L & S Discovery Courses Launched

February 22, 2006

This year the Undergraduate Division is piloting an exciting new curricular initiative: the L&S Discovery Courses. The program's goal is to offer students a truly meaningful liberal arts experience. The Discovery Courses are the expression of Dean Holub's commitment to give students the opportunity to take courses from distinguished teachers on topics that have been designed to add genuine breadth to their undergraduate education.

In the pilot year we are offering a total of twenty-one Discovery Courses, nine of which are being taught by recipients of the campus' Distinguished Teaching Award. Most of the courses are offered exclusively under L&S. Others are existing courses that already fulfill breadth in an exemplary way: these are cross listed with L&S. Here are some of the courses that were developed especially for our program, and are being offered for the first time ever this spring:

• L&S 20B: New World Jealousy: Othello in the Americas - José Luiz Passos
• L&S 40A: The Soviet Experience - Irina Paperno
• L&S 40B: History of Popular Culture - Kathy Moran
• L&S 140A: Biblical Controversies: Archaeology, History, and the Hebrew Bible - Carol Redmount
• L&S 150A: Global Transformation and Cultural Change: NGO's, AIDS, and Sub-Saharan Africa - Ann Swidler
• L&S 160A: Questioning Efficiency: Human Factors and Existential Phenomenology - Bert Dreyfus and Ken Goldberg
• L&S 160B: Effective Personal Ethics for the 21st Century: Awakening at the Center of an Evolving Universe - Jack Phillips
• L&S C70W: Physics and Music - Saul Perlmutter
• L&S 180A: Archaeology of Sex and Gender - Rosemary Joyce

In addition we are crosslisting such perennial favorites as Physics for Future Presidents (Rich Muller), Language and Power (Claire Kramsch), The Planets (Michael Manga and Geoff Marcy) and Alex Filippenko's Astronomy course. We even have one course for which students can receive both breadth credit and American Cultures credit: George Brimhall's Crossroads of Earth Resources and Society.

Not surprisingly, given the caliber of the Discovery Course faculty, many of these courses will be taught in innovative ways. Several of the faculty members are experimenting with ways to make a lecture course interactive. Students who prefer passive learning situations should steer clear of these courses.

Our fall 2006 line-up will be online by TeleBEARS time, but here is a sneak preview of courses that will be piloted in the fall:

• Crime, Detection, and Punishment in Literature and Film - Linda Rugg
• Politics of Music - Darren Zook
• Psyche: Soul, Mind and Afterlife from Homer to Christianity - Mark Griffith

In addition we will be repeating the following successful courses from the pilot year:

• The Value of Poetry - Stephen Booth
• Crossroads of Earth Resources and Society - George Brimhall
• Americans and the Global Forest - Sally Fairfax
• Language and Power - Claire Kramsch
• Introduction to General Astronomy - Alex Filippenko
• Physics for Future Presidents - Rich Muller
• Drugs and the Brain - David Presti
• The Soviet Experience - Irina Paperno

Finally, we will be cross listing John Searle's Philosophy of Mind course in the fall.

Advisors can help us promote the program by recommending the Discovery Courses to students looking for extraordinary ways to fulfill their breadth requirements.