This list will be updated as more information is available. The most accurate source of Honors sections is the Course Finder web site.
AGR 203, Outer Core: Science, Math, and Technology
ECO 103, Middle Core: Individuals and Societies
HIS 104.03, Outer Core: Humanities
PHI 238, Outer Core: Humanities
POL 106, Middle Core: Individuals and Civic Life
More info about the Summer Session at Illinois State:
http://www.summersession.ilstu.edu/
Outer Core: Humanities
Session A: May 12 - May 30, 2008 (3 weeks)
Monday - Friday: 8 am - 10:40 am
Instructor: Dr. Thomas Simon
This course will have a travel component that will entail trips to tour the Chicago River and the Pontiac waste dumpsite.
We shall explore the nature of environmental problems, harms, agents, and victims. First, we shall examine why nature and not, for example, the workplace has received most of the attention from environmentalists. Second, we shall explore why we seldom ask “Who did it to them?” when people succumb to deadly diseases, such as cancer. Third, we shall analyze the tension between individual rights and collective responsibilities. Finally, we shall raise questions about the types of victims (environmental racism).
The entire class will explore a few model cases not only through readings but also through site visits. For example, we shall tour the Chicago River to learn about its history in contributing to downstate pollution. Then, we shall tour the Pontiac waste dumpsite. Students, individually or in teams, will examine specific environmental problems with an eye on continuing the work beyond the course.
Middle Core: Individuals and Societies
Session C: May 19 - June 12, 2008 (4 weeks)
Monday - Thursday: 11 am - 1:30 pm
Instructor: Dr. Oguzhan Dincer
This course focuses on two primary objectives:
1. To understand a few key ideas from economics along with the related tools of analysis
2. To apply the insights from each economic idea to a variety of choices made by individuals, firms, and the government, both individually and collectively.
ECO 103 is designed to help students improve their skills in critical thinking and written communication. It introduces the students to the way social scientists in general and economists in particular attempt to understand individual and collective choices and the relationship between the two.
While the perspective in this course is based on economic theory, the topics commonly considered in other disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, agriculture, geography, and psychology are addressed as well. Although it explores a diverse set of applications, its focus returns periodically to three general issues of interest:
1. What are the sources of society’s economic well-being and how does this relate to individual choice?
2. How are the rational choices of individuals different from each other?
3. How are social choices made and carried out in a market environment?
Among the various readings/assignments in the class is one called Sam’s Choice, which is a project about the choices concerning a hypothetical single mother. In groups of 8, students will explore what happens to Sam, a divorced mother of a two-year-old and a four-year-old with a high school education and not much work experience.
Outer Core-Humanities
Session C: May 19 - June 12, 2008 (4 weeks)
Instructor: Dr. Patrice Olsen
Please contact the instructor for more information
This course will feature a travel component…a trip to Peru. This course is open to all students, Honors students are encouraged to complete an In-Course Honors Project to earn Honors credit. The following is a description of the course and In-Course Honors Project.
Our focus in Peru is on human rights. Students will be attending lectures given by academics, lawyers, and activists. Along with their reading and field activities (in two shantytowns and in Ica, assisting with reconstruction projects), they will develop a better understanding of how human rights are defended and protected in Peru. Serious problems persist, however, particularly as NGOs and diverse activists seek to expand the understanding and operationalization of human rights beyond the protection of a person's body, and right to exercise various civil liberties without oppression or coercion to the rights to education, health care, land, etc.
For their In-Course Honors Projects, students will develop a full understanding of the extended concept of human rights on the streets of Lima -- as well as the persistence of grave problems in this area. They will document via photos and essays the lives of street children (and the organization "Niñas de la Calle"), domestic workers (and the organization "Empleadas Audaz"), taxi drivers and tourist sector workers, or others. Their photos and insights will be collected and presented as a segment of the Peru Project's presentation at the International Studies Seminar in Fall 2008. I envision this project to take from 20-30 hours of fieldwork in Lima, and another 5 hours on campus to assist in putting the collection together.
Middle Core-Individuals and Civic Life
Session D: June 16 - July 10, 2008 (4 weeks)
Monday - Thursday: 11:00 am - 1:30 pm
Instructor: Shamira Gelbman
This course will have a travel component that will entail a day trip to Springfield, IL, where students will tour the State Capitol Building and meet with legislators.
As an Honors course, POL 106 will focus more heavily than usual on the historical and comparative angles of American government and civic participation. Rather than deal primarily with a descriptive account of how the American political system works, it will develop this concern in the context of the following questions: Why did the institutions and practices of America develop as they did? How does the American political system differ from those of other advanced industrial democracies? And finally, how do political practices differ across states and local communities within the United States? Second, greater emphasis will be placed on students’ hands-on participation in the processes of American government, including assignments that encourage students to engage in political discussions with family and friends, observe and participate in local political events, and initiate correspondence with newspaper editors and public officials.
Outer Core: Science, Math, and Technology
On-line,
May 12 - June 20, 2008 (6 weeks)
Instructor: Dr. Aslihan Spaulding
Except for the first week of class, there will be no face to face class meetings for this course. The class will visit several farms and agribusinesses in the first week of class. Then students will participate in class on-line.
The focus of the course is the role of both individuals and groups in the production and distribution of food and fiber and the impact of agriculture on the environment. Students will have the opportunity to examine contemporary environmental issues that are linked to current and past agricultural practices. The course will provide students with an opportunity to understand the general principles by which the dynamics of social, demographic, political, economic and geographic forces affect the production and distribution of food and fiber and the resulting impact upon the quality of human life for the individual and society.
Use the Course Finder search engine to search for Honors courses and get the most up to date information.
140: General Chemistry I
Inner Core Science
102: Individuals, Society, and Justice
Middle Core - Individuals and Civic Life
204: Elementary Education: Practices & Issues
208: Literacy I: Reading and Language Arts in the Elementary Schools
185: Legal, Ethical, and Social Environment of Business
240: Business Finance
250: Introduction to Risk and Insurance
102: Principles of Geology
Inner Core - Science
291: Undergraduate Teaching Experience in Health Sciences
296: Historiography and Historical Method
121.21: Texts & Contexts: Reading Verbal & Visual Text
Middle Core - Language in the Humanities
254: Religions and Cultures
Middle Core - Language in the Humanities
*202.48: Philosophical Issues Concerning the Self
Advanced Honors Colloquium
Middle Core - Language in the Humanities
Dr. Liane Stillwell, Philosophy
The course focuses on philosophically interesting questions about the nature of the self or person, as well as the nature of “personal identity” across time. There is a great deal of emphasis on metaphysical issues and theories. After an Historical Introduction, the course will consider Lockean-inspired Criteria which philosophers have defended in regard to our personal “persistence” over time. In Part III, the course will study Eric Olson’s recent “Biological Approach” to the metaphysics of personal identity. The remaining part of the course attempts to synthesize, philosophically, a variety of fascinating data collected from descriptive psychology and our everyday experience.
*202.73: Advanced Honors Colloquium: Topics in Psychology
Advanced Honors Colloquium
Dr. Byron Heidenreich, Psychology
This course will be an advanced seminar on the discovery and evaluation of knowledge (fact and theory) in psychology. Experimental and non-experimental perspectives will be considered, as will the role of reasoning, logic and conjecture in determining knowledge. Course content will include basic and applied/clinical areas of psychology. Readings will include both empirical and conceptual writings of psychologists, philosophers and biomedical scientists.
*202.74: Consumers & Consumption
Advanced Honors Colloquium
Dr. Thomas Burr, Sociology
This class is an interdisciplinary introduction to consumers and consumption. We will read and learn from texts in five different academic disciplines. Consumption as an academic study has become very interdisciplinary in the last few years. There are two major groupings of theories of consumption in academia. One is a combination of economics, marketing, and psychology, which is focused mostly on how people make choices around their purchases. The other grouping is a combination of anthropology, sociology, and history, which is more focused on how people use products, especially how they use them for symbolic and identity purposes. A third grouping, which is generally separate from these two, is broadly critical of consumption on environmental, labor-oriented, or quality-of-life grounds, and is even more interdisciplinary, coming from dissidents in all these disciplines.
*202.71: Presidential Scholars Service Learning Colloquium
Advanced Honors Colloquium
*202.72: Honors Service Learning Colloquium
Advanced Honors Colloquium
* Must contact Honors Office for approval to take course.
295: Honors Seminar
220: Business Organization & Management
230: Introduction to Marketing Management
101: Music Theory
107: Group Instruction in Basic Musicianship I
201: Music Theory
207: Group Instruction in Basic Musicianship III
152: Experiencing Music
Outer Core - Fine Arts
229.01: Adult Nursing I
101: Basic Issues in Philosophy
Outer Core - Humanities
106: United States Government and Civic Practices
Middle Core-Individuals & Civic Life
140: Intro to the Politics of Africa, Asia & Latin America
Outer Core - Social Sciences, Global Studies
254: Global Issues
