Honors 394: Comparative Ideologies, Human Rights Movements
This course dove into three different American civil rights movements: Black Power, Feminists, and the Gay movement. While I considered myself to be supportive of equality based on race, gender, and sexuality, I had never actually studied the ideologies that drove these movements. After taking this course, I feel I have a better understanding of some of my beliefs, as well as many, many more unanswered questions. This class raised questions about everyday institutions and assumptions I had held my entire life, but now see in a totally different light. I can without doubt say I am a different and better person for having taken this class. I recognize many more perspectives on the issues that I care about and am more eager to question things I thought I had known. I am now enrolled to take this professors other course, Philosophy of Gender in Western Thought, because of how important I believe the lessons I learned in this course are. Below I have included my final paper which discusses human nature in terms of the different ideologies that contribute to the Feminism and Gay movements.
Honors 394: Climate Change; Science, Art & Activism
In this course, I had the opportunity to learn about climate change in a new and intriguing way. We looked at climate issues from the perspectives of artists, activists, and those most greatly impacted. Guest speakers included an Arctic marine scientist, a renowned photojournalist, and a scientist who leveraged poetry as activism. As a person already interested and moderately informed on the topic of climate change, the inclusion of these diverse perspectives enriched the course and my own understanding of this issue. When it came time to write a final paper, we were given the freedom to select any topic of interest that aligned with the course. I was about to write about a policy issue that was relevant and I wanted to learn more about. Dr. Pavia required us to create paper outlines before submitting a final paper. This allowed me to receive feedback and create a final paper I was proud of.
In this online course, I learned about the history and current state of United States foreign policy. I also learned about myself and my ability to learn independently. This course was graded through four papers and extra credit discussion posts. For me, this was a perfect format. At the end of each unit, a paper was assigned based on a related prompt. I have included the first and last paper that I wrote for the course.