Honors College Distribution

CAS: Non-lab Natural Science
GSB: Natural Science Core 
CALS: Natural Science/Physical and Life Science
CEMS: ENGR: Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/DS students check with your advisor
RSENR: Consult with Academic Advisor
CNHS: Consult with Academic Advisor
CESS: Consult CESS advisor 

Symbioses are intimate associations involving two or more species. Symbiotic relationships are incredibly diverse, and affect almost all life on the planet. The establishment of symbioses has shaped the branching of the tree of life and impact the function of entire ecosystems. For example, the evolution of mycorrhizal symbioses (involving plants and fungi) was likely a key
innovation that allowed plants to colonize land. This course will survey the wide diversity of symbiotic organisms and investigate how these symbioses form, how they persist in evolutionary time, and how they impact their environment. In particular, we’ll focus on species that mutually benefit from their close association (mutualisms) and investigate what stabilizes these interactions – that is, what prevents partners from reaping benefits without reciprocating (“cheating”). We’ll apply this mutualism framework to untangle current issues such as invasive species, climate change, agriculture, and human health.

Honors College Distribution

CAS: Humanities
GSB:  Humanities
CALS:Social Science
CEMS:  Engineering Students - Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/CSIS/DS students check with your advisor and department chair
RSENR: Consult with academic advisor
CNHS:  Consult with your academic advisor
CESS: Consult with academic advisor

Major/Minor:

Philosophy: counts as one additional course at any level towards Philosophy major or minor

Food Systems: counts towards Food Systems minor

This class will discuss various ethical concerns about the contemporary food system. We’ll talk about the ethics of treating food workers various ways, the ethics of buying and eating various foods, and then a topic of our choice.

Honors College Distribution

CAS:  Humanities
GSB:  Humanities Core
CALS: Humanities 
CEMS: ENGR: Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/DS students consult with your advisor
RSENR: Consult with academic advisor
CNHS: Consult with academic advisor
CESS: Consult with academic advisor

Major/Minor Requirements

History major/minor - Americas category

This seminar will examine the intersection of war, race, and identity in America focused around two critical sites.  Firstly, the racialized othering of Native America from the wars of colonial conquest to the defeat of the Plains Indians; and secondly the Civil War, viewed as war for the overthrow of slavery and as it was transformed in memory into a valorous war between brothers in which questions of race were marginalized.  These sites are critical to race and race relations in America, working to define who is, and who is not included with its racialized boundaries.

Based in the discipline of History, the seminar will embrace approaches drawn from gender studies, critical race theory, anthropology and film studies. Seminar discussions will be based on academic monographs and on cultural products, particularly in film.  I also plan to organize a visit to the “Dreaming of Timbuctoo” exhibit at the John Brown Farm in Lake Placid as part of a discussion on Civil-War era Black settlement in the Adirondacks.

Honors College Distribution

CAS:  No CAS credit
GSB:  Elective Credit only
CALS:  Physical & Life Science, Quantitative Reasoning
CEMS:  Engineering Students - Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/CSIS/DS students check with your advisor and department chair
RSENR: Consult with your academic advisor
CNHS: Consult with your academic advisor
CESS: Consult with your academic advisor

Prediction of the behavior of groundwater and its associated dissolved contaminants is critical to the solution of water quantity and quality problems. Prediction is achieved through modeling. Modeling, specifically computer modeling, is the focus of this course. After an introduction to the general equations that govern all physical systems, the specific equations that describe groundwater flow behavior are developed using physical insight and described using algebraic expressions resulting in an algebra-based mathematical model of groundwater flow amenable to solution on a computer or its user-friendly derivative Excel. Several different groundwater flow problems are then solved via Excel. Finally, the model is applied to the groundwater contamination site at Woburn Massachusetts.  A similar strategy is also used to model contaminant transport and finally river flow. The course concludes with the application of a commercially available large scale model resident on your personal computer.

Honors College Distribution

CAS:  No CAS distribution
GSB:   SU, Social Science Core, Natural Science Core
CALS: Social Science, Physical & Life Science
CEMS:  Engineering Students - Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/CSIS/DS students check with your advisor and department chair
RSENR: Consult with Academic Advisor
CNHS: Consult with Academic Advisor
CESS: Consult CESS advisor 

The earth is a complex coupled human-natural system that is increasingly dominated by human activities. We will examine the nature of global climate change including its causes, mechanisms, and ecological and societal impacts.  The course will emphasize climate change as part of an integrated earth system that also includes social, economic and ecological systems. Students will gain a broad perspective on the challenges that climate change presents to human systems by considering responses of current and past societies to climate change and environmental degradation.  The class will emphasize readings, discussions, and simulation modeling to understand the scientific and social basis of contemporary climate and environmental change.

Honors College Distribution

CAS: Humanities
GSB: Humanities Core 2016+
CALS: Social Science
CEMS:  Engineering Students - Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/CSIS/DS students check with your advisor and department chair
RSENR: Consult with Advisor
CNHS:  Consult with academic advisor
CESS: Consult with academic advisor

Major/Minor Requirements

Counts towards the European Studies major/minor "European History and Society" category

Counts towards the History Major/Minor in the "European" category

Counts towards the Holocaust Studies minor

This seminar is situated at the nexus of history, German and European Studies, and international relations. It will explore a range of social, political, and cultural developments in the two German states that emerged from the rubble of the Second World War. Major themes will include how the German states coped with the legacies of the past and the political realities of the present. The division of Germany embodied the division of the world into two hostile blocs during the Cold War. Having unleashed a brutal war of conquest, and having perpetrated murder on a massive scale, Germany stood morally bankrupt in 1945. We will analyze how the legacy of the Holocaust affected German politics East and West, influenced the relations of the two German states with the other countries, shaped both German societies internally, and impacted on German reunification in 1990. Ever since German unity, the Germans also have to come to terms with the history of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), leading to a situation termed doppelte Vergangenheitsbewältigung – coping with the legacies and memories of two German dictatorships.

Honors College Distribution

CAS: No CAS credit
GSB:  Social Science
CALS: Humanities & Fine Arts or Social Science
CEMS:  Engineering Students - Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/CSIS/DS students check with your advisor and department chair
RSENR: Consult with academic advisor
CNHS:  Consult with your academic advisor
CESS: Consult with academic advisor

In the1990’s, Trish O’Kane worked for ten years as a human rights investigative journalist in Central America and specialized in investigating massacres for the United Nations. At that time, most human rights violations by Central American militaries were the result of two centuries of US foreign policy. Today, thirty years later, conflicts over land and water, mining and other environmental issues—exacerbated by climate change—are fueling human rights violations. The situation is particularly dire in Nicaragua where since April of 2018, the Ortega regime has killed over 76 college student activists, many of whom were protesting government corruption in the environmental ministry and wildfires burning in a protected Mayan biosphere. Hundreds of students have since fled the country or gone into hiding.

In this course UVM students will explore the history behind these headlines. This is a multi-disciplinary course drawing on environmental studies, human rights, US foreign policy and international relations, environmental history, environmental justice and communications. Through readings, lectures, weekly dialogue and action-research assignments, students will learn about the history of US foreign policy in Central America and particularly how the historic control of natural resources (land, water, wood, minerals), has caused human rights violations and massive displacement. The US role in funding and training Central American militaries since the 1950s, as part of counterinsurgency campaigns dating back to the Vietnam War, will be a major course theme.

While attaining a historical and contextual foundation, students will also read English-language media based in Central America to learn about the situation of their peers there, and analyze how headlines relate to past US foreign policy. Students will follow current environmental movements in Central America in the media, particularly college student activists in Nicaragua. This daily and weekly reading about how young people in Central America are organizing for change will counter the “pobrecitos” narrative of victimhood, a strong thread running through human rights literature. Finally, through an op-ed writing project and an outreach project to state legislators, students will use their new knowledge to educate the public about why so many Central Americans, particularly Nicaraguans have been forced to flee their countries.

Honors College Distribution

CAS:  Fine Arts or Humanities
GSB:  Humanities Core
CALS: Humanities
CEMS: ENGR: Gen Ed Elective; CS, STAT,MATH: check with your academic advisor
RSENR: Consult with Academic Advisor
CNHS: Consult with Academic Advisor
CESS: Consult CESS advisor

Major/minor requirements:

Counts towards Jewish Studies Minor "100-level or above”

1920’s Berlin saw an extraordinary cultural renaissance in theater, music, literature, film, architecture, and design. This historical period, known as the Weimar Republic, came crashing down with Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. The daring, subversive, political, progressive artists of the period, many of whom were Jewish, began an exodus West: to New York, and onward to Hollywood. This course will examine the American flowering of these artists, and their work in exile. We will read two of the seminal chroniclers of the period, Stefan Zweig and Christopher Isherwood, study the work of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, and examine the films of artists such as Ernst Lubitsch, Max Ophuls, Erik von Stroheim, and Fritz Lang.  The course will also focus on contemporary work which is clearly connected to the Weimar ethos: The films of Wes Anderson, underground cabaret artists such as Taylor Mac, choreographer Bob Fosse, the television work of Jill Soloway (Transparent) and more.

Honors College Distribution

CAS: Non-Lab Natural Science
GSB:  Social Science
CALS: Physical & Life Science or Social Science
CEMS:  Engineering Students - Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/CSIS/DS students check with your advisor and department chair
RSENR: Consult with academic advisor
CNHS:  Consult with your academic advisor
CESS: Consult with academic advisor
The One Health concept recognizes the interconnections of human, animal, plant and environmental health. This course introduces students to major areas of One Health, zoonotic and vector-borne disease, ecosystem change, pollution, comparative medicine, and animal-human interactions and the intersection of these topics. One Health is a transdisciplinary endeavor and students from all disciplines are encouraged to join this course. While “health” is the core of the One Health concept, societies need input from all disciplines to address global One Health challenges. One Health competencies extend beyond health and biomedical disciplines, and transdisciplinary teams include practitioners and from agriculture, business and public administration, computer and mathematical sciences, ecology and environmental sciences, humanities and arts, and social sciences.
The main topics covered are Human-animal-environment interactions, comparative medicine, zoonotic and vector borne disease, pollution and ecosystem change. This course will explore the question, how do we define and perceive health when we view it simultaneously through the lenses of humans, animals, and the environment at large. The course includes 13 weekly topic modules, where each module includes an introductory reading, case study and lecture/discussion for a topic followed by a student driven deeper dive into the subject matter. During the first week of class, student are introduced to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and are encouraged throughout the course to apply a One Health approach as a means of reaching these goals. Other knowledge areas introduced are professional core competencies for a One Health work force, national and international One Health policy and initiatives, and examples of One Health transdisciplinary problem solving efforts and success stories.

Honors College Distribution

CAS: Social Science
GSB:  Consult with academic advisor
CALS: Social Science or Humanities & Fine Arts
CEMS:  Engineering Students - Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/CSIS/DS students check with your advisor and department chair
RSENR: Consult with academic advisor
CNHS:  Consult with your academic advisor
CESS: Consult with academic advisor

Major/Minor: This course counts towards Political Sciences major or minor as fulfilling the requirement for a 100-level course in the subfield of American politics.

This seminar will cover the topic of U.S. impeachments with a focus on the relevant historic, legal, and constitutional principles and their political consequences.  We will discuss the actual impeachment history, procedures and processes of presidents and other “Civil Officers”, including Federal judges of the United States. The seminar, also, will review the various burdens of proof needed for impeachment (formal charges like an indictment) setting forth a reasonable basis to believe an impeachable offense has occurred in the House of Representatives and conviction through a trial in the Senate.
Over the course of history, the House of Representatives has impeached twenty “Civil Officers”, including three presidents.  As noted, one president resigned just before an impeachment vote.  Of the three presidential impeachments by the House, no president has been convicted by the Senate. This is due, in large part, to the constitutional requirement that at least two thirds of the Senate agree.
The goals and purpose of this seminar are to give you an understanding of the constitutional history and principles, the law, and relevant procedures and processes that frame the important impeachment clauses in the U.S. Constitution.  Together, with the doctrines of separation of powers and the rule of law, among other critical provisions, these are key to understanding the American Constitutional system.

The goals and purpose of this seminar are to give you an understanding of the constitutional history and principles, the law, and relevant procedures and processes that frame the important impeachment clauses in the U.S. Constitution.  Together, with the doctrines of separation of powers and the rule of law, among other critical provisions, these are key to understanding the American Constitutional system.

Honors College Distribution

CAS:  Literature
GSB:  Humanities Core
CALS:  Humanities 
CEMS:  Engineering Students - Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/CSIS/DS students check with your advisor and department chair
RSENR: Consult with academic advisor
CNHS: Elective – Consult with Academic Advisor for further clarification
CESS: Consult CESS advisor for General Education Requirement Approval

Major/Minor Requirements:

This course counts toward the European Studies major and minor in the "European Culture and Thought" category

The course explores the role of women in traditional European fairy tales, both as characters and, to a lesser extent, as authors. We will read fairy tales dating from the sixteenth throwh the twenty-first centuries, and hailing from Italy, France, Germany, and England; we will also view and discuss the film adaptations of some of the stories. Students will become familiar with some of the classics of 'fairy tale analysis, including the structuralist work of Vladimir Propp and the psychoanalytic interpretation of Marie Louise von Franz. Readings will be in English and films will have English subtitles. Evaluation will be based on class participation, three short essays, a midterm, and a final exam. "Women and Fairy Tales in the European Tradition" fulfills category B of the Italian Studies Major and Minor (significant Italian content).

Honors College Distribution

CAS: CAS elective credit
GSB:  Social Science
CALS: Social Science
CEMS:  Engineering Students - Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/CSIS/DS students check with your advisor and department chair
RSENR: Consult with academic advisor
CNHS:  Consult with your academic advisor
CESS: Consult with academic advisor

This class will focus on the extensive empirical research which suggests a child’s racial profile and economic status are significant predictors of educational success, matriculation to higher education, and participation in alternative pathways, such as the school-to-prison pipeline. Performance gaps rooted in these identifiers begin to manifest in the earliest years of a child’s life and are rarely mitigated through time. Consequently, disparate access to higher education for children who experience systemic inequalities remains persistent. Through a “P-16” examination of American educational inequality and the myth of meritocracy, this course will explore the legal, educational, and public policy challenges that promote or preclude access to higher education for low-income, first-generation, and/or racially minoritized students. Readings draw from a range of disciplines, including political science, social welfare, public policy, housing policy, law, and sociology.

Honors College Distribution

CAS: No distribution credit
GSB:  Elective Credit
CALS: Humanities, Social Science
CEMS:  Engineering Students - Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/CSIS/DS students check with your advisor and department chair
RSENR: Consult with academic advisor
CNHS:  Science/elective
CESS: Consult with academic advisor

Following completion of the Human Genome Project, Genomics has proven a rich source of controversy. As the applications and implications of rapid, inexpensive, and reliable whole-genome sequencing become clearer, complex ethical, moral, and practical questions emerge. Misuse and misunderstanding of the science behind Genomics has clouded conversations in the public forum and polarized topics that warrant many shades of gray. This course will focus on thoughtful, engaging, and open-minded discussions of current controversies involving Genomics (the study of the structure, function, and evolution of an organism’s entire genome) and Genetics (the study of specific gene function and inheritance). Students are expected to actively participate and prepare for each class through critical review of assigned scientific literature, documentaries, public policy reports and documents, news articles, and other media. There is no pre-requisite knowledge of Genetics or Genomics. Evaluation will include preparing for and actively engaging in class discussions and projects, composing thoughtful reflection papers and a midterm paper, and crafting a well-sourced final research report and presenting findings as part of an expert team panel to the class for discussion.

Honors College Distribution

CAS: CAS elective credit
GSB:  Social Science or Humanities
CALS: Social Science or Humanities & Fine Arts
CEMS:  Engineering Students - Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/CSIS/DS students check with your advisor and department chair
RSENR: Consult with academic advisor
CNHS:  Consult with your academic advisor
CESS: Consult with academic advisor

Individual choice is the foundation of modern society driving decisions ranging from what type of cereal to buy to selecting spouses and careers.  Understanding how and why individuals make the choices they do has occupied philosophers and researchers from the ancient Greeks to modern marketers. Many disciplines have developed theoretical and empirical approaches to understand and predict human choices.

This course reviews a wide-ranging set of theoretical models for individual choices drawn from social psychology, economics, (moral) philosophy, marketing and other disciplines and then introduces students to a set of standard choice modeling approaches. We begin with theoretical frameworks based on the rational model of judgment and decision making, then review the assumptions made in this model and recent challenges, particularly focusing on the work of Daniel Kahneman, a recent recipient of the Nobel prize in Economic Sciences. Individual as well as household decision-making models are developed in a discrete choice framework with discrete choice applications, including both empirical and econometric components.

The second part of the course culminates in an in-depth introduction on how to develop a choice experiment for either research or marketing. Students will be exposed to standard software used to develop experimental designs and will develop their own experiment, drawing on class materials and research from the academic literature in their chosen area.

Honors College Distribution

CAS: No CAS credit
GSB:  BSAD Entrepreneurship Theme Only
CALS: Social Science
CEMS:  Engineering Students - Gen Ed Elective; Math/Stat/CS/CSIS/DS students check with your advisor and department chair
RSENR: Consult with academic advisor
CNHS:  Consult with your academic advisor
CESS: Consult with academic advisor

The purpose of the course is to develop your critical thinking and inquiry skills, in particular in the areas of technology, innovation and entrepreneurship. In order to better understand both the positive and the negative sides of these areas in a more nuanced way, we shall explore these areas from a variety of perspectives, including

• Management & Economics
• Politics & Public Policy
• Ethics & Philosophy
• Gender & Diversity
• Culture & Sociology
• History & Futurism

Our explorations will be guided by select academic research articles, and inspired by books, films and other media from a variety times and places around the world. Through a mixture of classroom lectures, student-led discussions, and lively debates, we will develop both a broader and a deeper understanding of how technology, innovation and entrepreneurship can both hinder and help our economy, society, and planet towards a potentially brighter future.