An introductory drawing course focusing on in-class exercises and assignments that build on technical skill and conceptual development. Use traditional media such as graphite and charcoal to learn observational drawing techniques from the figure and still-life. Assignments will guide the development of imagery through sketchbooking, research, observing artworks, and writing. During the latter part of the course, students will explore non-traditional media, performance, and conceptual practices. The course will culminate in a self-directed project.

This course will teach the principles and practice of distributed systems as applied in today's cloud computing environments. The course will cover concepts in distributed computing including distributed clocks, consistency, fault tolerance, and consensus. The course will also cover popular cloud computing service models, MapReduce and related programming models, datacenter architectures, and security and privacy issues in public clouds. The course will expose students to popular cloud platforms such as Amazon EC2, Google AppEngine, and Microsoft Azure.

This course will teach the principles and practice of distributed systems as applied in today's cloud computing environments. The course will cover concepts in distributed computing including distributed clocks, consistency, fault tolerance, and consensus. The course will also cover popular cloud computing service models, MapReduce and related programming models, datacenter architectures, and security and privacy issues in public clouds. The course will expose students to popular cloud platforms such as Amazon EC2, Google AppEngine, and Microsoft Azure.

Few legal and political issues are more complex than a woman's reproductive rights and the rights of individuals to decide about medical treatment at the end of life. The Supreme Court has frequently ruled on these "culture war" issues; yet this incendiary mix of law and politics has been made even more difficult by the recent national election. This course examines the influence the Court has had upon these conflicts over individual autonomy, religious freedom, and the nature of the doctor-patient relationship.

Species distribution models (SDMs) relate species distribution date (typically occurrence of abundance at know locations) with environmental characteristics (i.e., biotic, abiotic) of those locations and are commonly used for predicting species response to global change, including shifts in climate and land use. This seminar will introduce students to the concept, technical aspects, and application of SDMs.

Big data present exciting opportunities to better understand risk factors, to build improved predictors, and to examine the causal relationships between variables. Still, there are many sources of association between two variables, including direct effects, indirect effects, measured confounding, unmeasured confounding, and selection bias. Methods to delineate causation from correlation are perhaps more pressing now than ever.

An introduction to fundamental "design thinking" and graphic communication skills in architecture. First of a 2-part series. Course can be taken alone or as part of series.