The PRISM Experience is a new initiative designed to focus your entire college experience on building the critical thinking skills that are essential to your success in college study, in advanced scholarship, and in the workforce.

PRISM Seminars are 3-credit hour elective seminars that:

• Focus in-depth on an important topic or issue and introduce you to a discipline

• Introduce critical thinking skills that will help prepare you for college study and beyond

• Introduce experiential learning—making connections between the classroom and the world around you

• Are taught in a small class environment of no more than 20 students where you can think, discuss and debate ideas with each other

• Offer enriched opportunities for PRISM Seminar students to meet and interact with campus-wide speakers and guests

PRISM Seminars will challenge you to excel…inspire you to think deeply…and engage you to apply learning in real contexts.

ART 949: Get Outside

Instructor: Warner Hyde

Students will identify and deepen their personal relationship with the natural world and look at how nature has been perceived by mankind throughout history and across cultures. The method of investigation will be to use the creative process of making art from found natural materials outside, as a means of self exploration and discovery, while object making becomes secondary. As art is a visual reflection of a society, students will learn about how different cultures throughout time have reflected their relationship to nature through art. With a solid understanding of the past, students will focus on the evolution of “Environmental Art”, and scrutinize its development from the 1960’s to its present day peak of “Eco-Art”. Students will learn and analyze how at the core of environmental artwork, there is a need/search to connect spiritually with nature and to establish guiding ethics towards mankind’s relationship with the natural world. Students will then learn “studio” practices associated with creating environmental artworks and will create works of their own and a final class collaborative installation. No previous art experience needed!

COM 949: Interpersonal NETiquette: The good, the bad, and the ugly of communicating through technology in relationships

Instructor: Dr. Carla Ross

Students in this critical thinking course will apply skills of reasoning to the communication discipline and reflect, discuss, and apply new rules of etiquette to the use of cell phone conversations, texting, Facebook, Skype, and e-mail in relationships. Students will focus on particular communication events or messages and the most appropriate and effective use of technology in each context or goal and conclude by developing a manual of new etiquette for technology in relationship communication.

Instructor: Dr. Michiko Yamada

Students will learn about the communication discipline, develop critical thinking skills, and engage in an in-depth study of how technology affects relational communication. A variety of technology avenues such as Facebook, texting, cell phone conversations, Skype, and email will be examined in specific communication goals and outcomes sought in interpersonal relationship contexts.

CS 949: The Future of Technology

Instructor: Dr. Barry Koster

What will computers do next to your social life? How can you keep technology from taking your job? Is constant contact ruining your ability to think? This course asks tough questions about the gadgets in our lives and the pace of change that these gadgets bring about. This seminar will explore the last 40 years of technology, looking at the winners and losers, and always asking "Why?” Students will discuss the rapid and shocking developments to date, explore how technology currently affects our lives, and make predictions about things to come.
There are no easy answers here; students must think critically and defend ideas thoughtfully. And as much as technology is based on information—the key medium, we will pay close attention to how we know anything, how information is created, found, ranked, merchandised, transmitted and absorbed.

EDU 949: Education Under Fire!

Instructors: Dr. Monica McKinney & Dr. Julie Schrock

“I don’t want my kids going to school all summer!” “My child spends more than an hour on the bus everyday!” “How is my son supposed to learn when there are 45 kids in his class?” “Will my daughter be safe?”
Have you seen or heard these kinds of statements and questions in the news, or perhaps around your own dinner table at home? What are the facts? Who are the players? Who is calling the shots? What’s your opinion? This seminar will help you critically examine hot topics in education and consider solutions to these complex problems that affect everyone in our society.

FL 949: Off the Map!

Instructor: Dr. Brent Pitts

Today we are interconnected in so many ways that we can scarcely remember or imagine a time when incommunicado and self-reliance were the norm. In Off the map!, students accompany explorers beyond the edge of the known world, meet new peoples, discover new species, and ponder life-threatening challenges for which the only solution is common sense, resourcefulness and resolve.
Off the map! is based on reading and on oral and written analysis of a series of narratives about the discovery or exploration of lands unknown to Europeans. Students share the excitement of discovery by following intrepid explorers who were, in many cases, on the leading edge of knowledge in their day, and whose journals remain essential reading about the new lands they encountered.
Throughout the seminar, students read, analyze and discuss primarily first-person narratives written between the Age of Discovery and the 1930s. Students read and react to accounts of travellers and voyagers who saw first-hand numerous unknown regions, from Brazil to the Mississippi Valley, the Yucatan and Tibet, and recorded their experiences and impressions as eye-witnesses.

FN/BIO 949: The Great Food Debate:
A multi-disciplinary perspective

Instructors: Dr. Karthik Aghoram & Dr. Bill Landis

Cloned cows, super chickens, milk with hormones, potatoes that produce their own pesticide … have you ever wondered what’s in your food these days? Here’s your chance to see how the science of genetics is connected to your breakfast burrito. This course will examine the contentious issue of genetically engineered or GE food – what is genetic engineering, how GE food is made, their risks and benefits, and their place in your diet and in feeding the world. In this course, you’ll discover and debate the miracles and quandaries of making modern food.
The course will examine the issue of GE foods and their presence in the food supply. Starting with a review of GE technology and its many applications, the course will then address the issue as it applies to the human food supply, investigating some of the key issues with GE foods, the motives and perspectives of the key stakeholders, and recent case studies.

POL 949: Thinking About the News!

Instructor: Dr. Clyde Frazier

There may be no arena in which critical thinking skills are any more vital than in politics. We are constantly bombarded with carefully crafted arguments advocating action on one side or the other of current issues. Should the government insure that everyone gets medical care? Are taxes too high? Should we legalize marijuana, withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, recognize same sex marriage? These are not just theoretical questions; we make decisions about them every time we vote.
Thinking About The News will arm confused citizens with vital self-defense skills. You will become knowledgeable about today's big issues. You will learn to tell the difference between fact and opinion and which media outlets you can trust. You will learn the difference between liberals and conservatives and what the Tea Party really wants. You will learn how to state and defend your own point of view on current issues and talk with working journalists about the problems they face reporting the news. This course won't tell you what to think, but it will push you to clarify your views and express them more effectively.

RES 949: Comedy, Ethics & Laughter

Instructor: Dr. Steven Benko

Why do humans laugh? When do we learn to laugh? Is it ever wrong to laugh?
Comedy, Ethics and Society explores the evolutionary, psychological, social and philosophical dimensions of comedy and laughter as a way to answer the question, “When is it wrong to laugh?” Students will read from a range of disciplines so that they can apply what they think is true of comedy and laughter to examples of satire, irony and parody. In order to think more critically about the role of laughter in group dynamics and individual personality formation, students will be asked to recreate the thought patterns, cultural assumptions and personal beliefs that make something funny to them. At the end of the semester students will be able to articulate a theory of comedy that includes psychological dimensions of comedy, philosophical understandings of comedy and an ethics of comedy.

RES 949: Jesus at the Movies

Instructor: Dr. Margarita Suarez

This seminar will examine the figure of Jesus in popular films of the last hundred years. We will explore questions such as: What do the films tell us about Jesus? What do they tell us about those who made the films? What about the historical context in which it was made? What do the films tell us about the audience for the film? How do these narrative and filmic conventions combine to make theological meaning?
We will learn how contemporary biblical scholarship enhances or diminishes these current film stories of Jesus, will appreciate narrative as a unique language of cinema and theology, and will be introduced to film theory. Participants will also explore and consider their own stories of and about Jesus in light of these cinematic presentations.

THE 949: Reflections of Body Image in the Media

Instructor: Curt Tomczyk

What is beauty? Who defines it? Do you believe everything you read? What about what you see? How do you decide if you are having a good hair day? What do you decide to wear or buy and why? How do you know your thoughts are honestly your own and not just what someone else has convinced you of?
“Reflections of Body Image in the Media” provides an opportunity to explore what the media tells us about ourselves and our appearance. Topics range from media messages and consumerism to cultural and social concepts of body image and beauty. Various disciplines including fashion, psychology, sociology, art, business, food and nutrition, and women’s studies will be explored. The final experience of this class will be a public performance of your own personal revelations through movement, words, music or visual art.