Offered as SWG 245 and CCX 245. This course introduces students to key concepts, debates and provocations that animate the world of community, labor and electoral organizing for social change. To better understand these movements’ visions, students develop an analysis of global and national inequalities, exploitation and oppression. The course explores a range of organizing skills to build an awareness of power dynamics and learn activists’ tools to bring people together towards common goals.

Service learning, civic engagement, community-based participatory research and community service are familiar terms for describing forms of community-based learning (CBL) in higher education. Theorists and practitioners continue to debate how students and faculty can best join partners to support community-driven goals in areas nearby colleges and universities. Students consider these issues through exploring the literature of community engagement and learning from the experiences of those who practice its different forms.

This course introduces students to the academic study of Buddhism through readings, lectures, and discussions. Students explore the ways that Buddhism is analyzed and interpreted through the perspectives of different academic disciplines, including anthropology, art, environmental humanities, gender studies, government, literature, philosophy, and religion. Each week features a different methodological approach. Materials to be considered include discourses of the Buddha, meditation manuals, painting, poetry, philosophical treatises, and more.

Offered as BKX 202 and PYX 202. This course focuses on various professional practice aspects of publishing, including manuscript submissions, selection, poetry craft and literary citizenship, through Nine Syllables Press, in partnership with the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center. Students learn about the publishing industry and contemporary US poetry landscape. Students have the opportunity to directly participate in reading and selecting manuscripts for a chapbook to be published by Nine Syllables Press. Preference given to Poetry and Book Studies concentrators. Cannot be taken S/U.

This seminar provides the opportunity to meet and collaborate with the other students in the BIO MS program, gain experience describing and sharing planned thesis research with others, and develop professional skills related to crafting research proposals, reading and critiquing scientific literature, and public presentation.  This course is required for graduate students and must be taken both years.  Restrictions: BIO graduate students only. Instructor permission required.

Understanding human induced climate change is one of the greatest challenges of this time. This course approaches the topic from two different ways of knowing: plant biology and the arts. These paired approaches ground this course in the scientific underpinnings of climate change and its impact on biological life, creating a space to engage with what climate change means—for students, for the greater human community and for the earth. At the same time, students explore how complex scientific content and deep existential challenges can be effectively communicated to the broader public.

This lab course involves field and laboratory investigations of plant ecology and conservation, with an emphasis on Northeastern plant species and plant communities. The labs explore interactions between plants and insects, visit wetland and upland habitats and investigate plant population dynamics at sites around western Massachusetts. Students gain hands-on experience with descriptive and experimental research approaches used to investigate ecological processes in plant communities and inform conservation of plant biodiversity. Enrollment limited to 20.

The expression of sex determining genes varies throughout embryonic development. This laboratory provides students with hands-on wet laboratory techniques (e.g., RNA extraction), and data analysis skills in R and Linux environments.

In this course, students explore the molecular mechanisms that drive the undifferentiated gonad to develop into either a testis or ovary. Science has a deep understanding of how these processes work in some species (e.g., mammals), but the molecular cascades in species with alternative methods of differentiation – including environmental or behavioral mediated sex determination mechanisms - remain elusive. This course investigates the molecular pathways across vertebrate lineages, emphasizing both compelling similarities and important differences.