Based on psychology and neuroscience, learn how your brain can be trained to help you be more confident, productive, and happy. Learn proven stress reducing techniques to make life easier, and to: Increase productivity and focus; Improve interactions with others, both personally and professionally; Increase self-awareness and self-confidence; Manage difficult emotions productively; Improve skills to attain better life balance.

Do you believe that a shirtless dancing person can start a movement but the courage to follow and show others how to follow creates a movement? Are you kind? Do you believe that it is sometimes best to not know the answer to everything? Have you dreamed of living the van life? Are you interested in world peace? Is the Universe still an unfolding mystery to you? Do you like hugs? Have you considered at least one or none of these questions? If you don?t understand this, this seminar is for you! And if you do understand this, this seminar is for you!

his course will consider the nature of play as well as the role play has in the early education context.

A seminar on time management from practical and theoretical perspectives. This course involves identifying and improving skills related to time management. Students will focus on how to manage their time for college academics and extracurricular activities and how to develop overall time literacy in order to establish productive routines based on what works for you.

Water is one of the basic elements needed for life systems to exist and survive. While it is abundant in supply, it is not always available where it is needed. This course will cover concepts and issues related to water resources through regional and global ecosystem perspectives.

This course is focused on engaging with a variety of narrative media about the college experience. Working collaboratively, will watch/read/listen to, deconstruct, and analyze, a series of texts connected to college/university life. This course will introduce students both to their own college experience as well as how the story of college is told in the mainstream media

he popularity of Bernie Sanders, the celebrity-like status of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes, both avowed socialists, along with polls indicating positive attitudes towards socialism among many youth, are a few markers of an openness to left radicalism hardly seen for nearly a half-century. Yet long-term, anti-communist ideology has largely buried a diverse, yet hardly known spectrum of homegrown U.S. socialist traditions.

This course looks at the lively and vibrant arts and culture of UMass, including museums and galleries, rare books and manuscripts, one of America?s foremost literary magazines, innovative and historic architecture, a major international film archive, and other cultural resources on campus. The seminar will offer a history of the arts, writing, and design at UMass, and will include on-campus field trips to all the places and resources we learn about.

This seminar will explore the biology and behavior of the domestic cat from an evolutionary and ecological perspective. Students will be introduced to the evolution of mammals and wild cats. The seminar will explore the domestication process and how this shaped the current behavior and biology of the domestic cat and how cat ancestry left its marks on this companion animal. The positive and negative health impacts of domestic cats will be discussed. The seminar will conclude with a discussion of feral cats, their impacts on wildlife, and their management.

Your DNA offers a chance to explore, discover and reconciliate with the past. Pieces of your DNA have come together for this moment from different ancestral places over time. With increasing accuracy your DNA offers mechanistic insight into your peculiar characteristics suggesting lifestyles and medical treatments. Your DNA is also being used today in ways that you may not wish. How do you want your DNA used? This course will examine the social life of DNA and the need for a new bioethics.