2006

 History and Culture of Nordic Europe

 Department of History, College of Arts and Sciences and the Conservatory of Music

This course explores the history and culture of Scandinavia and will analyze the relationship of historical events to the creative process with students examining how and why these isolated areas produced different yet related cultural identities. Outcomes for this class are an enhanced awareness of the creative process of Nordic cultures, students own creativity and the role of creativity in shaping society. The course will be offered Fall Term 2006

Instructors: Dr. Lynda Payne, Department of History, College of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Bill Everett, Conservatory of Music

Narrative and the Art of Legal Persuasion

School of Law

This course will explore the use of narrative in fiction and film and then apply what has been learned into making legal arguments and is designed for law students working on an emphasis in litigation. The outcomes of this course are to improve students’ ability to craft persuasive legal arguments, to provide a model that could be used at other law schools, to provide lessons from the humanities into other courses that teach lawyering, and to build relationships between faculty members and disciplines that could lead to future collaborations. The course will be offered Winter Term 2006

Instructors:  Dr. Jeffrey Thomas, School of Law.

2005

Creative Knowledges, Cultural Productions

College of Arts and Sciences: Sociology/Criminal Justice/Criminology and Communication Studies

This is an interdisciplinary course exploring the “culture” (material phenomena and lived experience) that encourages creative linkages between cultural analysis and expression. The course is open to upper-division undergraduate and graduate students of all disciplines. Sociology and communication studies frameworks will be used to problematize “culture”, second to question the social controls that limit creative expression, and third to propose strategies of resistance to dominant assumptions and expression. This perspective demonstrates how culture industries (mass media) and globalization shape our relationship to the creative process and to social change. The course design includes a perspective that analyzes the multiple strategic ways in which individuals and groups resist the homogenizing forces of the culture industries. A primary component of the course is a four-part thematic exploration of methods of cultural analysis that will include the use of appropriated imagery and text to explore issues pertaining to gender, interviewing techniques to explore social class, performance strategies to critically interpret race, and video production to analyze sexuality. A final outcome of the course is student presentations at a campus and community forum. The course will pilot fall semester 2005.

The Body, Technology, and Society

The College of Arts and Sciences

This is a 400 level course offered through the Department of Sociology/Anthropology and the Department of History/Religious Studies. It will review recent historical cases that address the relationship between technology and the body as both metaphor and site of production. It will include cases where religious communities have been involved in utilizing and resisting technology. Examples of technology to be explored include: the sonogram, the automobile, modern architecture, the firearm, digital virtual reality, and the genome project. A goal of this course is to forge a new type of discovery and innovation, one not traditionally approached in the classroom by inspiring students to view, examine and to reflect on actual tools, and to bring about awareness of the history and social impact of those tools. The case studies will serve to bring students into fuller awareness of their own relationships to technology and how it shapes their everyday lives and will ask both faculty and students to become less comfortable with the tools they habitually use. By cultivating a level of discomfort, new types of awareness can arise. Students will better understand their own creative responses, rather than the response supplied by technological tools. The course will be piloted in fall 05.

The Practice and Study of Creativity

Conservatory of Music and College of Arts and Sciences

This is a 300 level course offered through the College of Arts and Sciences and Conservatory of Music. It is a team taught, multidisciplinary course for undergraduate students that fosters awareness of the nature and power of students’ creativity by providing an understanding of the creative process from three different perspectives (visual arts/art history), (theatre/dance), and (music composition/performance) and will serve as a catalyst for students to design and implement both group and individual projects. The course is primarily designed for non-arts majors, but will utilize the arts as a foundation for exploring creativity. The arts focus was selected because the arts provide a “safe” forum in which to take risks. A unique feature of this course is creativity journals that each student will keep to record their thoughts and feelings about the class, their own creative process, and about the projects as they progress. These journals will function as narratives of each student’s journey into the nature of their creative selves.  An outcome of this course will be to dispel several myths about creativity: that most people are not creative; creativity equals artistic ability; and creativity is inherently mysterious, undefined, and unknowable. The course will be piloted in fall 05.

Development of a Bioterrorism Education Course

School of Nursing

This is a 400 level course taught through the School of Nursing and the College of Arts and Sciences. The course will focus on the management of bioterrorism in the event of an attack and will include a brief history of bioterrorism, the nature/epidemiology of biological agents and their resulting illnesses and complications. Input from the Schools of Medicine, Pharmacy, and Biology as well as community resources will be utilized in developing this course. Outcomes include an increased awareness of bioterrorism, obtaining information from appropriate sources, working with persons from other disciplines and developing policy, procedures and resources for the UMKC campus community and the community-at-large. The course will be piloted in fall 05.

2004

Learning Meta-models in Biology from the Nobel Prizes

School of Computing and Engineering working with School of Dentistry, School of Biological Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences/Dept. of Chemistry

A challenge in Bioinformatics education is the need to cross-train students in both computational and biological sciences. The proposed interdisciplinary course is designed to prepare students with a deficient background in Biology for training in the interdisciplinary subject of Bioinformatics and to inspire students to think creatively.  The course will draw on the work of Nobel Prize winning research scientists in Medicine, Physiology and Chemistry to teach the fundamentals of biological sciences to students. Each student will focus on all aspects of the research area of a single Nobel Prize and will play the role of a Nobel laureate in the second half of the course giving a presentation on the research and the key breakthroughs and creative insights integral to discovery. Students will also develop and present an abstract (meta-model) view of each discovery. Lectures by guest experts in the field will relate current knowledge to each of the discussed Nobel Prize laureates. This 400 level course is open to students with a senior standing in a scientific discipline. The course was offered in fall semester 2004.