This seminar is open to first-semester humanities or Critical Social Inquiry Division III students who are beginning their Division III projects. Emphasis will be on how to construct a research question, how to gather sources, how to do a literature review, how to locate our work in the most important scholarly debates in our fields, how to develop good writing habits, how to map out our research and writing plans for the year, and how to support one another as a community of engaged scholars.

In the wake of COVID-19 pandemic that laid bare the inequalities of our society and the recent murder of George Floyd and other Black Americans, alliances between communities of color have never been so critically important. This course examines the history of Black and Asian American feminist solidarities and activism in their fight against racism, sexism, capitalism, and imperialism.

This seminar is designed for students in their first or second semester of work on a Division III project primarily in areas of critical social inquiry, including those related (but not limited) to critical youth studies, education studies, and interdisciplinary projects spanning critical social inquiry and humanities and/or arts. Students will conduct multiple work-in-progress presentations on their projects and will be expected to provide timely and thoughtful feedback on peers' written work.

Humans are recent tenants on an ancient Earth. Understanding Earth's remarkable history is enlightening yet humbling. Earth's history provides a critical lens for evaluating the environmental processes occurring in our modern world. In this course, we will travel through time to study the evolution of Earth from its fiery beginning over 4.5 billion years ago to the present day. We will explore the physical and biological evolution of Earth and gain an appreciation for Earth as a series of complex systems that interact dynamically and holistically.

In this course we will learn the fundamental chemical concepts of composition and stoichiometry, properties of matter, the gas laws, atomic structure, bonding and molecular structure, chemical reactions, and energy changes in chemical reactions. Considerable time will be devoted to learning the use of the periodic table as a way of predicting the chemical properties of elements. We will also emphasize application of those chemical principles to environmental, biological, industrial and day-to-day life situations.

Physics I covers the fundamental principles and methods of physics by teaching classical mechanics, while emphasizing its limits and sketching out how they are modified in quantum physics. The topics will include the essence of measurement, data collection and analysis, the basic models (point particle, plane wave, harmonic oscillator, etc.), mechanics (motion and its causes), and fundamental interactions. Special focus will be given to general principles, such as the conservation laws.

Modern physics encompasses the major discoveries made in the early 20th century, which can be broadly divided isnto relativity and quantum mechanics. This course is a survey introduction to the special theory of relativity, the development of quantum theories of matter, light, and their interactions, and the application of these theories to atomic, nuclear, and solid state physics.

This course will use a natural science lens to explore the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals with a specific focus on the food-water-energy nexus. We will explore the implementation of the goals on a global scale as well as efforts underway locally and regionally. Students in this class will read primary literature, complete case studies, work collaboratively and independently on sustainability projects and actively participate in small group and class discussions and activities.

The social, nutritional and sensory environment of an organism can dramatically affect the expression of specific hormones. Those hormones, in turn, can determine the development, degree of plasticity and output of the nervous system. Thus, the behavior an organism can have is sometimes determined by the endocrine constraints on the nervous system. This course examines how the endocrine system interacts with the nervous system to influence behavior in a range of organisms.

This course is an introduction to the principles and practice of epidemiology, the core science of public health and the primary tool for measuring health disparities. The course covers the major concepts usually found in a graduate-level introductory course in epidemiology: outbreak investigations, study design, measures of effect, internal and external validity, reliability, and causal inference. Assigned readings are drawn from a standard textbook and the primary literature.