Teaches foundational concepts for intellectual exploration and personal development within an academic community: analysis, critical thinking, metacognition, engagement with others across difference, and self-efficacy. Texts in varied media reflect individuals' and communities' struggles to represent, constitute, and empower themselves in the United States.
Students explore the radical restructuring of media representation and its consequences over the last three decades. Examines a range of social issues--representation of women and minorities, police brutality, fake news and social media--through lenses of specific media spaces, in order to discover the impact of new media, new media environments, and a dynamic media culture on power and representation in American life.
Develop practical skills and knowledge in naturalist observation. Acquire an overview of the field of natural history, particularly applied to the UCSC campus. Document an evolving and multidimensional personal experience of natural spaces, including, but not limited to, wilderness. (Formerly KRSG 18.)
Students find a volunteer position with the instructor's assistance and perform community service in non-profit organizations, schools, unions, or local government agencies. Students meet weekly, keep a journal, and write a social action witnessing report of their experience.
Students find a volunteer position with the instructor's assistance and perform community service in non-profit organizations, schools, unions, or local government agencies. Students meet weekly, keep a journal, and write a social action witnessing report of their experience.
A fast-paced and academically rigorous exercise in four main sections. First and foremost, participants must locate and support a community-service site for three hours each week. Each student's service commitment requires the student to attend class regularly and share community-service experience with classmates. Students are introduced to the basic requirements of a variety of national service agencies including AmeriCorp, the Peace Corp, City Year, Teach for America, and City Service. Students are required to do community-service work with a member of one of these agencies locally for four hours during the quarter. The last major section of this course teaches students the basics of grant writing and research.
Students are involved in a community service project to produce a portfolio of social-action writing that situates the writer as witness in the community.
Students are involved in a community-service project to produce a portfolio of social-action writing that situates the writer as witness in the community.
Explores the rise and consequences of capitalism. How has capitalism affected how humans understand and act in the world? How do oppressions along lines of race, gender, sexuality, and nation intersect with capitalism? Is resistance desirable and/or possible?
Explores possible futures by studying several utopian visions, projects, and manifestos. Students imagine a future by writing a manifesto and other creative non-fiction pieces that embrace a utopian imagination.
Provides community college transfers, during their first year at UC Santa Cruz, with an understanding of the workings of a research university with emphasis on advanced academic expectations, creating purposeful education and career goals, and navigating opportunities and challenges. Guides refinement of goals, development of an action plan to meet desired academic, career and civic-oriented outcomes, and encourages developing essential and enriching relationships to enrich UC Santa Cruz experience.
Explores critical engagement in education in the context of a research university. Introduces first-year issues and success strategies and ways to participate in the institution's academic life. Investigates strategies for clarifying education goals and devising a plan for success. Students cannot receive credit for this course and Porter 26 or Stevenson 26.
Defines consensus in terms of inclusive decision-making and explores depth-psychology approaches to facilitating social agreement in culturally diverse settings. Readings include Totem and Taboo, Diversity Calling, and selected articles related to issues of cultural literacy. Recommended for, but not limited to, social science majors.
Seeks to ask hard questions about the role of the prison, its increasing use in our nation, and the use of torture by the U.S. government in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and other prisons. Readings may include J. James's Imprisoned Intellectuals, Alexander Berkman's Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, and other writings by American prisoners. Eve Ensler's What I Want My Words to Do to You is shown. Course is primarily reading and discussion; students are asked to keep a reading journal and to write a critical/creative essay at the end of the quarter. (Formerly Language of the Prison House.)
Students attend weekly creative writing readings by fiction writers and poets, read excerpts from the writers' works, participate in question and answer sessions, and write short, creative and/or analytical responses to the readings and writings.
Introduces key skills for effective transformation agents including: creativity and innovation; transformative communication; servant leadership; optimism and resilience, risk taking, initiative; luck; failure; and relationship building. Students create their own portfolio and commit to weekly civic engagement projects.
Addresses the most effective methods of social change. Examines principles and strategies of transformative action and case studies of leaders solving world problems. Empowers students to be innovators in real-life community projects. Integrates nonviolence, psychology, sustainability, and social justice.
For students who enrolled in the winter quarter Transformative Action course, to further investigate, research, and refine their Big Idea. Opportunity given to deepen and integrate Transformative Action principles into projects. Enrollment by instructor permission only.
Hands-on practice with basic ecological horticulture skills through work at the Kresge Garden, including soil cultivation. Enrollment by instructor approval through application (available in the Kresge College office). Enrollment limited to college members.
Develops life skills that support you and help you support others. Implement effective methods for personal productivity (managing your to-dos, calendar, and inbox), interpersonal communication, meeting facilitation, event hosting, collaboration, and regenerative community design.
Explores core themes of power and representation through the mediums of food, nature awareness, community, personal empowerment and sustainable living. Students will develop meaningful final projects in collaboration with Kresge Food Co-op, Kresge Garden Co-op, Kresge World Cafe, and projects of their own design. (Formerly Power and Representations: Food Systems.)
A course of practical guidance in developing skills and creative approaches in photography; also a group setting for critique and feedback. Students do in-class and out-of-class assignments in photography and development, discuss examples of photographic art in various communities and subgenera, and apply principles to their own work in a final portfolio. (Formerly course 65B, Power and Representation: Photography).
Students pursue collaborative or individual projects in the relationship between text, music, and performance, in pairs or groups. Areas explored include practical introductions to prosody and poetics, musical forms, text-setting, and theories of performance and reception. (Formerly course 65D: Power and Representation: Poetry and Musical Performance).
A course of guidance and exercises to assist in developing independent writing projects, and a group setting for critique and feedback. Students do in-class and out-of-class writing assignments; read and discuss texts; and work to develop a final project. (Formerly course 65C, Power and Representation: Creative Writing).
Examines the principles and processes of restorative justice juxtaposed to current practices in the judicial and educational systems of contemporary society. Students study leading restorative justice practices and their implication for individual and community transformation. Students learn to facilitate the restorative justice process restorative circles, and have the opportunity to practice them in real time. Enrollment is by instructor consent and is restricted to frosh, sophomores, and juniors.
Based on Nonviolent Communication (NVC), this experiential course offers skills in intra- and inter-personal conflict transformation by aligning with core values; understanding what motivates self and others; cultivating compassion, even under difficult circumstances; and bringing greater peace into our world.
This second seminar supports students in deepening and fine-tuning their Restorative Circle facilitation along with exploring the question What are the components of a restorative life? Students participate in the Kresge College Restorative Justice Initiative, and, during the fall quarter, offer Restorative Circles to student groups in conflict.
Examines the principles, practices, and art of hosting conversations derived from the work of Juanita Brown, David Isaacs, and the World Cafe community. Students gain experience with group facilitation, meeting design, strategic questioning, harvesting collective intelligence, graphic recording, intergenerational collaboration, and participatory action-research.
Collaborative learning in service of transitioning from an industrial growth society to a participatory, democratic, and sustainable society. Students engage with ongoing sustainability and justice projects and develop leadership skills in personal productivity, project management, communications, and facilitation. (Formerly Collaborative Learning: The Great Turning.)
Collaborative learning in service of building thriving, just, and sustainable communities locally and globally. Students engage with ongoing sustainability and justice projects and develop skills in leadership, personal productivity, project management, communications, and facilitation.
Collaborative learning in service of fostering community resilience in response to environmental and social crisis. Students engage with ongoing sustainability and justice projects and develop advanced skills in leadership, personal productivity, project management, communications, and facilitation.
Introduces students to fundamental food-system issues and opportunities. Topics include: hunger, environmental sustainability, race and gender, food and agricultural policy, local food systems, gardening and farming models, social movements, and approaches for analysis and change.
History of social documentary photography with its practice. Includes analysis of historical and contemporary images from social documentary work; camera, darkroom, and digital skill development; an individual student documentary project; and collective project discussion.
Workshop in writing memoir that connects to issues of multiculturalism, gender, and environment. Designed to hone skills in creative writing through stories that students will unify into a larger memoir.
Introduces contemporary activism on environmentalism and human rights, emphasizing the work of Laureates of the Right Livelihood Award (known internationally as the Alternative Nobel Prize) and the Right Livelihood College, whose North American campus is Kresge College.
Critical engagement of current research methodology in the humanities and arts. Coursework consists primarily of a collaborative research project that requires each student to synthesize information and sources in topics both familiar and unfamiliar. The specific methodologies presented vary by instructor across two to three disciplines, possibly including literature, history, the arts, and cultural studies. Enrollment is restricted to first-year Challenge Program participants from Stevenson College, Merrill College, Porter College, and Kresge College.
A program of directed study arranged between a first-year or sophomore student and a Kresge faculty member. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
A program of directed study arranged between a student and a Kresge faculty member. Class time is less proportional to credit given. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
A program of directed study arranged between a student and a Kresge faculty member. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Students learn practical ways of maximizing the resources of a public education and research institution. Students collaborate across disciplines, broaden impacts of higher learning, and develop strategies for effective interaction with faculty and the broader professional communities to which they aspire.
Focuses on concepts, principles, and practices of permaculture and whole systems design. Permaculture education is transdisciplinary and provides practical experience with design, ecological horticulture, regional planning, natural building, architecture, appropriate technology, aquaponics, animal husbandry, ecopsychology, and community resilience. Enrollment by application.
For first-year students, by invitation only. This class is part of the Challenge Program which provides high-achieving students with the opportunity to participate in a rigorous program emphasizing individual attention and dynamic interaction with UCSC faculty and academically motivated peers in classes, social settings, and collaborative research projects. Enrollment restricted to Kresge, Merrill, and Stevenson students enrolled in the College Challenge Programs.
Collaborative learning in service of transitioning from industrial growth society to a life-sustaining society. Students deepen their connection with nature, themselves, and community through guest lectures, intergenerational dialogue to discover collective and wise action, and engagement with long-term projects.
Collaborative learning in service of building thriving, just, and sustainable communities locally and globally. Learn about Ecovillages and reclaiming the commons while also discovering collective and wise action through guest lectures, intergenerational dialogue, and engagement with long-term projects.
Collaborative learning in service of fostering community resilience in response to peak oil. Practice hands-on skills with permaculture and transition towns while also discovering collective and wise action through guest lectures, intergenerational dialogue, and engagement with long-term projects.
Teaching of a lower-division seminar under Kresge faculty supervision. (See course 42.) Prerequisite(s): upper-division standing in Kresge, a proposal supported by a Kresge faculty member willing to supervise, and college approval.
Supervised off-campus study conducted under the immediate and direct guidance of a Kresge faculty supervisor. To be used primarily by upper-division students doing part-time, off-campus study. Prerequisite(s): approval of student's adviser and the college.
A program of independent study arranged between a group of students and a Kresge faculty member. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
Senior thesis or project for student doing individual major program. May be repeated twice for credit. Prerequisite(s): permission of sponsoring committee and college approval.
Provides for college-sponsored individual study programs off campus, for which Kresge faculty supervision is not in person (e.g., supervision is by correspondence.) Prerequisite(s): approval of the student's faculty sponsor and college approval.
A program of individual study arranged between an upper-division student and a Kresge faculty member. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.
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