The Honors College Faculty Fellows program encourages curricular innovation, giving faculty the opportunity to design new Honors College courses that also fit within the General Education Foundations (GEF) course framework.
2020-2021 Faculty Fellows
Carla Brigandi
LEARNING SCIENCE AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, COLLEGE OF EDUCATION AND HUMAN SERVICES
“Creative Thinking” will challenge students to look at the world and its problems through the lens of creativity, progressively guiding them through increasingly more advanced creative thinking activities and strategies. This course will give students the toolkit they need to pursue a self-selected passion project in an individual investigation of a real-world problem with the goal of producing real solutions and making the world a better place.
Kimberly Floyd
LEARNING SCIENCE AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, COLLEGE OF EDUCATION AND HUMAN SERVICES
“Trauma, Resilience & Children” will examine the influence trauma has on the lives of children and how it impacts them throughout their lives — in their growth, learning and adult relationships. Students will explore these topics through community activities, guest speakers, readings and interactive in-class learning focusing on the core issues of trauma-informed care and the influence of childhood trauma on society and the economy.
Steven Frisch
BIOCHEMISTRY, SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
“The Biology of Aging” will be a multidisciplinary examination of biologic aging and the factors that affect and can extend longevity. Students will learn about the exciting study of “cell senescence,” or the irreversible cessation of cell division. Students will explore work that shows cell senescence as the major factor underlying human aging and learn about new interventions that prevent cell senescence in model organisms, extending their longevity. What could this mean for humans and aging in the future?
Christian Schaupp
ACCOUNTING, JOHN CHAMBERS COLLEGE OF BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS
“Global Consulting” will teach students how to work cross-culturally in the business world by working with a real international client, honing students’ cooperation, problem-solving and presentation skills. Students will pair up with undergraduates studying in Münster, Germany, giving both groups of students the opportunity to work together to learn global competence, collaborating across cultural differences and performing real-world client problem solving.
John Temple
REED COLLEGE OF MEDIA
In “Nonfiction Storytelling” students will examine and analyze different types of contemporary nonfiction writing, looking at their narrative structures to learn how stories are built and ultimately creating their own in-depth, original nonfiction stories. Students will discuss the ethics and practical concerns behind applying narrative techniques to real-world events, exploring how storytelling done well is able to entertain and inform, as well as create empathy, making the retelling of a series of events propulsive, satisfying, and ultimately consequential.
Andrea Soccorsi
MULTIDISCIPLINARY AND INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES, EBERLY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
“People vs. the Planet” will challenge students to consider climate change and environmental issues through the lens of multiple disciplines, focusing on how the perspectives of diverse stakeholders in the sciences, social sciences and humanities can help us not only to better understand the issues surrounding climate change, but also to propose plausible solutions together. Students will employ critical reading, thinking and writing skills to investigate the science of climate change, as well as its representation in media, literature and other sources. Students will then translate these theoretical problems into real world solutions through an action project with local non-profit organizations and the city of Morgantown.
Johanna Winant
ENGLISH, EBERLY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
“Mysteries and Diagnoses” will ask students to re-examine stories of murder mysteries and medical diagnoses as interpretive puzzles, each with their own assumptions, blind spots and biases. Students will probe the process of interpretation and test presumptions of objectivity, learning about the influence of ideology, when interpretation and explanation succeed and fail, and whom they fail. Ultimately students will learn to see how ideological structures and societal values shape even the most objective work and arguments.