00 to 3.00. The main goal of this course is to encourage students to think like global engineers by focusing curricular activities on engineering case studies from a humanistic-engineering perspective. The case studies examined in the course may include past, present, and hypothetical engineering successes and failures; analyses will require engineering skills combined with understanding of cultural perspectives of local communities and cultural context (i.e., sociological, anthropological, and historical information and analyses that contribute to cultural understanding). This humanities-infused approach will encourage students to develop a new mindset–a way of seeing current and hypothetical engineering plans, projects, and impacts through local communities’ pasts and presents, unique values, perspectives, and daily ways of life. Taught in Spanish.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course provides an introduction to Ethical, Legal Social Issues (ELSI) in Data Science. Students will be introduced to interdisciplinary theoretical and practical frameworks that can aid in exploring the impact and role of Data Science in society. This is a writing intensive course. Students will work individually and on collaborative assignments.

Learning Outcomes
1. Engage in current debates surrounding professional and research ethics, roles and responsibilities in Data Science.
2. Examine emerging legal and policy issues which impact Data Science.
3. Reflect critically on the relationship between Data Science and political, social and cultural change.
4. Learn collaboration, public engagement and scholarly communication skills.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course is designed to increase your understanding of professional and ethical responsibilities in national, international, and cross-cultural environments, helping you to anticipate, understand, and navigate issues that will likely arise in your working life as an engineer or designer. The focus of the course is on developing the ability to apply a general ethical framework to new and unique situations, including those arising from the global cultural context of modern engineering. The course covers how this ethical framework should be constituted, and provides practice in applying this a framework to specific, concrete cases. Together, these components work toward your development as a better engineer and a more responsible global citizen. The readings, case studies, and exercises are geared towards the development of a well-researched original case study that you will present to the class, which is informed by your past experiences and future aspirations related to engineering.

Learning Outcomes
1. Develop an understanding of professional and ethical responsibilities in technology, engineering, and design (TED).
2. Understand and assess ethical problems in TED contexts.
3. Analyze and assess the impact of engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts.
4. Understand the effects of technological engineering and design solutions in different cultural environments.
5. Apply abstract ethical frameworks to concrete situations.
6. Develop critical thinking skills.
7. Develop and deploy analytical skills in ethical contexts.
8. Develop skills in analytical writing and in clear and precise oral communication.

Credit Hours: 3.00. As applications of data science permeate more aspects of our lives, new and important ethical issues are arising. However, especially because we are entering uncharted territory, reasoning clearly about the ethical implications of data science isn’t easy. This course provides students with the tools for doing so, including a conceptual framework for ethical reasoning in professional settings, as well as a procedure for case-study analysis that allows students to practice employing this conceptual framework. Together, these components help prepare students to be ethical professionals and responsible global citizens.

Learning Outcomes
1. Identify ethical issues associated with applications of data science in a variety of professional settings, by reading assigned texts, viewing/listening to assigned media content, and participating in classroom and group discussions. 2. Apply general ethical principles to the specific, concrete actions of individuals, corporations, governments and other organizations. 3. Construct sound, well-reasoned arguments, and communicate them clearly, by participating in classroom and group discussions as well as writing assignments. 4. Develop a case study of their own, by submitting a written essay that applies the case study procedure.

Credit Hours: 3.00. An introduction to the scope and methods of science and to theories of its historical development. Topics include scientific revolutions, theories of scientific method, the nature of scientific discovery, explanation, and the role of values in scientific change.

Credit Hours: 3.00. An examination of the moral problems raised by developments in medicine and the biomedical sciences. Topics include abortion, reproductive technologies, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, experiments involving human subjects, and health care delivery.

Credit Hours: 3.00. A philosophical examination of the nature and history of technology, as well as its complex impact on humans and the world.

Learning Outcomes
1. Critically evaluate the impact technology has upon our lives and the world.
2. Analyze and interpret a significant body of primary works in philosophy of technology.
3. Develop their ability to read, analyze, and write about complex texts.
4. Demonstrate their familiarity with the major questions and traditions in the philosophy of technology.
5. Reflect on the socially responsible creation and use of technology.
6. Critically scrutinize the nature, value, and challenges to technology as an intellectual and cultural institution.
7. Pose critical questions about the future directions of technology and explore whether any ethical vision guides the development of technology.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course introduces the student to mathematical probability and its philosophical applications. Topics may include theories of probability, Hume’s problem of induction, Goodman’s paradox, and the foundations of scientific reasoning.

Credit Hours: 3.00. An examination of central issues in philosophy of science. Topics include theories of explanation, confirmation, reduction, laws, the status of theoretical entities, and the epistemological foundations of scientific theories.

Credit Hours: 3.00. Are science and religion irrelevant to each other? Or can one of them challenge, support, shape, presuppose, explain-or explain away-the other? This course examines how science in general, as well as specific scientific disciplines such as evolutionary biology, physical cosmology, and cognitive science, are related to religion in general, and to particular religious traditions.

Learning Outcomes
1. Identify specific ways in which science and religion appear to be in tension and specific ways in which they appear to support one another.
2. Demonstrate familiarity both with attempts to resolve alleged tensions between science and religion and with attempts to challenge claims that science and religion support one another.
3. Present, explain, defend, and evaluate complex philosophical perspectives on the relationship between science and religion, in oral and written communication.
4. Locate, interpret, understand, and evaluate philosophical arguments encountered in complex texts on the relationship science and religion.

Credit Hours: 3.00. (FNR 22310) Study of decision making as modern societies attempt to cope with environmental and natural resources problems. Focuses on the American political system, with some attention to the international dimension. Current policies and issues will be examined.

Learning Outcomes
1. Learn fundamental principles, generalizations, and theories related to policy development, with a focus on environmental and natural resource policy.
2. Learn to apply course material to improve thinking, problem solving, and decisions relevant to natural resource and environmental issues.
3. Learn to analyze and critically evaluate ideas, arguments, and points of view.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course introduces the student to the roles that modern weapons systems play in contemporary international relations.

Credit Hours: 3.00. Comparative study of environmental policy development and processes in industrialized democracies, former and current communist states, and developing nations.

Credit Hours: 3.00. Analysis and assessment of the nature of global environmentalism, its connections with other new social movements, and its impact on domestic and international politics worldwide, with particular attention to green political parties and nongovernmental organizations.

Credit Hours: 3.00. Environmental policy development in the international arena, with attention to international law, international organizations, and transboundary environmental problems.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course provides an introduction to statutory and case law relating to environmental policy. Regulatory schemes in environmental policy and the legal framework for environmental regulation are presented. Market alternatives to various regulatory mechanisms will also be treated.

Credit Hours: 3.00. Politics and policies of federal and state regulatory agencies. Explanations of regulatory agency behavior, arguments for and against government regulation, and alternatives to government regulation.

Credit Hours: 3.00. The political problems of natural resource use and environmental quality. Theoretical foundations for environmental policy and its evaluation, the political context of environmental policy, principles of administering environmental policies, and the significance of international law and institutions for environmental policies.

Credit Hours: 3.00. This course provides an overview of theories and approaches to the transdisciplinary concept of design, spanning multiple disciplines and types of design outputs with a focus on technology. Students will read the work of leading design scholars, and situate their personal approach to design practice and research based on historical and current trends in the literature. Student work will be focused on theoretical and practical outcomes, with two main learning goals: 1) building upon and critiquing theories, methods, and processes of design in their original research; and 2) generating an awareness and representation of their personal design philosophy.

Capstone Project

Visit the Capstone Project page to learn more about this requirement and see some examples of previous students' work!

Plan of Study

Steps For Success