Ohio Wesleyan Announces 16 Travel-Learning Courses For 2012-2013 Academic Year
Ohio Wesleyan students seeking a unique travel-learning experience to enhance their educations will get to choose from a “suite 16” course list during the 2012-2013 academic year.
Chuck Stinemetz, Ph.D., OWU’s Dean of Academic Affairs, says this group of courses are some of the best to date and will provide significant experiences for all students who enroll in them.
“These courses exemplify Ohio Wesleyan’s commitment to providing a liberal arts experience that is second to none,” Stinemetz says. “They link academic theory with hands-on learning in meaningful ways that will change students’ lives. We are very excited to be able to provide 16 travel-learning courses next year – more than ever before.”
Scheduled 2012-2013 travel-learning courses are:
Botany-Microbiology – Global Change Biology
Taught by Laurie Anderson, Ph.D., students will spend two weeks in Brazil in May 2013. This upper-level science course will focus on how organisms influence, interact with, and are affected by global environmental changes such as increasing temperature and carbon dioxide levels. Tentative destinations include the Cristalino Jungle Lodge, an ecotourism center in the southern Amazon rainforest.
Education and Sociology/Anthropology – Teaching for Equity and Social Justice
Taught by Paula White, Ph.D., and John Durst, Ph.D., students will travel to Mississippi during spring break in March 2013. These two courses will work together provide an opportunity to examine education through an equity and social justice lens. In the education course, students will investigate ways in which racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, ageism, and other forms of discrimination permeate educational policy and practice. In a sociology/anthropology seminar, senior majors in sociology and anthropology will undertake a project to apply sociology and anthropology to significant problems in the United States and abroad.
English – Native American Literature
Taught by Karen Poremski, Ph.D., students will travel to South Dakota, Minnesota, and Illinois for two weeks in May 2013. For this course, students will read Native American literary works that depict the reservation and the city in all of their complexities. Destinations will include the Sicangu Lakota Nation (also known as the Rosebud Reservation) to learn from elders and artists about reservation life, and Chicago and Minneapolis to learn about urban Indian Centers and native life in the city.
English – Shakespeare at the Globe
Taught by Zack Long, Ph.D., students will travel to England for one week in May 2013. Shakespeare’s plays were written for specific actors and particular venues. The most famous venue was the Globe Theatre, where works such as Henry V, Hamlet, and As You Like It were originally produced. This course explores the staging practices, acting styles, and performance conditions of Shakespeare’s Globe, with special focus on the research and findings of scholars and theatre professionals working at the reconstructed theatre. In England, students will see plays, attend lectures, and participate in workshops led by Globe Education scholars, actors, and theatre professionals.
Fine Arts – Contemporary Art
Taught by Janalee Emmer, Ph.D., students will spend two weeks in New York in May 2013. The course will focus on contemporary art from the 1940s to the present including a wide range of media from paintings, sculpture, and photography to performance, installation, and design. In New York, students will see many of the works studied in class including creations by Jackson Pollock, Judy Chicago, and Chuck Close.
Fine Arts – Landscape Painting in Italy
Taught by Frank Hobbs, M.F.A., students will visit Italy for two weeks in May 2013. This course will enable OWU students to expand their knowledge and practice of landscape painting by traveling and painting in many of the same spots where some of Italy’s most historically significant artists painted. The students also will study the history, critical theories, and practices of the art form that developed in Italy in the mid-19th century.
Health and Human Kinetics – Food Philosophies and Traditions
Taught by Chris Fink, Ph.D., students will spend two weeks in Italy in May 2013. The course will focus on developing qualitative, ethnographic research skills, and on a cross-cultural comparison of food systems in the United States and Italy. In Italy, OWU students will share their findings with students and professionals in the fields of food studies and health promotion.
Humanities-Classics – Chasing the Dream: Alexander the Great
Taught by Lee Fratantuono, Ph.D., students will travel to Greece and Turkey for two weeks in May 2013. The course will follow in the footsteps of the early life and career of Alexander the Great, moving from Greece to Macedonia to Turkey. Students will explore sites connected to Alexander, as well as contemporary European debates about the identity of Greeks versus Macedonians, and the relationship between East and West at the Hellespont, where Europe meets Asia and Greece joins Turkey.
Journalism – Fallout on Fleet Street: Effects of Rupert Murdoch Scandal on British Press
Taught by Melinda Rhodes, Ph.D., students will travel to England for nine days in May 2013. This course will explore literary journalism and advanced-reporting techniques, helping students to improve research and interviewing skills, expand practical knowledge of media law and ethics, use public records, and hone creative-writing skills. In London, students will visit with professional journalists, story subjects, litigators, and lawmakers involved in the News Corp scandal and/or media reform. Prerequisite: Open to non-journalism majors/minors with an interest in creative nonfiction by permission of instructor.
Modern Foreign Languages – Introduction of Chinese Literature, Classical, Contemporary, and Modern
Taught by Ching-Hsuan Wu, Ph.D., students will travel to China for two weeks in May 2013. In this course, students will analyze Chinese classical, contemporary, and modern poetry and prose, developing their understanding of how Chinese literature styles, philosophy, history, values, people, and society have evolved over time. The class will be conducted in Chinese, and the reading materials will be in Chinese. In China, students will visit different poetic sites as well as a literature class at a university, where they will interact with local students.
Music – Choral Music of Italy
Taught by Jason Hiester, M.M., students will visit Italy in March 2013. OWU Chamber Singers will spend the semester studying the choral music of Renaissance and Baroque Italian master composers with the intention of visiting and singing at the churches and opera houses where the composers wrote and directed their music. Destinations will include St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice and the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence.
Religion – Christianity and the Non-Western Challenge
Taught by Emmanuel Twesigye, Ph.D., students will travel to Uganda for two weeks in May and June 2013. The course will discuss Christianity and the serious political and cultural conflicts in Africa and Latin America. Because Christianity in its Catholic and Pentecostal expressions is growing fastest in Africa and Latin America, students will visit Uganda, the center of African Catholic Christianity. In June, students will be able to witness, document, and participate in the colorful and historically important annual Christian holy pilgrimage and celebration of the African Catholic Saints and Christian Martyrs of Uganda.
Sociology/Anthropology – The Andes: Environment, Poverty and People
Taught by Mary Howard, Ph.D., students will travel to Peru and Bolivia for two weeks in May 2013. This course will examine challenges to the South American Andean Region’s fragile ecosystem and the related impact on humans. Destinations will include the ancient Inca ruins of Machu Picchu; Lake Titicaca; Bolivia’s capital, La Paz; and Amboro National Park. This travel will bring to life issues including global warming, ecological degradation, migration, and urban poverty.
Sociology/Anthropology – Sociology of Knowledge
Taught by Alper Yalçinkaya, Ph.D., students will travel to England and Scotland for 10 days in May 2013. In this course, students will analyze social factors that shape the way they perceive and think about the world and their existence in it. They will discuss different approaches to concepts such as ideology, worldview, and hegemony, as well as study the characteristics of social institutions that produce knowledge. In England and Scotland, students will visit sites that are significant for the social history of science and that demonstrate how different social groups and practices no longer seen as “scientific” played a part in the transformation of science into the institution that it is today.
Zoology – Island Biology
Taught by Amy Downing, Ph.D., and Ramon Carreno, Ph.D., students will spend two weeks in Ecuador in May 2013. This course will examine why island organisms provide superior examples to study evolution, ecology, behavior, and conservation. Destinations include the Galapagos Islands, where students will explore the islands by boat for seven days. Prerequisite: Permission of instructor and one unit in botany-microbiology or zoology.
Zoology – Marine Biology
Taught by Amy Downing, Ph.D., students will spend five days in North Carolina in fall 2012. The course will emphasize human interactions with the marine environment including human impacts on coral reefs, fisheries, marine mammals, and coastal ecosystems. The class will travel to the Atlantic coastline over mid-semester break to the Duke Marine Lab in Beaufort, N.C.
Read more detailed descriptions of Ohio Wesleyan’s 2012-2013 travel-learning courses.
Read more about Ohio Wesleyan’s commitment to translating academic theory into real-world experience.