Sample Core Courses

Below are course descriptions from some of the core courses that were taught in 2006-07. Core courses change based on the faculty that are teaching each quarter. For information on core courses currently being offered, check the online Time Schedule .

TCORE 104: Locating Self in Landscape

Professors Anne Beaufort (Interdisciplinary Writing) and Tyler Budge (3-D Art)

An interdisciplinary humanities course that draws on the creative arts and rhetorical studies to examine how people interact with and create landscape in a global society.  We consider a wide variety of natural and cultural landscapes by investigating through visual and written media both representational art and conceptual art. These investigations reveal that landscapes are not just a given, but are social constructs,  specific expressions of their time and culture.  How do people of different regions understand landscape, both “natural” and “cultural?”  How does our  regional or individual perspective shift our understanding of landscape?  Students consider thematic issues through images, lectures, and discussions of readings, creating their own visual/verbal landscapes, writing essays, and peer review.

TCORE 122: Bodies of Knowledge: How We Know What We Know

Professors Denise Drevdahl (Public Health) and José Rios (Science Education)

Explores how knowledge is constructed in the global society by studying the internal landscape of the body. We consider how food consumption shapes the body and how local, national, and international forces shape body image. Students discuss the underlying forces that drive inquiry. This course will enhance students' knowledge so that they can make informed decisions about local, state, national, and international issues. Using body image as a focus, we examine the topic from numerous viewpoints (economic, political, medical, etc.), model analysis of current findings, and discuss decision-making based on current knowledge of the topic.

TCORE 123: Communities and The Common Good

Professors Tom Diehm (Social Work) and Linda Ishem (Urban Studies)

This course has a guiding question: As members of local, national, and global communities, what are the limits of our individual responsibilities for establishing and maintaining the common good? How have perspectives on individual responsibility for the greater good changed over time? How do physical, relational, and cultural proximity affect our sense of the common good? How do different academic disciplines describe and exercise social responsibility?

TCORE 114/ TCORE 112: Science and Technology in the Information Society

Professors Donald Chinn (Computer Science) and Amós Nascimento (Philosophy)

Traces the intellectual ideas that led to the modern computer. We examine these ideas from a formal mathematical perspective and a historical perspective. The second part of the course introduces students to the philosophy of science and how that philosophy guides the ways we address personal, local, and global problems in daily life. Issues that might be discussed include global warming, genetic research, and energy policy. Students find connections between modern and historical problems.  Course activities include the active use of technology for communication, homework assignments regarding logic, science and technology, position papers regarding social issues and their scientific components, small group discussion, and debate.

TCORE 103: Human Nature and Culture

Professors Nicole Blair (Interdisciplinary Writing) and Sam Parker (Anthropology)

Asks students to consider ways that social scientists—anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and others—study questions of diversity, "nature," and "nurture." Are people the same everywhere you go?  Are people born to be the way they are? Or are we born as "blank slates" to be inscribed by environmental circumstances and learning?  Course readings focus on the biological and evolutionary aspects of human nature.  Students examine how human diversity has been explained in the past, moving from 18th-19th century explanations of diversity as the product of "race" and class bloodlines, through the rise of competing concepts of "culture" and "eugenics" in the later 19th century, followed by the early 20th century "nature/nurture" controversy and its aftermath.

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