This course will introduce students to fundamental "design thinking" and graphic communication skills in architecture.
Students will gain an understanding of drawing as a vital means to see, analyze, and represent essential aspects of the
visual environment. Emphasis will be placed on freehand drawing and sketching, using UMass buildings as case
studies.

In this class we will

read the book ?The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail ? But Some Don?t? by Nate Silver, who is well known for predicting political elections and sports outcomes with great accuracy. The book explains how careful use of data can lead to better predictions in many areas, including many areas of everyday life. The only requirements for the class are attendance and participation in class discussions.

This is a wonderful opportunity to use the Common Read book, Orange is the New Black, to explore the role that lawyers play in our criminal justice system.

The goal of this seminar is to expose the enormous potential of computers and electronics to the wide university student audience in an intellectually stimulating, yet non-threatening way. Students participating in this seminar will design and build an elegant piece of electronic jewelry or other wearable electronics, an interactive art exhibit, a temperature measuring station, an electronic pet collar, or some other ?widget? of their choosing. The seminar will revolve around experiments and projects with the ?Arduino Uno? embedded computing platform.

Institutional trends such as demographic diversification, globalization, and transnationalism continue to make the U.S.
and Asian countries more politically, economically, and culturally intertwined and inter-dependent. Within this
context, this seminar asks the question, how have Asians and Asian American fit into this dynamic? The seminar will
use a multi-level perspective to look at how Asians and Asian Americans have been portrayed in different media and
popular culture throughout U.S. history.

While neither assisted reproduction nor adoption are entirely new, both have radically increased in recent decades, potentially transforming the face of the American family. No longer performed in secrecy nor limited to heterosexual couples, assisted reproduction methods such as sperm and egg donation, in vitro fertilization, and surrogacy have become increasingly sophisticated. Meanwhile the landscape of adoption has been redefined by transparency, the rise of transracial and international adoption, and the partial acceptance of single and same-sex adoptive parents.

Nanotechnology can be a double-edged sword. The same unique properties that enable the beneficial use of nanomaterials in novel applications also make their unintentional interactions difficult to anticipate. Increasing entry of engineered nanomaterials into the environment has resulted in growing environmental and health concerns as the field of nanotechnology continues to expand. Nanomaterials are not only found in our latest gadgets, they are also

It's estimated that 80% of the U.S. population lives in cities and towns, and the trend is expected to continue into the foreseeable future. Increasing population in urban and suburban areas increases the demand on the infrastructure of such places to sustain the residents. Trees are an integral part of the infrastructure, providing many environmental, economic, and social benefits; they make it easier for us to live sustainably. This is why so many communities (like Boston, New York, Washington DC and others) have started to plant more trees.

Icelandic I is the first part of a four-part elementary course sequence in Icelandic. The course is offered through the Five College Supervised Independent Language Program. The independent study format includes small group conversation sessions and an evaluation by an outside evaluator. Students studying Icelandic develop speaking and listening skills needed for study abroad in Iceland and to support course work in European Studies.

From this seminar students will gain a better understanding of the East German revolution in 1989 and its lingering legacy 25 years later. Throughout the fall we will look back at events in almost real-time to learn about how East Germany went from a dictatorship to a democracy in the span of only a few month. Readings will draw from eyewitness accounts, television footage, and scholarly publications.