Fall 2025 Learning Community

 

Making Sound Musical

“Making Sound Musical” brings together two foundation General Education courses, one from Cluster Two (GNED 1203 – Nature and Ideas) and the other from Cluster One (GNED 1103 – Innovation). Together, they approach both sound and music as scientific innovations with quantitative elements (for example sound waves, propagation in instruments, tuning, symmetries, and more qualitative humanistic elements like perception, composition, philosophy, and historical context.  The course is taught by Charles Hepler from the Department of Math and Computing and Guy Obrecht from General Education.

 

The World Through Speculative Fiction

How do we communicate about science and mathematics? How is our understanding of science and mathematics related to the way that we understand ourselves and our world?  What do science and mathematics help us to understand?  What roles do science and mathematics play in society?  We will consider these questions through the lens of speculative fiction. We will explore the future and alternative worlds through multiple media: movies, literature, games, comics and graphic novels to gain an understanding of what science is, what mathematics is and how they fit with our sense of self and humanity.  We will develop critical and creative thinking and writing skills around science and mathematics and our imaginations.

 

The Making and Unmaking of Monsters

The “Making and Unmaking of Monsters” is a Learning Community of two GNED foundation courses: GNED 1202: Text & Ideas and GNED 1401: Writing for Academic Success. Together, the courses explore iconic cultural notions of monsters and academic writing.  Using the lens of monsters, the course will walk through ancient, classic, and contemporary texts and media that highlight and examine ways that people create monsters, and how they sometimes attempt to “unmake” them.  Notions about monsters also have historical, philosophical, psychological, and scientific roots that relate to academic questions about how we perceive, and sometimes fear, that which is different from ourselves.  Through critical reflection and analysis of monster-making, students will research, reflect, and write to further their academic writing abilities and the many dimensions of the monsters of our world.