The dramatic decline in honeybees over the past several years related to Colony Collapse Disorder has raised the public's awareness to the importance of these insects in our everyday life. This seminar will use the popular book 'Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honeybee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis' by Rowan Jacobsen as a guide to examine the importance of bees in our society, the possible causes of declining honeybee health, as well as learn more about the biology and social society of bees.

Early childhood education has been making the news. President Obama and Massachusetts Governor Baker have prominently identified early childhood education as a major goal for their administrations. In this seminar we?ll explore the diverse contexts in which early education takes place as well as how we educate young children aged birth to eight years. We?ll consider why policy makers, politicians, educators and parents view early education as important through an examination of the current status of American?s young children and their families and a review of the relevant research. .

Are you willing to let go of your smart phone or laptop for a week, a month, a year, perhaps even longer? What if you
were not even permitted to use the telephone or to write letters? If not, why not? What do you think you might lose
in these situations? What would your life be like? Would it be better or worse and why? It seems clear that we now
live in what is called network society: we live in networks; we work hard to network with one another; and perhaps
we have become networks in some way. More than that, we are also surrounded by talks about networks. I call this

This course aims to provide first-year students with some of the foundational skills and knowledge necessary to be effective citizens, advocates, and activists here at UMass and beyond. Students will learn the basics of community problem-identification, problem-solving and policy development. By the end of this first semester at UMass, students will already have developed the capacity to be effective change agents on campus, and in their other communities. A range of guest speakers will round out the readings and other materials with their firsthand experiences as advocates and policymakers.

After discussing the origins of foster care and adoption in the United States and defining exactly what each of the terms mean, the course will explore the seven life-long core issues (Silverstein and Kaplan, 1982) experienced by adoption triad members; birth/first parents, adoptees and adoptive parents. These core issues are loss, rejection, guilt and shame, grief, identity, intimacy and mastery/control. Students will explore these topics through the most current academic journal articles and personal narratives.

As cities and towns across the country try to grapple with the ongoing opioid epidemic, the country's prisons are

This course will explore the psychological mechanisms behind close personal relationships. Using psychological research as a starting point, students will be led in discussions and about attraction, love, lust, and close relationships. Students will be asked to think deeply about the social constructs that influence their preferences, and the bio-psychosocial processes at play. The course will begin by dissecting the concepts of attraction and love.

The biopic lecture series of ethnographies, Michael Wilson shares the fascinating stories reflecting the human condition of people such as steel tycoon Charles M. Schwab and tomboy-turned-pilot Amelia Earhart. While becoming familiar with little known facts and fandango, students will learn about semiotics, pragmatism, and the phenomenology contributing to the fabric and lore of industries, of politics, and of untold agendas. The lecture series will include: music, videos, quotations, demonstrations, and hands-on activities during each talk. Example bio features include:

Mythologies of many cultural traditions have been repurposed in recent years to inform a number of highly influential and commercially successful narratives. From Harry Potter and Percy Jackson to the Star Wars franchise, the explicit and implicit use of narrative structures drawn from myth has emerged as an essential feature of modern storytelling. In this seminar, we will consider and discuss a number of differing forms of mythological narratives through the lens of their modern reception and presentation.

The world is becomingly increasingly data rich, and our abilities to make good decisions in all realms - from personal to policy - rests on our abilities to analyze and convey data in meaningful ways. Unfortunately, human beings are limited in our perceptual and cognitive abilities, making it difficult for us to use these large amounts of data. Data visualization holds promise as one mechanism for making sense of and presenting large amounts of data in a way that reduces information overload, and supports comprehension, memory, and decision-making.