Honors College 323H - Jr Yr Common Exp: Big Idea

The purpose of the course is to provide a common experience for Commonwealth Honors College students in their junior year. While recognizing that by the junior year students will be working in a wide variety of disciplinary areas, an interdisciplinary course like this will help honors students at the preliminary stage of thinking about a culminating senior thesis, project or capstone to experience a variety of topics and approaches that can lead to the development of their own senior culminating experience. Why a theme of innovative ideas across disciplines? The ways in which we are accustomed to view the world are not fixed because knowledge is always evolving and existing paradigms that have defined a field are challenged. The purpose of this course is to examine, from several academic perspectives, how perceived wisdom has been transformed by new ideas. Further, the course will identify motives for `Big Ideas?, focusing on the role of new questions thrown up by changing social, political, scientific and economic conditions and possibilities. By reviewing an interdisciplinary record of shifts in paradigms, students will see how interactions between problems within theories and problems of how theories conform to reality drive innovative thinking. Viewing change as a complex system of dynamics will help students understand how issues like racial discrimination, political polarization, economic inequality and scientific progress have led to the emergence of transformative ideas.

This course is open to Senior, Junior, and Sophmore Commonwealth College students only.