This course aims, from a communicative perspective, to develop in an integrated and meaningful way the fundamental linguistic skills of listening and reading comprehension, and oral and written expression of the Catalan language. Furthermore, emphasis will be placed on lexical and grammatical content always seeking to respond to the communicative and academic needs of the student.

This introductory course examines the far-reaching significance of translation and uses insights and practices from the field of literary translation to help students improve their communication skills. Translation is not just a straightforward matter of exchanging words in one language for words in another. It involves cultural, social, aesthetic, political, economic, and ethical considerations.

Students will learn the latest theories on how we learn and how to teach using these theories. They will also have then opportunity to observe and practice these best practices in other classes.

Debates today rage about whether democracy is really possible in powerful authoritarian countries like China, in the oil-producing states of the Middle East, in the poorest countries of Africa, and even in wealthy but unequal societies like the United States. This course asks whether there are in fact economic, or associational preconditions for (or impediments to) the establishment or maintenance of democracy. This question is at the heart of one of today?s great political debates. It is also at the center of major methodological debates within the social sciences.

C. Everett Koop, former Surgeon General of the Unites States famously once said "Anything we can do to stop smoking is good." The course explores the meaning of this "anything" in public health practice. A guiding question will be "what are the ethical limits in protecting the public's health?" While we won't be solving all the ethical issues that confronts practitioners, we will raise questions about ethical public health practice.

In this course, students will go behind the curtain of public education. Students will actively engage in making sense of the history, politics, promises and pitfalls of the US education system; a system in which most have participated in for 12+ years. Students will discover multiple and often competing purposes of schooling, examine important developments and trends in education using the latest available data, and consider the value of education in their own lives.

This course will introduce NLP methods and applications, such as text classification, sentiment analysis, machine translation, and other applications to identify and use the meaning of text. During the course, students will (1) learn fundamental methods and algorithms for NLP; (2) become familiar with key facts about human language that motivate them, and help practitioners know what problems are possible to solve; and (3) complete a series of hands-on projects to use, implement, experiment with, and improve NLP tools. This course counts as a CS Elective for the CS Major (BA or BS).

This course focuses on common domestic animals and their behavior. The interaction of the hormonal and physiological factors in animal behavior is also discussed. Ethological principles and methods are examined in lecture and field exercises. The recognition of normal versus abnormal animal behavior and prevention of behavior problems are emphasized. Animal learning theories and behavior modification techniques are also covered. An introduction to career options in animal behavior and professional organizations and publications is also included.

Game Programming introduces students to concepts of computer game development, including 2D and 3D modeling, character design, animation, game art, basic game AI, audio and video effects. The course will help students build the programming skills needed to turn ideas into games. Both runtime systems and the asset pipelines will be covered. Students will work on various game programming exercises with modern game engines and graphics APIs. This course counts as a CS Elective toward the CS major (BA or BS).