Digital communication can bring dispersed peoples and ideas closer together more rapidly than traditional mass communication, but it can also reinforce structures of domination, often along social differences, across the world more intensely. In this course, students will write an honors thesis that examines some aspect of the fraught relationship between digital communication and global society. We will ask how the impact of the new digital public sphere raises issues around free speech, privacy, information, and economic policy, among others.

This two semester Interdisciplinary Honors Thesis Seminar will explore current thinking on health and wellbeing in the built environment, with a focus on campus environments. Consideration of the impact of the built environment on health and well-being is an increasingly important priority in the design fields as well as in conversations concerning equity, public policy, public health, and education. These concerns are interrelated with issues of sustainability, resilience, and planetary wellbeing.

The goal of the course is to better understand randomness and uncertainty, and develop tools to make more informed decisions under uncertain situations. In the beginning of the first semester, the instructor covers some fundamental and relevant concepts from probability, decision theory, and psychology. The presentation will be made in a way accessible to students from all majors and no advanced knowledge will be required. The goal is to lay the foundations for deeper investigation by students in their theses.

In this course, students will conduct an honors thesis by creating an instrument to pursue a biological science research question. Students will be encouraged to coordinate with an existing research enterprise on campus. In the first semester, students will develop a thesis proposal and construct a prototype instrument. During the semester, students will explore case studies about creating/deploying instruments combined with hands-on activities to develop technical skills for instrument development.

This two-semester, 8-credit honors thesis/project course focuses on two of the most intractable structural issues confronting contemporary American society: immigration and mass incarceration. This course will place these two issues in historical context through a variety of academic, journalistic and autobiographical texts and documentaries, which will allow students to see how the contemporary phenomena of immigration and mass incarceration have common ideological underpinnings and common historical roots.

In the second part of this two-semester Honors Thesis seminar, students will learn about the psychological and historical forces that have shaped house and home in the United States. Dominant norms evolved that other nations and cultures must variously mimic, alter or resist.

Globalization will serve as the cornerstone of our study in this two-semester seminar as students undertake their honors thesis. By globalization I mean the increasingly integrated nature of our world's economy, culture and consciousness. Some of the main issues of globalization the course will explore are: strengthening borders against outsiders (refugees, immigrants); increasing borderlessness of technology, which reaches into all corners of the globe and the relationship between globalization and the distribution of income across countries.

Students registering for this Honors Practicum must complete a contract with their honors sponsor. Appropriate forms and more information are available at the Bloom Honors Advising Center - 201 Commonwealth Honors College.

This is a stand-alone independent study designed by the student and faculty sponsor that involves frequent interaction between instructor and student. Qualitative and quantitative enrichment must be evident on the proposed contract before consent is given to undertake the study. Registration should be done during pre-registration and completed by the end of the add-drop period.

Students registering for this Honors Practicum must complete a contract with their honors sponsor. Appropriate forms and more information are available at the Bloom Honors Advising Center - 201 Commonwealth Honors College.