University Seminar
Themes
What is University Seminar?
University Seminar (USEM) is a three-term, 12-credit course sequence (USEM 101, 102, 103) that anchors SOU’s curriculum and learners’ academic careers. USEM’s mission is to engage learners, help them to build a strong connection with learning peers, and develop the communication, thinking and research skills that will meet the expectations of university study and their future careers.
USEM is required for all first-entry learners who are not transferring in relevant credits. Seminar topics vary by instructor design, but all focus on developing essential reading, writing, thinking and research skills. While texts, writing assignments, and activities explore a focused area of inquiry, the intent is to provide interdisciplinary perspectives. USEM instructors also serve as academic advisors, offering caring mentoring and consistent communication about navigating life at SOU.
A Sampling of Seminar Themes
Biology at the Crossroads
Instructor: John Sollinger
Understand the biology underlying our physical and mental well-being and how it can inform our everyday choices: what we eat, how we handle stress, who we chose for partners, and what we do to protect future generations have biological links. Challenge your biology-based preconceptions and discover evidence-based opinions that will help to better navigate complex choices in these changing times. Investigate learner-driven inquiry of our modern American food culture, including topics related to agricultural practices, nutritional value, GMOs, microbiomes, and animal rights. Explore the inheritance of characteristics in offspring that result from what we eat. Finally, learn how to interpret and communicate ideas through the exploration and creation of visual representations for papers and oral presentations.
Chasing the American Dream
Instructor: Edward Derr
Explore the American Dream and its impact on immigrants to America over the past 200 years. Analyze the perceptions of people who came in the wake of our nation’s creation in the Eighteenth Century. Compare their earlier perceptions with current points of view. Examine how the American Dream has been redefined, who might have been excluded from the Dream, and what it means today. Explore the relationship of the American Dream to Native Indigenous populations, African Americans, and the LGBTQ Community through primary stories, articles, the spoken word, and film to develop perspective on what the American Dream means to contemporary citizens.
Fighting and Writing
Instructor: Deborah Brown
Explore literary responses to war. Build the historical and literary background necessary to engage in a discussion of war and understand the impact war has on cultures, communities, families, and individuals. Analyze a variety of early responses to war, starting with the American Civil War, moving into World War I and II, and culminating with the Vietnam and Iraq wars. Delve into poetry, short stories, novels, and films exploring the many facets of the war to understand what war might tell us as a part of the human experience.
The Good Life
Instructor: Laura Jessup
Reimagine the values and goals that will guide our futures as we build them. Explore what it means to live a life guided by emotional compassion and intellectual curiosity. Follow passions to better know the world and to understand what sustains a meaningful life. Build wisdom through the many ways knowledge is acquired: via dialogue, writing, research, and by experiencing the arts. Imagine opportunities to create a good life – one “inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”
Law and Chaos
Instructor: Matthew Moreali
Explore the dynamic relationship between law and human behavior focusing on “malice, mandates, and mind.” Analyze the many tensions among logical reasoning and raw emotions. Evaluate complex social values via the lenses of mass hysteria, freedom of expression, and media bias. Develop original questions, investigate relevant evidence, weight the facts, and articulate arguments to persuade a jury of your peers. Course concepts apply universally to many areas of social thought and human behavior, not just to within the confines of the law.
Medicine and Society
Instructor: Craig Stillwell
Reflect on our experiences with health and illness, healers, and healthcare while focusing on the roles of nurses and physicians. Examine the characteristics of effective healthcare providers and analyze how these interact with the technology that dominates medicine. Explore how medical practice affects culture and how cultural attitudes affect caregiving. Discover those features of modern healthcare that promote empathy and compassion and those that prevent genuinely therapeutic healthcare provider-patient relationships. Consider how the depiction of healthcare providers in popular media might influence both the practice of medicine and the public understanding of the medicine and medical caregivers. This seminar fits well for students in STEM subjects and pre-nursing, pre-med majors.
Navigate the World
Instructor: Danielle Hammer
Travel the world with a sense of wonder and consider what draws us to take on unfamiliar challenges. Become more aware of our global community and our place in it. Examine how people find purpose and make a difference in the world. Embrace the humanities approach and experience the inspiration of story, essay, image, art and music to study to strengths of travelers, the wealth of cultures, and the richness of motivated change-makers.
Reading, Writing and Revolution
Instructor: Elizabeth Whitman
Any education isn’t worth much if it teaches us how to make a living without teaching us how to make a life. What makes a purposeful, meaningful life? Discover knowledge, practice relevant skills, and gain vital wisdom needed to revolutionize and transform self, society, and action. A revolution is a change, a shift of paradigm, a new way of being, all of which are vital to an evolving world. Practice working with the essential skills needed to master the art of making a revolutionary life and so “be the change you wish to see in the world.” Experience what it really means to know thyself, to think globally, and to act locally.
A Sense of Place
Instructor: Jamie Hickner
Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns of the “single story,” the power of stereotypes to deform our understanding of people and places. We will explore the human experience, across diverse places and as represented by people whose lives embody daring, creativity, and grit. As we deepen our appreciation for the challenges and victories humans experience daily, we will come to know ourselves and our communities in new and profound ways.
Shakespeare and Friends
Instructor: Alan Hemingway
How has Shakespeare influenced our ways of looking at the world – good or bad? Today Shakespeare’s plays are as popular as ever, but were they always so? Examine Shakespeare’s influence through history by juxtaposing one of his plays with a work from another playwright. We will look at Shakespeare and his friends with a critical eye. Through the use of text and character analysis, and direct observation of the plays, we will determine how far his reach extended – both in the Elizabethan era and beyond.
Contact Undergraduate Studies
SOU Division of Undergraduate Studies
1250 Siskiyou Blvd.
Ashland, OR 97520
541.552.6505
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