There will be a number of Mini-Courses offered beginning on Monday afternoon. Note that during the same time period when Mini-Courses are held, the legislature will meet. Therefore, no one who is elected to either the House or the Senate can take a Mini-Course. These topics will vary and will provide a much greater opportunity for discussion than is the case with general education or electives. A sample course list and descriptions are below.
Freakonomics: Finding the Rationality in Some of Life’s Most Irrational Decisions
What do Galileo Galilei and Randy Moss have in common? When should you park in a fire lane? Why did the addition of seatbelts in cars result in more auto related deaths? How are crack cocaine and the Whopper similar? Why might compulsive gamblers make the best savers? The answers to these questions and more can be discovered through economics. Come uncover the economics behind sex, drugs, rock and roll, crime, addiction, altruism, greed and dating. Along the way, you’ll learn real economic principles such as: supply and demand, diminishing marginal utility, indifference, scale and substitution effects, skewness, compensating differentials, game theory and Nash equilibria. As a bonus, I’ll teach you all how to win $1 million dollars on the TV show “Survivor”.
The Citizen
It was Thomas Jefferson who stated “were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” This course will focus on exercising the constitutional right to freedom of the press by publishing a daily newspaper, the Citizen. The paper will include news, sports, and editorial sections. There will also be opportunities to work with photo, layout, and design.
Let’s Talk: Public Speaking and Debate
The objective of this course is to use video and textbooks to show some of the finer points of making speeches with the point of helping them in their campaign. This is not a class to help write speeches to specifically. This mini-course is designed to show common mistakes as well many famous speeches in real life, in movies and in theater. This class is aimed towards those who want to run for office, but would like some pointers before they take the stage.
International Relations
Have you ever considered that the era of the Cold War was actually marked by the longest absence of war between major powers? Have you ever questioned the role and legitimacy of international institutions? The study of International Relations can answer questions about why and how nations interact in the global community. This course will examine the primary schools of thought of international relations as well as assess historical and contemporary issues that can be examined from an international perspective.
Climate Negotiation
Despite disagreement in the United States, climate change is recognized by governments around the world and by international organizations as a pressing issue requiring immediate attention. Through a simulation in which students will represent countries at a climate treaty negotiation, this course will familiarize participants with the problem at hand, how the global community has responded, and how international politics has and may come into play.