FUNDED PROPOSALS
Fall 2008
Program: Community Action and Social Change Minor
The multidisciplinary Community Action and Social Change (CASC) minor will
extend opportunities for undergraduate students to: 1) examine community action
and social change concepts using a multidisciplinary framework; 2) address
community action and social change efforts in multilingual and multicultural
communities; 3) integrate, using a multidisciplinary framework, social justice
values into the community action and social change processes; and 4) engage
in service learning opportunities to promote community action or social change
initiatives.
This multidisciplinary minor is collaboration between the School
of Social Work, the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, the Program
in American Culture, Psychology, Sociology, and the Program in Intergroup Relations,
the Residential College and the Michigan Community Scholars Program.
The CASC
minor using critical structural thinking will engage students in analyzing
types, levels and sources of power to better understand how inequities are
manifested, maintained and reinforced in society and how these inequities can
be addressed through community action and social change efforts. The CASC minor
will include:
- two foundation courses (Course A: Community Action and Social Change
Theories; Course B: Diversity Learning and Community Action and Social
Change Skills);
- a minimum of three mini courses that will address a special
issue in community action and social change that will vary each semester
(e.g., social movements; poverty and community change; participatory community
action);
- a capstone community action and social change seminar that will
use an e-portfolio process that highlights integrative learning and will
provide opportunities for students to engage in service learning in the
community; and
- a minimum of six credits to be selected from courses offered
throughout the university relevant to community action and social change.
CASC minors in the capstone
community action and social change course will join in a community action
or social change effort. Students will be linked to local community, business
and/or social service organizations to engage in helping these organizations
work toward a community action or social change goal. Community partners
may collaborate with faculty in delivering some of the mini courses and the
capstone course. Undergraduate students may take any of the courses without
declaring a minor. The only course that has pre-requisites is the capstone
seminar. The students who enroll in the capstone seminar will have completed
the two foundation courses, a minimum of three mini courses and a total of
6 credits of cognate courses.
Lead faculty member: Mary C. Ruffolo
Course: The Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic (available Winter 2011)
The global HIV/AIDS
epidemic is now at least thirty years old. UNAIDS estimates that in 2007
alone 2.1 million people died of AIDS and 2.5 million were newly infected
with HIV. In the United States, according to the latest estimates by the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, new infections totaled 55,000
per year from 2000 to 2007 and more than a million people are known to have
been diagnosed with AIDS since the epidemic was identified in 1981. Socially
stigmatized groups currently account for the largest numbers of new HIV infections
in the United States: in 2007, the last year for which figures are available,
HIV infections were 8 times higher among Blacks than among Whites and the
majority of new infections occurred among men who have sex with men.
This
course will offer an introduction to the global HIV/AIDS epidemic. It will
aim to inform students about the epidemic in all of its human, social, and
scientific dimensions. In particular, it will present what we know about
the natural history of HIV, its origins, spread, discovery, and treatment,
its social and political consequences, and the complex challenges which the
epidemic poses to the world.
In order to address the global HIV/AIDS epidemic
on the broad scale it requires, we intend to cover a range
of considerations, from structural factors of political economy and global
inequality to individual behavior. HIV is a microbiological pathogen, but AIDS
is a disease of discourse: who is infected, and who suffers from it, depends
on how it is represented. The course will therefore address the culture(s)
of HIV/AIDS, as well as historical forms of social exclusion or stigma that
have facilitated the spread of the virus. Ultimately, this course is about
the kinds of social and political systems that have made the HIV/AIDS epidemic
possible as well as the forms of power and government that have emerged, taken
shape, and been consolidated in the course of various efforts to respond to
it.
Lead faculty member: David Halperin
Course: Smartsurfaces
(available Fall 2009)
Smartsurfaces offers a collaborative, project-based learning
experience in which artists, designers, architects and engineers come together
to build physical systems and structural surfaces that have the capability
to adapt to information and environmental conditions.
The course will operate
as a multidisciplinary, hands-on think-tank where participants will pool their
knowledge and skill sets to work together to produce environmentally sound
and socially responsible projects. Public exhibition of these funded projects
will provide an opportunity for participants to present their work to a wider
audience and to review their achievements.
Projects will make use of the resources
available to all participating university units, such as: parametric modeling,
digital fabrication, networked sensors, microcontroller programming and energy
harvesting using solar cells and nanostructured materials.
The course is a
collaborative endeavor led by three professors who will advise and contribute
to all team projects. Teams will make use of visiting lecturers, specialists,
site visits and relevant stakeholder organizations.
Lead faculty member: John
Marshall
Course: Sustainable and Fossil Energy: Options
and Consequences (available August 2009)
We are exposed on a daily basis to
conflicting views on the options and consequences of various forms of energy
production. Should the United States implement a “Manhattan Project” type
of effort in alternate energy as discussed in a recent Presidential Debate?
Do we have the technology for home-owners to economically go off the grid and
generate their own power? Does “Clean Coal” live up to its name?
Is nuclear power worth the environmental cost? These are just a few of the
questions circulating though the popular media, and it is important for students
to learn more about these topics to prepare themselves for transitions in energy
production that will be shaping their future world.
This new course will be
taught at the University of Michigan’s Camp Davis Rocky Mountain Field
Station in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The facility is situated near hydroelectric
generators, wind farms, solar arrays, a nuclear reactor, gas fields, coal mines,
uranium mines, geothermal areas and oil fields. The course will integrate lectures
and laboratory exercises with visitations to energy-related facilities in the
Rocky Mountain Region. Students will benefit from seeing first-hand the engineering
requirements and the environmental impacts of a wide range of types of energy
production. Discussions will be held with individuals who work in these facilities
and grapple with the complex issues of balancing energy production with the
effects that it has on local communities.
Students will also gain a deeper
understanding of energy through hands-on experiments using alternate energy
systems that will be established at Camp Davis, and which will include a combination
of solar, wind and hydroelectric generation. We will use Camp Davis as a small
experimental “city” where energy and resource production and
use can be carefully monitored and manipulated by students. Working in small
groups students will design experiments, collect data, and draw conclusions
about the effectiveness of various alternate energy production technologies,
and also about strategies for reducing energy use in this microcosm.
Lead
faculty member: Joel Blum
Fall 2007
Program: Gender
and Health Policy (to be taught Winter 2009)
Important gender differences in health, health care access, and use of medical services have been recorded in the United States. Women and men differ considerably in the type and extent of certain health conditions. Although women in general are less likely than men to report lack of insurance coverage, women are more likely than men to experience cost barriers to medical care. Moreover, many of these gender differences evolve across lifespans.
This course will examine how gender influences health status, health care, and health policy from a feminist and sociopolitical context. Specifically, we will review the history of the major public health and welfare policies and programs in the United States and discuss the identified differences in the ways that women and men fare within the health care policy arena. In addition to reviewing the main historic, legislative, organizational, and financing bases for programs, we will address the limitations of the current health care infrastructure and programs serving both men and women. To that end, we will explore how an individual’s health care needs, access, and utilization change over their life course. Lastly, we’ll assess the effectiveness of existing programs in meeting the public needs of specific populations.
An epidemiologist and a health economist will facilitate the course, with colleagues from the Schools of Public Health, Nursing, and Medicine and health officers from the Washtenaw County Public Health Department providing supplementary lectures in their specialty areas on the intersection of gender, health policy, and program development from a life course perspective. Students will be expected to attend a two-hour lecture and one-hour discussion session once a week. Course requirements will include two exams, active participation in discussion, and the completion of a position paper on a gender and health policy topic of their choice.
Faculty contact: Anjel Vahratian
Course: Creative Process (to be taught Winter 2009)
“Creative Process” is a four-credit lecture/discussion
- studio/critique course – the first at U-M with the designation UARTS – open to
all University of Michigan students. The course provides an experiential and
conceptual foundation for the cultivation of creativity across academic fields.
Goals of the course are to help students:
- Recognize and demystify “creativity,” understanding
that it is not the province of a select few, but an inherent potential
of all humans.
- Understand that creative expression in any field is not an event but
a process that can take many different forms and has recognizable breakthrough
moments.
- Develop a first-hand knowledge of the interplay among creative impulse,
media, modes of expression, and shared meanings in the creative process.
- Develop a conceptual and contextual foundation for understanding the
creative impulse and the processes of creative work, drawing examples from
multiple cultures, disciplines, and historical periods.
- Become more confident and
creative makers and doers, able and willing throughout their private and
public lives to follow their creative process toward positive, productive,
and unforeseen ends.
The course was proposed by the Deans who direct Arts
on Earth – Christopher
Kendall, School of Music, Theatre & Dance; Dave Munson, College of Engineering;
Monica Ponce de Leon, Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning; and
Bryan Rogers, School of Art & Design – and is taught by interdisciplinary
teams of faculty from those four units.
Faculty contact: Bryan Rogers
Winter 2007
Program: Informatics (available Fall 2008)
The Program in Informatics is a new, innovative interdisciplinary undergraduate concentration, based in the College of Literature, Science & the Arts, but drawing on the expertise and disciplinary breadth of faculty in the School of Information and the Computer Science and Engineering Division in the College of Engineering. Informatics deals with the structure, behavior, and interactions of natural and artificial systems that collect, analyze, process, and communicate information for specific and explicit sets of goals, such as effective decision making or scientific analysis. It studies the intersection of people, technology and information systems. Informatics focuses on the ever-expanding relationship between the daily lives of real people and information systems, from simple systems that support personal information management to massive distributed databases manipulated in real time. The field helps design new uses for information technology that reflect and enhance the way people create, find and use information, and it takes into account the social, cultural and organizational settings in which those solutions will be used. Students who concentrate in this program will be equipped to participate fully in important emerging areas such as bioinformatics, information analysis, large-scale information management, and human-centered information systems design.
The Program in Informatics will consist of a core curriculum of five co-developed, tightly integrated, and often team-taught courses. The Core will serve as a tour of critical perspectives and investigative methodologies, an introduction to tools and techniques, and an entry point for further study. Beyond completing the core courses, students will have an opportunity to pursue one of four flexible tracks within the program:
- Information Analysis
- Social Computing
- Computational Informatics
- Life-Science Informatics
After the two-year development cycle, we expect that the new program will have about 150-200 undergraduate students.
The Program in Informatics will foster an environment where faculty with shared interests but diverse viewpoints can collaborate more extensively than they currently do, especially in the area of undergraduate education. As envisioned, students with interdisciplinary interests, but with different amounts of background in information systems engineering, information analysis, and the use of information processing in biological, societal and emerging application areas, will be attracted to the new program, endowing the program and its classroom experiences with a multidisciplinary character.
Faculty contact: Paul Conway
Fall 2006
Program: Practicum
in a Multidisciplinary World (PMW) (available Fall 2007)
The PMW Initiative’s goal is to create a structure that grows and sustains multidisciplinary opportunities that engage students in significant multi-semester development activities and which promotes an important curricular connection. Strictly as examples, projects could include the design and fabrication of a solar car to race for thousands of miles across North America and Australia, developing simple water purification methods for small remote villages, small spacecraft projects, developing aids to alleviate a physical impairment, smart home monitoring for energy efficiency, or, developing and implementing tools and resources for non-profit organizations. By their very nature, these projects are multidisciplinary and need students from across the campus. Engaging students in these type of significant, multi-semester technical and organizational efforts create tremendously valuable experiences with multiple benefits:
- Gives students broader exposure to disciplines outside of degree
- Hands on real-world experience (provide bridge from class to real-world)
- Learning how to work with others
- Engages diverse population of students
Simply put, it sends our students out into the world both wiser and better leaders at levels simply not possible by “book learning” alone. Further, we see other important benefits to many of these projects including (1) students, with appropriate guidelines, can largely manage much of a project’s day-to-day activities and, (2) mentorship of newer students by more senior students (including graduate students) follows the spirit of a “see one, do one, teach one” teaching model representing a huge - often overlooked - resource for students and their institutions. We intend to make PMW Initiative the basis of a broad initiative that is significant and available to a wide-range of students. It will be developed in a way that enables, over time, numerous interdisciplinary practicum opportunities covering a wide-range of activities such as student competitions, society driven projects, collaborations with industry, research and development driven.
The plan for the PMW Initiative can be summarized as follows:
- We propose to implement an over-arching interdisciplinary practicum concentration (IPC) or minor that , with variations, would be appropriate for students from numerous UM colleges/schools in this initiative. Undertaking a substantial interdisciplinary experience would be at the core of the concentration requirements. As such, faculty and students from multiple academic units would be associated with any multi-disciplinary project.
- We will establish and operate a council of faculty and staff that will guide the overall initiative and will oversee
- a practicum concentration/minor sub-team to develop the details and work with various academic units to adapt the practicum, and monitor its implementation
- an “outreach” sub-team focusing on developing broader collaborations among university units and creation of an infrastructure to promote new practicum opportunities, and
- a sustainability sub-team to develop and implement a process for attracting outside support and developing a viable internal cost structure
- We are establishing two pilot-projects involving faculty from different disciplines that provide a path for meeting the practicum concentration/minor and hope to propose others in the future. These first pilot-projects are:
- Design for the Greater Good
- Space Systems
Faculty contact: Brian Gilchrist
Course: Applied
Complex Systems: Emergent Challenges (to be taught Fall 2008)
Many of the biggest challenges facing the modern world: global warming and sustainability, epidemics, terrorism, and the impacts of technology and globalization can be formally characterized as complex. They’re the product of diverse agents and/or entities that interact in spatial temporal frameworks in which positive and negative feedbacks produce emergent structures (such as epidemics and hurricanes) and path dependent outcomes. Confronting these challenges requires an understanding of the properties of complex systems.
In this course, students learn the fundamental properties of complex adaptive systems and apply that knowledge to meeting the aforementioned challenges. The course consists of three parts. In the first part, we provide an overview of complex systems theory and concepts. This material requires familiarity and comfort with some basic mathematics, but nothing beyond basic probability and algebra. In the second part, we introduce and analyze models. For example, students will learn (i) the SIR model of infectious disease to help them understand relationships between the numbers of susceptible (S), infected (I), and recovered (R) in the population (ii) network based models of inequality and information spread (iii) models of self organized criticality and (iv) systems dynamics models of negative and positive feedbacks. Our goal is to present these models three ways: with mathematics, computation, and experimentation. In the experimental setting, students will have to interact within a complex system and attempt to harness its potential. In the third part of the course, subject matter experts present cutting edge research on the aforementioned global challenges, which will be interpreted through the theoretical lenses developed earlier. For example, students will learn about the complex relationship between ecosystem diversity and robustness and relate their theoretical insights to empirical evidence from real ecosystems.
Students will be expected to work with these models and to think critically about how to apply them in the real world. They’ll be encouraged to think about potential solutions to these challenges as well as the social, political, and economic implications of their proposed policies. That thinking will be informed by, in fact guided by, the formal models they’ve acquired during the semester.
Faculty contact: Scott Page
Winter 2006
Course: Public Policy
201—Systematic Thinking About The Problems of the Day
(to be taught Fall 2006)
Systematic thinking (largely from the social sciences, but application of scientific methods and knowledge more generally) can make a difference in the way that we encode and try to solve current problems. Formal modeling can be very helpful in the real world. This course will teach students that many difficult problems facing society can be made at least somewhat tractable through the use of relevant expertise and analytical methods. The course will cover five current policy issues, each presented by a member of the U-M faculty with relevant expertise. The faculty members come from four different schools and colleges.
Faculty contact: Paul Courant
Course: Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Course on Contemporary Social Issues in Southeast Asia
(to be taught Winter 2007)
Southeast Asia, a ten-country region of 600 million people including 250 million Muslims (the world’s largest regional concentration after South Asia), is at the forefront and center of a host of global social, political, environmental, and public health problems and issues. These include: bird flu, SARS and AIDS; human, women’s and children’s rights; labor standards and international migration; environmental degradation from rapid urban-industrial and agrarian development; ethnic and religious diversity and conflict; post-socialist economic and social transition, democratization and terrorism; and associated cultural and artistic transformations.
The University of Michigan has one of the U.S.’ leading Southeast Asian Studies programs; with a U.S. Department of Education-funded Title VI National Resource Center for Southeast Asian Studies from 1961–2006; 29 non-language (23 tenure-track) language faculty in seven liberal arts departments and six professional schools; four language faculty teaching all levels of the most widely spoken regional languages (Indonesian/ Malay, Vietnamese, Filipino, and Thai); the second-largest university library collection—and the largest museum collection—of Southeast Asia materials in the country; and probably the largest/most distinguished alumni base in the region of any U.S. university.
This course aims to leverage these unique resources, thus far heavily concentrated on graduate education, for the benefit of our undergraduates, including pre-professional students, who are interested in the topics listed above, and/or in Southeast Asia, but do not currently have access to the requisite courses or faculty expertise. The course will be an important vehicle to introduce undergraduates to the relevance of Southeast Asia to global social, health, and environmental issues and vice versa, and to encourage some
of them to enroll in our Southeast Asia language offerings, and the Southeast Asia area concentration and minor offered by the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures.
Faculty contact: Linda Lim
Proposals for activities starting Fall 2008 are due December 14, 2007. The focus for this funding cycle is on professional school faculty engaging in undergraduate education. Submitted proposals will be reviewed by the Multidisciplinary Learning and Team Teaching Steering Committee. Incomplete or insufficient proposals will be treated as pre-proposals and, if possible, the committee will provide feedback on ways to strengthen the application. Within two months of submission of a completed application the steering committee will communicate with proponents before making funding recommendations to the Provost. The Provost will make the final funding decisions.
Questions regarding the details of proposal preparation should be sent to:
Stephanie Riegle, Senior Project Manager
email: sbrugler@umich.edu
phone: 615-6737
Questions regarding the evaluation and decision process should be sent to:
Ben van der Pluijm, Chair of MLTT Steering Committee
email: vdpluijm@umich.edu
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