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This SYE focuses on the interaction between communication practices in the 21st century and people as they act in social contexts. Communication is still the social glue that holds together nations, corporations, scientific disciplines, and families. Communication also remains the source of problems when people fail to understand each other, fail to agree, and fail to act. New communication technology does not necessarily make communication more effective, more persuasive or more ethical. We will explore the role communication plays in our lives as professionals and individual actors, across a wide variety of contexts: entertainment, information and social media, business and organizational life, politics, family life, globalization. We will 1) consider seminal theories about why we communicate, what we communicate about and how we communicate to individuals and large populations; 2) analyze cases in 21st century communication situations and how our disciplinary backgrounds influence what we understand and how we understand it; 3) assess how each of us relate to the personal and social communication networks in which are we enmeshed; and 4) evaluate how all of this bears on our development as persons and professionals acting in the communities in which we live. The goal of this course is to empower you to make better informed choices as you engage messages and technologies, and individuals, groups, and communities as a citizen whose choices will affect the lives of the people and organizations you interact with on a daily basis.
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The world we experience is the product of our individual perceptions. We invent this world through our emerging sense of self. This development is not created in isolation; rather we incorporate influences of family, gender roles, ethnic heritage, personal surroundings, and culture. We accept and react to those influences; we frame personal myths and rituals; we shape our strengths and dreams; and from these, we devise our self-driven perceptions—our worlds—forming narratives of our individual pasts and our futures. SYE 4002 is an inquiry; we will discover the individual worlds we have created—the individual selves we have invented and will invent—largely through personal narratives which will serve as a means of tracing the development of the selves we inhabit and projecting the selves we will create into the future. Then as part of this process—through a service-learning experience—we will take a group of senior citizens through a similar set of brief narratives through which they will also examine their personal narratives. We will write a series of life stories—memoirs/personal essays—all from the class by class series of brief personal reflections—some of which will be written in class—and a final essay aimed at projecting our individual pasts and our learning at Otterbein into our futures. Self-reflection and insight gained from these explorations will help us to understand our individual places in the Postmodern, Post-9/11 world where truth is not found, but made. The class will be conducted, primarily, as a workshop.
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The Face of AIDS is a course that focuses on the global crisis of HIV/AIDS, the reach and impact of which continues to grow. The primary goal of the SYE course is to have students appreciate and confront the complexity of the AIDS epidemic by exploring the obstacles to addressing the AIDS epidemic on a personal level and in the local, national, and global communities. This course will not only provide each student with a comprehensive, interdisciplinary understanding of the disease and the role it plays in a contemporary global society, but also challenge and empower them to take action. The course includes a service-learning component.
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This course is an integrated service-learning course which establishes the conceptual basis and need for forming, joining, and participating in non-profit and social service organizations. Students examine the history of these endeavors, survey concepts and reflect on form and reflect on their definitions of “altruism” and “community,” and review the current status of their participation in volunteer and non-profit organizations. Then, students concentrate their efforts on group consulting projects. Students work as members of a small group consulting team or as members of the whole-class consulting team. The team or teams will be assigned a non-profit or social service organization that wishes to improve its effectiveness as an organization, and each group applies Appreciative Inquiry or another highly recognized consulting strategy in developing a plan for leading the organization through a change process. The course requires weekly personal response papers. These individual essays will be folded into the group organizational development plans. Students create autobiographical portfolios which include their personal conceptions of the transitions they will experience as they are graduated from Otterbein and their projections of the roles they will play in the future. Group and individual presentations are required.
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In this course, students examine the historical migration of Appalachians into Midwestern cities and the contemporary experiences of Appalachians in Cincinnati and Columbus. The course asks students to call on may perspectives including their own, and to use many disciplines, including sociology, psychology, literature, communication science, nursing, education, and business, to consider the nature and results of cultural encounters between rural and urban in Westerville and Columbus, a microcosm for such encounters in national and global contexts. Students must be active participants in the class, committed to acting upon what they learn. Students study academic materials, investigate policies and agencies practice ethnographic description, and work together to propose solutions to the problems and issues they themselves discover and consider important. Students also reflect on their own cultural encounters and transitions as they study and observe the cultural encounters and transitions of others.
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Also called Edu-tainment and Entertainment-Education, Media for Social Change uses the techniques of drama, advertising print and broadcasting to weave education messages into entertainment programs. The class is open to students from all disciplines. The class will partner with a local community organization to develop a viable media project available to the public. Projects will be group-driven with most of the work done in class. Depending upon the size and talents of the group, the class may produce any of the following: self-contained soap opera, mini-drama, commercial-length public service announcements or an entire package of media approaches focused on one social issue.
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Various kinds of systemic inequality persist in contemporary American society. That is, some forms of inequality are not merely a matter of personal behavior, belief, or preference; rather, they are deeply ingrained in our institutions and/or belief system. Examples (or symptoms) of such inequities include income inequality between men and women, racism in the criminal justice system, racial and ethnic biases in hiring by private companies, cultural bias in standardized testing, unequal access to basic health care, radical differences in funding between public schools, and the practice of “redlining” by banks and insurance companies. In this course, students spend the first part of the semester studying racial inequality in twentieth-century America, focusing on historical, literary, and social scientific literature written by Americans of various ethnicities. This historical inquiry will focus on specific events, including the Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924, the G. I. Bill, Brown v. Board of Education and the desegregation of schools, and the “War on Drugs.” This part of the course will culminate with small groups choosing a major event from twentieth-century American history and creating a study of how this event was impacted by beliefs about race and ethnicity, and/or how this event changed or affected understandings of race and ethnicity. Each such analysis must include at least three different disciplinary perspectives on the chosen event. Students will work with students from other disciplinary backgrounds. In the second part of the course, each student will identify a structural inequality that exists in contemporary society, and that she will encounter in her professional life. Each student will write a factual report in which she defines and explains this form of inequality. The student will then put together an action plan in which she will outline some form of action to redress the chosen issue, aimed at the reform of workplace or professional practices.
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This class is intended to have students gain "real world" experience related to decision-making and project management issues typically encountered by environmental professionals and citizens. The structure of the class emphasizes the multidisciplinary approach to solving environmental problems with participants having varied levels of experience. Specific projects and case studies are selected to demonstrate that economic and social issues are often much more difficult than the environmental solutions. This class is open to all students and is recommended for Environmental Studies Program students. Prerequisite: instructor permission or Senior standing.
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In this course we will discuss the apparent tension between religion and a secular or scientific world view. We will focus on three key themes. First, we will discuss recent atheist criticisms of religious belief from the new "brights" movement. Then we will turn our attention to the question of the role of personal religious belief in public life, and attempt to answer questions like the following: Is it appropriate to support public policies that are based in religious beliefs that aren't shared by all members of a society? How should we understand restrictions on the establishment of religion found, for instance, in the United States constitution? How can we best organize a religiously diverse society? Finally, we will look at the global level and the interactions between secular and religious states. Here we will try to come to a better understanding of the diversity of religious practices and customs, and attempt to come up with a set of policies that might help us guide the interactions between states and cultures with diverse religious practices and beliefs.
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The proposed course is designed to educate students on the social and political correlates of the presidential election process, focusing on the presidential election in November 2012. Special topics will include voting behaviors, the role of PACs and special interest groups, political advertising, and the Electoral College. Because the election takes place before the end of the quarter, students will have an opportunity to also analyze the outcomes of the elections in terms of the above topics as well. Students will also get hands on experience by working at polling places or volunteering with campaigns of their choice.
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This course will first of all explore the historical roots of our tradition of service. We will study the origin and growth of the United Brethren in Christ in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including its involvement in the causes of Abolition and of missions, and its response to liberal theology and the social gospel, its stance on Prohibition, and its engagement with education. On that basis we will explore the church's continuing involvement in issues of social and economic morality and justice and the continued evolution of missions and international service, through two church mergers that eventually brought the United Brethren in Christ together with the Methodists to form the United Methodist Church.
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In 1900 the imperial capital of Austria-Hungary exploded with energy, wealth, sex, intellect, and power. The streets of Vienna teemed with the intriguing sounds of languages from the multi-national Habsburg Empire. In the coffee houses patrons rubbed shoulders with giants like Freud, Mahler, Klimt, Schnitzler, and Wittgenstein. Now, in the years following 2000, Vienna has recovered from the devastation of war and the straightjacket of the fallen Iron Curtain, and bright, striving, young people from the new lands of the European Union, from Prague, Budapest, Warsaw, and Istanbul flock again to the city to seek their fortunes.
Some residents fear and resent these outsiders, but others welcome them as a return to "normal times" when Vienna was the capital of a multi-ethnic empire. In fact, not unlike our own country, Austria is engaged in an intense debate about immigration and multi-culturalism. This course will examine culture, conflict, and identity, the contexts and consequences of being Viennese in these two remarkable historic moments, 1900 and the years following 2000.
The class will meet for orientation four Sunday afternoons (4pm-6pm) at the end of Fall Semester, then students will travel to Vienna, Austria, and Budapest, Hungary, for J-Term. Living and learning in an awe-inspiring working monastery in the heart of Vienna. With the city as their campus, students will explore the riches and poverty, the beauty and ugliness, the opportunities and the daunting challenges that faced Vienna and its people then in 1900 and that face it now.
As in all SYE courses, the learning process will include thoughtful reflection about the college experience and the transition to life after college, including life direction and goals. The course will use multidisciplinary readings and discussions, and it will be team-taught by course coordinators and other faculty members and guests, including distinguished Austrian scholars.
Students will learn basic traveler’s German, but all readings and classes will be in English. The city is well equipped to assist English-speaking visitors, and students will find that Viennese whom they meet are eager to speak English. Permission of instructor required. Criteria for admitting students include academic achievement, good campus citizenship, focus of interest in the topic, balance among majors, availability of lodging for men and women; previous study of German not required, but a plus. Requires meetings during Fall Semester.
FAQs about this course
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This four-credit hour course is to provide the students with a one-month immersion experience in Argentina and Uruguay. In addition to incorporating the SYE processes of Act, Reflect, and Transition, students will attend language classes that develop their communication skills in Spanish, at their own personal level of ability. Students will work on mentored projects that combine their areas of interest with a broader interdisciplinary theme. This experience will allow students to learn about the culture of the region in the context of their major, whether nursing, business, humanities, science, sciences, communications, fine arts, and modern language.
This course combines four pre-departure and one post-travel set of classes, and four weeks off campus. The pre-travel classes in the fall will give students the opportunity to explore the historical, political, cultural and economic attributes of the region, facilitate team building; cultivate intercultural skills and awareness, and discuss different aspects of the international experience. The traveling part of the course will be offered in J term for 4 weeks; three weeks will include extensive immersion in language courses and project- based learning. Students will immerse themselves in Argentinian cultural events, music, dance, art, history, contemporary political and economic issues. Students will experience life in Argentina and what it means to live and work as a member of their chosen profession in Latin America. Permission of instructor required.
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This course examines causes of social oppression and specific tenets and models of social justice, social responsibility, and social change. Through course readings, films, discussions, guest speakers, visits to and/or volunteer work at local nonprofit organizations, students will form their understanding of social justice and practice social responsibility. Then for a week, the class will travel to an off-site location where students will immerse themselves in visiting and volunteering with organizations that are working to promote social justice. As part of this experience, students will begin to understand some of the root causes of specific social challenges and be introduced to agencies and individuals who are working on behalf of those who are impacted. As part of the course content, students will explore specific tenets and models of social oppression, social justice, and social change from their individual academic disciplines. In the process, the students will identify their personal spheres of influence and specific action steps they may ultimately take to transform the social fabric. In addition to the weeklong trip, students are required to meet for a final wrap-up session upon their return to campus.
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This SYE course will examine how humans understand and relate to the nature of Belize. The course will integrate a scientific perspective of how reefs and rainforest function, and a psychological perspective of how humans relate to nature, from the vantage of Americans and several different Belizean ethnic groups. The course is a travel SYE designed to follow the Integrative Studies dyad Understanding Nature: Ecological and psychological perspectives with a dual focus. (NOTE: The first offering in January 2012 will not have the Integrative Studies dyad as a requirement.)
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This course explores the history, culture and health care of Britain organized around several on-line assignments, several in person classes and a two-week tour of England. Through course assignments and visits, students examine British history, culture, and health care. They compare how recent changes in health care delivery have impacted both British and American societies. The students complete a course project and a reflective assignment as part of the course requirements. (International travel required; extra fee required.)
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Co-requisite enrollment in off-campus study program; junior or senior standing. Check with SYE Program Director for details.
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Pre-requisite successful completion of SYE 4751 and senior standing. Check with SYE Program Director for details.
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A seminar designed for seniors who are enrolled in departmental internships. The class is designed to give you a chance to share concerns and issues related to your internships, to provide time for active reflection on the lessons and skills you have learned and are learning, and discuss issues related to your transitions to life after college (including finding jobs, developing career plans, transitioning to your first job, relationships, financial issues and others.) You will also have an opportunity to apply and further develop skills in groups and teams through work on team projects chosen by the class. Co-requisite: Enrollment in a departmental internship (DEPT 4900) for at least 4 semester hours. SYE 4900 may be taken during the semester of the internship or the semester following.