Centennial Honors College

SPRING 2025 GENERAL HONORS COURSES

With the exception of the required one hour G H 299 (Honors Colloquium), the Honors courses below may be used to fulfill requirements in the University’s lower division core curriculum (General Education/Multicultural Perspectives). 

HONORS COLLOQUIUM

89754  GH 299-I38  WLTH MGT  GRAY S, ONLINE  (FIRST EIGHT WEEKS)

Wealth Management (1)  The purpose of this course is to understand how excess money should be smartly invested in stocks, bonds, money market accounts, and certificates of deposit.  Included in the course is a discussion of internal and external factors that materially affect this “allocation of assets” decision.  How these investable assets should be spread across regular (taxable) investment accounts and retirement (tax-free or tax deferred) accounts is also addressed by the course.  Within this structure, a somewhat detailed understanding of how stocks and bonds are valued and traded is included. 

92183  GH 299: NEXT GREAT IDEA   MERRETT C D   T 3:30-4:30  STIPES 207

Design thinking is a strategy to resolve ill-defined and complex problems through innovation. Through an iterative, non-linear approach, students will learn to  empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test solutions to help community clients solve their challenges.

HONORS GENERAL EDUCATION COURSES

COLLEGE WRITING (COMMUNICATION SKILLS)

 87420 GH 101-I33  FILM POP CULTUR  DI CARMINE, ONLINE

Film and Popular Culture (3) (General Education/Humanities and English 180 or 280) This course will survey the ways in which film changed popular culture throughout the world. As a visual medium, film was one of the first universal art forms, and a powerful force in shaping a world that was coming to understand itself as more than a collection of nation-states. Through film, the world of the twentieth century opened up, as, for instance, the films of Charlie Chaplin were screened and loved everywhere in the world in the 1920s. This course will investigate how the medium of film and the institutions of cinema created a new, shared language for the world. While that language was primarily visual, everywhere in the world people were also writing about film: philosophers, art historians, sociologists, scientists all had much to say. Just as revealing, too, are the ways in which film was written about and talked about by journalists and, most importantly, ordinary people, the fans. We will pay special attention to how people write about film. Film writing reveals changing technologies, social contexts and norms, and provides both scholars and ordinary fans a vehicle to assess, celebrate, and contest the emerging meanings of modernity.  Over the course of the semester, our goal is to understand how film played a pivotal role in creating a new and unprecedented popular culture, and we will enter into that culture as writers ourselves. (G H 101 may be taken as Advanced Placement Credit for English 180 OR English 280, but not for both ENG 180 and ENG 280. G H 101 may be repeated only if taken with a different topic.  However, AP credit may only be earned once.  A student may not take G H 101 and earn AP credit for ENG 180 and then repeat the course to earn AP credit for ENG 280.)

HUMANITIES

87423  GH 301-009  AMERICAN DREAMS  CONNER J  T TH 3:30-4:45  SALLEE 230 

American Dreams-The Evolution of a Complicated Vision (3) (General Education/Humanities) Students will learn to identify issues such as the tension between assimilating to American culture and preserving one’s native culture, the daily battle against discrimination, and the courage it takes to carve out a new life and identity in a strange and often hostile land. Students will explore the range of cultural models that shape public thinking about immigration, assimilation, and accommodation in order to gain a greater understanding of American culture and their place within it.

PUBLIC SPEAKING (COMMUNICATION SKILLS)

87360  COMM 241H-007  INTRO PUB SPKG  GLOVICZKI PJ  M W F 2:00-2:50  MEMORIAL 339 

Introdcution to Public Speaking (3) (General Education/Comm Skills)  Students in this honors class will receive the same amount of speaking experience and practical instruction as in other sections but will engage in a more intensive development of those speeches.  Each student will give three major speeches.  The first will be an informative visual presentation, the second will be an argumentative presentation, and the third major speech will be a persuasive presentation.  Students will also deliver some minor, upgraded speeches. 

The course has two objectives.  The first is to have the students master the practicalities of public speaking.  They will learn and put into play the canonical principles of invention, organization, style, memory and delivery, and will do so in both informative and persuasive situations.  The second objective is to introduce students to the richness of rhetorical theory.  The section will be conducted in such a way as to promote both goals simultaneously.

Speeches will be critiqued by the instructor and the class according to the principles outlined in the texts and discussed in class.  With the exception of the days devoted to giving speech assignments, class will be conducted as a seminar and workshop.  Students will be expected to have read the material assigned and be prepared to raise issues about the readings.  Discussion will follow the students' reactions.

SOCIAL SCIENCES

87424  GH 302-081  CITIZEN POLITICS  LEE J  T TH 9:30-10:45  MORGAN 314

Citizen Politics (3) (General Education/Social Sciences)  This course is intended to guide students to examine critically the question of why ordinary citizens behave the way they do in politics. The course will cover four key topics on the politics of ordinary citizens—public opinion, political psychology, political participation, and voting behavior. Specifically, students will have the opportunity to analyze the following questions:

  • How do ordinary citizens make sense of politics, form opinions on issues of the day, and take part in the political process?
  • How can people arrive at political decisions while equipped with limited political information and capabilities to process that information?
  • Why do people participate in politics as much, or as little, as they do?
  • Why do different groups of people—in particular, different racial, ethnic, and gender groups—have different political preferences?

Students will also deal with the question of how best to ascertain the will of the people, if it exists.  In so doing, the course will provide a solid ground on which students may probe and understand the nature and characteristics of the principle of popular rule—the ultimate foundation of American democracy.