Course Descriptions
LDSP 1000 - Foundations of 21st Century Leadership - 3 credit hours
This new century poses many complex questions about how we live together in a democratic and just society. It is too often the case that ordinary citizens feel disconnected and removed from leadership and have limited awareness of their civic and social responsibilities. A democracy cannot survive under these conditions. Whether these challenges come from developments in technology or from political contradictions and social divisions, it is clear that more conventional models of leadership based upon individual greatness or personal charisma will be insufficient to respond effectively to the issues ahead. The course will introduce students to the theories and practices of historical and contemporary leadership. Students will also examine the moral and ethical dimensions of leadership and how cultural diversity applies to leadership in the 21st century. The course provides students with a set of leadership skills and competencies and serves as a laboratory for active experimentation in community leadership situations.
The course fulfills the Arts and Science Ideals and Values Core Requirement.
Instructors: Carol Miyagishima, Jorge Gibbons, Craig Dobkin, Steven Medina,& Ted Connolly
LDSP 2400 - Understanding Privilege and Oppression in Contemporary Society: Social and Personal Leadership Skill Development - 3 credit hours
In this multidisciplinary service-learning course students will learn about the dynamics of privilege, oppression and empowerment in the United States by focusing on race, class, sexual orientation and physical ability. Comparisons of the various types of oppression will be made as we examine a number of current social issues and problems in which they exist. Students will learn to think with more complexity about social problems.
The course fulfills either the Arts and Sciences Cultural and Gender Diversity or the Contemporary Societies Core Requirement.
Instructors: Carol Miyagishima & Steven Medina
LDSP 3100 - Multicultural Leadership: Theories,
Principles and Practices
Focuses on leadership theories and skills necessary
for effectiveness in multicultural settings. Students
gain understanding of traditional and culturally
diverse approaches to leadership and change through
comparative analyses of western and non-western
theories and practices. Community service required.
Same as ETHN 3201 and INVS 3100. Approved for arts
and sciences core curriculum: cultural and gender
diversity.
Instructor: William Takamatsu-Thompson
LDSP 4010 - Critical Issues in Leadership - Capstone Course - 4 credit hours
Critical thinking is fundamental to leadership competency. Leaders must have skill at making judgment and collecting information from a variety of sources and on topics in which they have limited expertise. Students read, discuss, and write critical evaluations of contemporary leadership theory from an ethical, military, community building, and business perspective. Prereq., a minimum of 8 credit hours towards the Leadership Certificate completed.
The course fulfills the Critical Thinking upper division core requirement
Instructors: Alphonse Keasley
EDUC 2910 - Ethnic Living and Learning Community Practicum - 1 credit hour
Students will gather once a week in this 90 minute class to interact with one another and share their experiences, perspectives, thoughts and ideas as they work toward building and sustaining community and practicing cultulrally competent leadership within a multicultural setting. Students will be challenged to step outside of their comfort zones and explore their beliefs, values and socialized ways of being around race, culture, gender and difference. Throughout the year the practicum will incorporate learning from the two leadership classes Leadership for the 21st Century and Privilege, Oppression and Liberation in Contemporary U.S. Society.
This course is an Elective
Coordinator: Steven Medina
LDSP 1561-790 Compassionate Leadership & Mindfulness- 1 credit hour
Compassionate Leadership and Mindfulness.
Explores various practices and traditions that lead to
a balanced, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual
life critical to the practice of effective leadership.
Prereqs., LDSP 1000 and 2400. This course is an Elective and may be repeated for up to 3
total credit hours.
PREREQ LDSP 1000 & 2400.
Instructor: CLR Staff
LDSP 1571-790 Topics in Leadership- 1 credit hour
Examines the complex nature of leadership by applying
knowledge and practice to contemporary and social
issues. Prereqs., LDSP 1000 and 2400. This course is an Elective and may be repeated
for up to 3 total credit hours.
Instructor: CLR Staff
AMST 2010 - Themes in American Culture Since 1865 - 3 credit hours
This course critically examines American, culture, identity and experiences, past and present. In a sense “America” is a “nation” without a “people,” and from it’s inception, it has theorized itself as plural - as a multiple, mixed, and even mongrel place. But how then do we, or can we, write the history and definition of “America” without ignoring about 90% of its peoples and cultures - as we seem to have done; done despite what Ishmael Reed has pointed out, “the United States is unique in the world: the world is here”? This course will reflect Gerald Graff’s model of American culture when he admonishes us, “Where there is no consensus - and there’s no consensus - teach the conflicts.” Our aim is to “rediscover” and repopulate many overlooked and ignored “Americas.” This course will evoke a number of themes in conflict from individual voices, groups, structures, economies, ideologies, and examine them in the light of multiple interpretative lenses and points of view, for example, “race” and ethnicity, gender, class (money/ status), a sense of place and locale (north, midwest, south, west, southwest, etc, and rural, urban, suburban), work, age, and religion. This will be a kaleidoscopic model of cultural history: multiple perceptions in constantly reconfiguring patterns. We will listen to a number of ‘overlooked” Americans tell their stories. It will not be exclusively chronological or linear, but will show how “history” is constantly being made and played out in the lives of specific everyday Americans in specific places, times, and issues – vital, or grass-roots, history. It will be more like a jazz model of culture, playing the changes on, and making new renditions of, old themes and melodies. I especially want to emphasize “the return of the repressed,” the continued influences of an unresolved conflictual past, living and working in the present. This course is especially about the process of “invisibility” and “ignore-ance” - the trick we humans have by which we teach ourselves not to see something that is right in front of us. And what we see and don’t see are determined by how we are “programmed” and taught by our culture, not by how our eyes are rated by the optometrist when we look at an eye chart. In order to see “America” “mo’ better,” we will primarily use short stories, poetry, essays, autobiography, oral history, case studies, material and visual culture, and films, supplemented by brief moments of lecture. We will have some serious fun.
This course fulfills the US Context Core Requirement
Instructor: Stuart Lawler
ARSC 1080 - College Writing and Research- 4 credit hours
In this class students develop the ability to do college-level reading, writing, and thinking. Students begin with short position papers synthesizing course readings with personal observations and experiences, and move on to create more complex arguments informed by independent library research.
This course fulfills the Written Communication Core Requirement
Instructor: Lori Fields
HUMN 2145 - African Americans in the Arts - 3 credit hours
This course will examine African America in the arts and its contribution to America. It will feature African American fiction, poetry, drama, instrumental, sung, spoken, and danced music, as well as sculpture and painting. It will especially focus on folk, vernacular, and popular culture. African American culture is a performative culture with roots in Africa. We will assume that this African culture was transmitted to and transformed in America. We will assume not only that these African cultural practices survived and were passed down, but also that the elaborate and complex world views, or cosmologies, encoding social, political and philosophical systems of status and leadership survived inside these performative practices. Margaret Drewal, the African art historian, gives a clear clue to African American culture when she says of the spectacular Yoruba masquerade, Gelede, “In Africa, [musical] performance is a primary site for the production of knowledge, where philosophy is enacted, and where multiple and often simultaneous discourses are employed. … Not only that, but performance is a means by which people reflect on their current conditions, define and/or reinvent themselves, and their social world, and often either reinforce, resist, or subvert prevailing social orders.” We will examine African American expressive culture in the light of polygnere, polyvocal, polyfocal performance. We will also examine African American arts in a full complex cultural context that avoids and even demolishes any stereotyping and is in cultural clash against a myopic mainstream culture. Our hope is to revise – to see mo/ better – more and better, in order to appreciate, understand, and deliver appropriate credit and reward to an “other’s” culture. We will closely examine the full irony of the argument of Nat D. Williams, retired history teacher, newspaper columnist, master of ceremonies at the Palace Amateur Night, disc jockey, Man of Words, and about to be retired Beale Streeter in Memphis, Tennessee, when he says, “The white man had said the black man couldn’t go certain places, that Beale was the place for blacks, and the black man turned it around and said Beale was the only place to be.” We will have some serious fun.
This course fulfills the Cultural and Gender Diversity or U.S. Context Core Requirement
Instructor: Stewart Lawler
PSCI 1101 - The American Political System - 3 credit hours
Introduction to the U.S. system of government and politics. This course emphasizes interrelations among levels and branches of government, formal and informal institutions, processes, and behavior. In this section, we will explore how inequality affects democracy, and also focus in on the 2008 elections. Each student will choose a political issue to follow through out the semester, learning how the U.S. political system addresses the issue in government, elections and media. This course meets MAPS requirement for social science: general or U.S. history and is approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: contemporary societies or United States context.
This course fulfills the U.S. Context Core Requirement
Instructor: Janet Donavan
PSCI 3011 - The American Presidency - 3 credit hours
Covers constitutional and institutional foundations and historical development of the presidency; roles, powers, selection, recent modifications and institutionalization, with a special focus on the current primary election process and the upcoming the 2008 election.
This course fulfills the U.S. Context Core Requirement
Instructor: Janet Donavan
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