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Fall 2008 FYE Course Descriptions
The First Year Experience (FYE) at Guilford College includes an FYE 101 course and an FYE 102 course. The FYE 101 course is an introduction to the Guilford curriculum and is taught by the student's academic adviser. These four-credit courses explore various topics through significant interdisciplinary study. The FYE 102 course is a one-credit course assisting students with making connections with the Guilford community and with adjusting to the college community.
It is important for students to read each of the FYE 101 course descriptions carefully before selecting their course because FYE 101 is the only course that cannot be changed. Some of the courses have special requirements of students. For example, several of the FYE courses require day-long or overnight field trips and some require living in a specific residence hall to form learning communities beyond the classrooms.
The following FYE 101 courses are being offered this fall semester. The course descriptions and faculty biographies should assist students in selecting their course. Students may contact the faculty directly by e-mail if they have specific concerns about a course.
NEW Stories of Medicine: Discovery of Modern Drugs
Class meets Tuesday & Friday, 10:00 – 11:15
People discover medicines, and the development of any new medicine is a human story as well as a scientific one. In this course, we’ll look at the stories and science behind the discoveries of several modern medicines that have made a huge impact on human health over the past century. For example, penicillin antibiotics have changed the way we view disease, and the “Pill” oral contraceptive has had a tremendous effect on reproductive freedom. We’ll also study the contrast between different avenues of drug discovery; from finding medicines from plants in the Amazon rainforest to high-tech methods involving designing a drug based on its biochemical target. Some of the people behind the medicines that we’ll be studying are: Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, Carl Djerassi, the “father” of the Pill, and Mark Plotkin, advocate for the value of traditional medicine as a route for drug discovery. In this course, we will use books, movies, and articles to explore the stories behind modern medicines. Some books we’ll read include “Tales of Shaman’s Apprentice”, “The Mold in Dr. Florey’s Coat” and “The Pill.” In addition, we’ll take at least one field trip to a pharmaceutical company in the area, as well as walking the Guilford College woods in search of medicinal plants.
Anne Glenn and Rob Whitnell have been chemistry professors at Guilford College since the early 1990s. Anne is a North Carolina native who received her B.S. in chemistry from N. C. State University, then headed to College Station, Texas where she earned her Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Texas A&M University. She then for three years was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Oregon before coming to Guilford. While in Oregon, she performed research in medicinal chemistry and developed a love for hiking in the Coast Range and Cascade mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Since coming to Guilford she has developed courses ranging from "Medicinal Chemistry" to "Chemistry of Food and Cooking" to "Women Scientists in the U.S.” She is also one of the pre-health professions advisors at Guilford, and greatly enjoys working with students interested in pursuing careers in the health professions. Rob grew up in Southern California, received his B.A. in chemistry-physics from Reed College in Oregon and his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Chicago. After his postdoctoral work at UC San Diego, Rob came to Guilford to teach chemistry and computing. Anne and Rob were married in 1996 and share a house with their two cats, Bob and Linus, while Anne takes care of the cooking and gardening, Rob handles the cleanup and the computers, and they share an unfortunate addiction to reality television.
NEW Gaelic/Irish Culture and Telling the Story of Your Own Tribe
Class meets Tuesday & Friday, 10:00-11:15
In telling our stories we merge our myths and imagination with facts according to our feelings. All “truths’ are only our truths because we bring to the facts our experinces and wishes. However, these individual stories come together to form a fundamental layer, and through these stories we see the trace elements of every tribe on earth. In this course we will tell our own and our tribe’s stories, as we study Gaelic/Irish culture. We will start with the Celtic myth, The Tain. We will read Irish authors such as James Joyce, W. B. Yeats, Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney. We will look at Irish history from the Celts to the Great Hunger to the Irish fight for Independence through film. We will watch traditional Irish sports, Gaelic football and hurling, try traditional set dancing and listen to Irish music. We will examine Celtic art and monastic architecture. We will talk about the Irish language, which is the official language of Ireland, and look at the stories behind place names. The Irish called the storyteller a Seanchai, and we will tell our stories in that oral tradition.
In addition to readings, group work and presentations, the course will require journal writing and one research project. We will learn how to write a college-level research paper from the first discussions of topic to scholarly research to a final thesis-driven paper. We will work in groups often and spend time and energy cultivating community among class members. The class will emphasize class participation and oral presentations.
You are invited to take this course and take a classroom trip to a beautiful little island at the edge of Europe: Ireland.
Sandra Winters: I have been teaching writing at Guilford in the English Department for twenty-two years. I took my first journey to Ireland in 1996 and was immeditatly taken with the people, the landscape, the ancient history. For the last twelve years I have returned to Ireland several times a year and have studied at University College Cork. I now own a house in Millstreet, County Cork, Ireland, and spend about four months of the year there. In addition to my Irish interest and teaching, I enjoy writing poetry, reading, walking and travel.
Class meets Tuesday & Friday, 10:00-11:15
There are no questions more crucial for a person than, “Who am I?” and “How can I best live and work in the world?” And there is perhaps no better place than college to explore those questions. When you have found your personal answer to these two questions, you have discovered your vocation, or “calling.”
This course focuses on the quest for that answer. Therefore, we will explore methods of discerning vocation, and study the lives of several remarkable people, real and fictional, who struggled with these same questions and came to amazing answers of their own. At the end of the class, you will have acquired some questions and frameworks for pursuing your own personal vocational quest over the next four years (and beyond!).
Our work will take us on a selective journey through the fields of history, literature and religious studies. Among other works, we’ll read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Confederates in the Attic, and the autobiography of musician Johnny Cash. In addition to such normal class activities as discussion, research, and writing, we will take at least one weekend trip together (Aug. 29-31) and you’ll create an e-portfolio of achievements and turning points in your life.
Perhaps the most significant (and unusual) component of this course will be the amount of time and energy we spend cultivating a sense of community among class members. Ultimately, the search to know oneself, one’s gifts and one’s calling necessitates becoming well known by others. To accomplish this purpose, as well as to enrich our in-class learning, students who enroll in “The Search for a Life’s Work” will live together in the same residence hall wing.
Finally, one of the basic assumptions of this course is that students from all walks of life can make use of the language of faith to explore their inner worlds and to translate their deepest concerns and desires into satisfying work. So we will define “faith” broadly as making or discovering meaning for oneself in the world. We will also devote significant time to developing both a personal language with which to describe our inner experience and a common language in which to talk with each other about that experience.
My hope is that this course will attract a diverse group of students. If your college experience is going to be powerful, sooner or later you will have meaningful encounters with peers who see the world in remarkably different ways. Living and learning together will help us to make the most of those encounters!
NOTE: This FYE course has a requirement that the students in the class live in Binford Hall on the same floor and wing. Because this FYE course has the residential component, instructor permission to add this course is required. Please contact Scott before registering.
NOTE: This FYE requires field trips.
Scott Pierce Coleman: I followed my calling to Guilford in the summer of 2002, where I now direct the Quaker Leadership Scholars Program and teach a variety of courses on vocation, among other projects. I have taught – in and out of the classroom -- for the past fifteen years in Quaker educational institutions, including Olney Friends School and Earlham College. My personal loves include Japanese language and culture, music, travel (I specialize in the road trip), the study of youth culture, and American history. I am also a passionate student of racquetball, which I would be happy to teach you, or be taught!. I live two convenient blocks from campus with my wife, Loren, and our three children, Max, Micah and Emma.
Class meets Monday & Wednesday, 10:00-11:15
The performing arts have throughout history helped human beings to examine themselves by reflecting with special insight the societies that produced them. Evolved from religious rituals in which communities gathered to share enacted experiences, the performing arts reveal a society’s soul. In this class we will look at significant artistic trends in popular twentieth century and contemporary performance, sometimes relating them to earlier forms. Is Survivor, for instance, our contemporary version of a Roman gladiator game? Does reality television indicate a lack of purpose in contemporary drama, an uncertainty about the current role of storytelling? What does a Franz Ferdinand concert do for its audience? Why did modern American dance emerge when it did? What was the significance of Oklahoma, Sweeney Todd, or Rent? Why have home theatres grown in popularity since 9/11? What function does Madonna fulfill in our culture? Meryl Streep? Keanu Reeves? Star Wars? Why are James Blunt’s videos so popular with teenagers? Why did Frank Sinatra cross generations successfully for over fifty years? How did Charlie Chaplin’s work give films a new significance? Will live performance survive in an age of technology? We will explore topics like these in class and attempt through our research and writing to identify the role the performing arts currently play in our communal search for meaning. If you love the performing arts –theatre, film, television, music, and dance- I think you’ll enjoy this course. You will be exploring, researching, and writing about subjects that are important to you, and you may come to understand their significance from many new perspectives.
Hi, and welcome. I’m David Hammond. I joined the faculty of Guilford College as Professor of Theatre Studies in January of 2007, after many years teaching at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Yale School of Drama, the American Conservatory Theatre, and the Juilliard School Drama Division. I continue to teach part-time for the New York University Graduate Acting Program and the American Repertory Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard, but it is undergraduate teaching that I find the most stimulating and challenging, and I am invigorated by Guilford’s wonderfully committed students and the nurturing Guilford community. I’ve worked as a director in the professional theatre for over three decades throughout the United States and abroad, but I have also always taught, and teaching is an essential part of my artistic life. Helping a student grasp a concept for the first time is very exciting for me, and seeing a student take possession of a methodology and begin to use it creatively is my greatest joy.
I’m passionate about theatre and performance and fascinated by their relationship to a society’s perception of itself. My work has taken me to Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, the United Kingdom, and many European countries, so I’ve had the opportunity to examine at first hand the role the performing arts play in many cultures. I’m eager to explore with a group of students what our American popular forms of entertainment tell us about ourselves, our aspirations, and our needs.
I did my own undergraduate work at Harvard University and my graduate work at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Class meets Monday & Wednesday, 10:00-11:15
College sports could easily be described as an obsession for millions of fans. John Gerdy has characterized college sports as the “All-American Addiction.” He very well may be right; just take a look at how the country reacts to “March Madness” and bowl games. We value intercollegiate sports for their ability to bring campus communities together, for their economic benefits to campuses and communities, and for their entertainment of students, faculty, administrators, and millions of others. But, do intercollegiate sports really have an educational value? Isn’t that the purpose of college? How should college sports fit into the institutions of higher education? How can these sports be reformed to exemplify the ideals of higher education? This course will critically examine the roles intercollegiate sports and their effects on students, faculty, and administrators. For our purposes, we will use various lenses to delve into what is perhaps the most visible and scrutinized aspects of higher education. Some of the topics will cover are the commercialization of college sport, the role of athletics in achieving the educational mission in higher education, and the role of athletics in attracting students to institutions. Additionally, we will explore alternatives for reforming intercollegiate athletics. We will read and discuss texts that are supportive of and critical of the use of sport in higher education.
Required Texts:
J. Douglas Toma’s Football U.: Spectator Sports in the Life of the American University
John R. Gerdy’s Air Ball: American Education’s Failed Experiment with Elite Athletics
Clay Harshaw is the Coordinator of the First Year Experience™ at Guilford College. A member of the Guilford College faculty since 1998, he began his career at the college as a Visiting Instructor in the Sport Studies Department where he taught courses for the Sport Management major and served as the Chairperson. He earned his BS in Business Administration from Newberry College and his MA in Sport Management from Appalachian State University. He is currently completing his doctorate at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Exercise & Sport Science with a focus on the role intercollegiate athletics have on the retention of students.
Playing with Legos® is Not Just for Kids (Programming Constructs & Logic)
Class meets Monday & Wednesday, 10:00-11:15
This course will look at introductory logic and concepts utilized to build modern day software, in order to gain an appreciation and understanding for what software can do and why it can cost so much; we will focus on design, construction and testing. To accomplish this goal, we will work with Lego Mindstorms, a robotics kit developed by the Lego Group. If you are not aware, the word Lego is the abbreviation of two Danish words, “leg godt”, which mean to “play well”—in this course, you will have a chance to play! Working in pairs, students will have the opportunity to build various robots, generate several programs, and see what activities they can have the robot perform (your only limit will be your creativity and understanding that software has limits). In addition to programming and building robots, we will read literary works from the past and fictitious writings forecasting where software, robots, and AI are moving, in order to set a framework that allows us to discuss ethical, social, and philosophical issues that computers bring to our everyday lives. NOTE: This course is challenging! It will require intensive effort both in and out of class to learn how to think logically and how to work with the robotic system.
Hi, I’m Chris Johnson, a recent transplant to the south, and have been part of the Guilford community for 3 years. I was born and raised in Minnesota, and spent the majority of my 40 years residing in various parts of the state. I earned an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Saint Mary’s University of MN and a Master’s degree in Software Engineering (MSE) from the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. During my lifetime, I have had numerous professions: software engineer, VP of sales and marketing, mortician’s assistant to name a few, and for the past 9 years teaching others my passion: computing and computer programming.
Outside of work (and being a computer junkie), I am passionate about the outdoors. I hike, camp, geo-cache, SCUBA, bike, and participate in various other outdoor activities. Because teaching is my true passion, I also teach winter camping and winter survival. Additionally, I used to guide small groups of people into the winter wilderness for up to a week at a time, and let them experience what -38°f really felt like (that is actual temperatures, not wind-chill!). While teaching them how to endure/tolerate the cold, I would show them world-class ice fishing with some of the biggest fish in MN. Come check out a few of the photos in my office sometime!
Class meets Tuesday, Thursday, & Friday, 10:00-10:50
What makes a place a home? What do we need to feel at home? This course will explore connection and attachment to place – including house, garden, and community. We will start out the class by considering the structures that we call home and examine the choices one makes when designing and building such structures. We will then consider the foods we associate with home, and will focus particularly on gardening and farming. Finally, we will discuss community and culture and reflect on the role of intention and commitment in developing a sense of home.
Students will read and reflect on the concept of home, but we will also get out of our heads and into the physical reality of home. Students will live together in a suite and will get hands on experience with balancing their own needs with those of the community. Students will also participate in many experiential activities outside the regularly scheduled class time, including a camping trip, a visit to a farmer’s market, walks in the woods, and volunteer work building or renovating a house. Students will be encouraged to understand different conceptualizations of home and to evaluate and refine their own beliefs on what makes a place a home.
NOTE: Required field trips are scheduled on weekends in this section of FYE. One trip is an overnight camping trip that will begin at 5:20 PM on Saturday, August 23 and return on Sunday, August 24 by 6:00 PM.
NOTE: This FYE course has a requirement that the students in the class live in Binford Hall on the same floor and wing. Because this FYE course has the residential component, instructor permission to add this course is required. Please contact Eva before registering.
Eva Lawrence – I grew up in a suburb of Chicago, IL and received my B.S. in Psychology from Loyola University Chicago. I did my graduate training in clinical psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. During graduate school, I had many escapist fantasies about “shucking it all” and moving to the country and growing my own food. My husband and I did actually buy land in central Virginia and built a small cabin using alternative homebuilding techniques (cordwood construction with an earth roof). After completing my Ph.D., we lived in the cabin for about a year – with no indoor plumbing or electricity! We have since built a slightly more conventional house. My experience with the joy and pain of this process is what prompted me to teach this class.
Class meets Tuesday & Friday, 10:00-11:15
“I see to it that I’m inspired by eight every morning”
Henri Matisse
What inspires people to create? Do we have to wait for the proverbial lighting bolt to strike, or can we actually cause it to happen? Whether or not they have considered themselves “artists”, certain people have always drawn upon their inner resources to make something complete and satisfying to them. Their unique creations deepen their understanding of themselves and enrich the world.
In this course, we will combine hands-on art exercises with art history as we read, journal, and take field trips to gain a deeper understanding of how inspiration can be cultivated. We will study examples of how artists in a variety of disciplines get their ideas and then develop them into finished pieces. Our primary texts will be Twentieth-Century American Art by Erika Doss, and The Creative Habit by the choreographer (and birthright Quaker) Twyla Tharp.
This will primarily be a class for students who care about the visual arts and the creative process. However, it is not an “art class”. It is an art/art history class, with equal emphasis placed on both disciplines. Be prepared to do several art projects, in addition to studying and writing about recent art history. We will use problem solving and brainstorming techniques, in combination with free association, to conjure and refine creative art ideas. Individual and group work will result in several finished mixed media projects. An ongoing sketchbook project will record your first semester of college. We will also investigate some pertinent art movements and periods. You will write several papers about these eras and the ideas that inspired the artists to create.
NOTE: A required field trip to local art galleries is scheduled for Saturday, August 23.
David Newton has taught at Guilford for five years. In 2007 he was awarded the Bruce B. Stewart Award for Excellence in Teaching. He was raised as a Quaker in Northern California, but has spent most of his adult life in New York and New England. He received an MFA in Sculpture from Bard College, and studied painting and printmaking at the Art Students League and Pratt Graphics Center in New York City. He has taught at a variety of schools, including the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), the University of Connecticut, a semester abroad in the south of France, and two years in the Upper School of Moses Brown, a Quaker school in Providence. He has exhibited extensively in New York, New England, the south and has work in numerous private and public collections. He and his wife Suzanne, a yoga teacher, are delighted to be in the warm and friendly climate of North Carolina.
Class meets Tuesday & Friday, 10:00-11:15
Why do people tell stories about perfect societies? Why do we tell stories about horrifying societies? Why is one person’s vision of a perfect society another person’s vision of a horrifying society?
In this class we will read books and stories, watch films, listen to songs, and think about (and talk about, and write about) the roles that stories about utopias and dystopias can play in our lives. Along the way, we will examine how our society compares to these imaginary societies, and how we might think about our own lives in light of what we learn. We will also read texts that can help us think about these questions.
Maria Rosales: I have been a professor of political science here at Guilford College since the fall of 2005. I moved here from California, where I’d lived all my life up until then. (Not counting the summer I spent in New Hampshire.) When I’m not teaching I spend time with my partner, I garden (not well, but I like it anyway), I play with my dog, I watch movies and a little TV, I hang out with my friends, I play the Sims (limiting myself to weekends, because I am mildly addicted), and I read and write. And I drink coffee, practically non-stop.
Race, Class, and Gender in Sport
Class meets Monday & Thursday, 10:00-11:15
Some scholars suggest that sport is a microcosm of the larger society. Others argue that sport is a society in its own right. Regardless of which point of view you take, sport has the markings of a society. Within the sport society of the United States are the social constructions of race, class, and gender. Rather than studying these social constructions individually, we will examine how race, class, and gender interact inside the sport society of the United States. To aid our study of these intersections, the course is reading intensive with class discussions. Article and text readings and movies allow students to explore opposing views pertaining to the theme of the course and develop personal opinions about its impact on society. Students will be given the opportunity to debate specific topics in class using scholarly research to support their view.
Craig Eilbacher is the Program Director of Sports Medicine Education in the Sport Studies Department completing his seventh year at Guilford College. He earned his BS degree in Physical education and athletic training at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and his MS in Education from the University of Akron. Craig worked as a graduate assistant at Akron for 1 year. He taught in the physical education department and worked as an athletic trainer while completing his M.S.Ed. Craig is a nationally certified athletic trainer, who previously spent 5 years teaching anatomy and physiology, sports medicine, biology, and PE at Central Davidson high school in North Carolina. While working as an athletic trainer at Central, he was the assistant varsity men’s basketball coach. Craig is currently pursuing a doctorate from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in exercise and sport science.
Adolescence in Cross-Cultural Perspective
Class meets Monday & Wednesday, 10:00-11:15
Where and who would you be without adolescence? What are your adolescent social practices and rituals and how did you acquire them? How do you interpret and perform culturally amid conflicting aspirations, opportunities, meanings and expectations? Do what extent is your distinctive cultural lifestyle a reflection of both the changing needs and moral preoccupations of your society? Adolescence is one of the most difficult transitions that teenagers have to go through in life. Anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and others have suggested that physical and hormonal changes are not the only factors that affect teenagers because living in different cultural societies also has a great impact upon their lives. We will use multiple readings and films to explore the life stage of adolescence and the different forms it takes in different cultures. Descriptions from different societies will enhance understanding of the distinct nature of adolescence, drawing on research to address various issues regarding this age and show how it has different effects on individual and group behaviors across societies. The course will provide insights into how rapid global change is dramatically altering the experience of the adolescent transition, creating new opportunities and challenges for adolescents, parents, teachers, and professionals.
The interdisciplinary aspect of this course is that we will explore the anthropological, biological, sociological, and psychological explanations and interpretations of adolescence through scholarly cases studies of different societies including those found in the US, Africa, Asia, and Europe. We will use interdisciplinary perspectives to make sense of our own experiences while at the same time examining how and why some aspects of our adolescent experience might be similar and/or different from the experiences of others in different cultures
The experiential learning component will include a trans-generational inquiry into the extent to which our personal adolescent lifestyles might be different from our parent(s) and grandparents. We will accomplish this by doing personal, parent, and grandparent life-histories and thereafter examining the similarities and differences in adolescent experiences. We may also come up with individual and/or group oriented creative experiential learning tasks.
Required books:
F. Phillip Rice & Kim Gale Dolgin: Adolescent: Development, Relationships, and Culture. 12th Edition. (2005) Pearson Allyn and Bacon.
B. Bradford Brown, Reed W. Larson & T. S. Saraswathi (eds.): The World’s Youth: Adolescence in Eight Regions of the Globe. (2002) Cambridge University Press.
Edwins Gwako: I earned my Ph.D. in Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis (1997) and have been at Guilford College since 1999. I am a native of Kenya, East Africa, and I teach courses including cultural anthropology, culture and sexuality, anthropology of slavery, African families in transition, African cultures, and understanding poverty. My scholarly publications address issues such as female circumcision, polygyny, widow inheritance, roots of human sharing practices, and incentives for food production.
Don’t Believe The Hype: (Media And Popular Culture)
Class Meets: Monday & Wednesday, 10:00-11:15
Why do we accept television images and the economic forces that produce them? Television images have a pervasive effect on society. Because network television is an audiovisual medium that is piped free into at least ninety-five percent of American homes, it is one of the most important vehicles for depicting cultural images to our population. From crime to politics, moral panics, drugs, social problems to the news and fear of crime, the role of media and popular culture in everyday life continues to expand.
Popular culture including film, music, television, advertising, sports, fashion, toys, magazines, should compel us to ask if the current media system in the U.S. undermines democracy or is it doing something else?
We have to understand the importance of popular culture and its images in mass media are not only based on our beliefs but our prejudices.
This course will critically examine media constructions of crime, popular culture, moral panics as influenced by mass media. Specific course topics will include the media system and its domination by transnational conglomerates, blurring of news and entertainment, drugs in the media, the commodification of hip hop, the relationship between cultural consumption and social status, the social significance of leisure activities from sports to shopping.
Students should be prepared to discuss issues of cultural imperialism, censorship, crime, class, gender, race, and ethnicity as shaped by various mass media.
NOTE: Required field trips and reviews of contemporary/controversial music tracks will be scheduled and assigned.
Barbara Lawrence – I am a native New Yorker and spent most my adult life living and working in New York City. I received my B.S. from John Jay College of Criminal Justice and completed both graduate and law school at Indiana University. I am a retired New York City Police Officer and worked as a Prosecutor for a short while, Director of a Community Center and Research Consultant. I have a passion for youth leadership, social justice and community development. My hobbies include listening to progressive music (particularly hip hop), watching movies and traveling.
Ethics: College Life and the Business World Beyond
Class meets Monday & Wednesday, 10:00-11:15
The world you and I live in is filled with ethical dilemmas. As a student, you face ethical dilemmas involving cheating, alcohol and other drugs, moral relativism, friendship and betrayal, and sexual activity. As you enter the business world, problems still exist, but the emphasis shifts to such issues as cheating on financial statements, prejudices affecting hiring and promotion policies, betrayal of a friend for the sake of keeping a job, and sexual activity between bosses and employees.
This course, first and foremost, does not moralize by spelling out what is right or wrong in a specific situation. Rather, we shall learn from the philosophers who, down through the ages, have developed four basic patterns of personal ethics. The course will provide a framework for ethical decision-making and apply this framework by reading real-world cases. Class time will be spent discussing possible solutions to these cases as well as the consequences of each solution. As we attempt to solve these problems, you will learn how the various academic disciplines affect an ultimate solution; and you will learn how to develop your own framework for ethical decision-making so that when you are confronted with any of these or many other dilemmas, you will be able to respond in a manner that will honor your integrity and honor those around you.
Garland Granger: I am a native Tar Heel who has been teaching in the Accounting Department at Guilford College for the past twenty-five years. I have an undergraduate degree in Business Administration and a Masters in Business. I am a Certified Public Accountant, as well. I attended both the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech to obtain my accounting degree. I moved to Greensboro in the 70s and worked for seven years in public accounting before coming to Guilford to teach. During the past ten years, I have had the opportunity to teach over 600 seminars to business professionals around the country as part of their continuing education requirement. This experience has helped me immensely in dealing with the day-to-day problems facing people in the business world, especially in the realm of ethical behavior.
I have several passions in my life. The first is my family. I have a great wife, Barbara; two daughters who have Master’s degrees; and a son who is an accountant in Chicago with a national CPA firm. My second passion is teaching college students about living life to the fullest. I love the outdoors, sports of all types, jogging, music, and especially laughter (I love great jokes). I believe that it is my responsibility to make any class I teach come to life for students by challenging them to think outside of themselves and examine their life goals and objectives and to find their way in the world.
An Exploration of Good and Bad Business Practices and How They Affect Our World
Class meets Monday & Wednesday, 10:00-11:15
Our lives begin, are immersed, and end in organizational settings. This course will give you a chance to look at the benefits brought to our world by business organizations. The reverse will also happen so that we will discuss negative processes and consequences brought on by business. A balanced view of business is useful because it opens up a broader and more engaged worldview. Regardless of your intended major or current skills, this look at the business organizations that polka-dot your world will help you towards greater levels of both appreciation and caution regarding them.
We will view films, discuss histories, look at current and recent events, and find patterns both heartening and distressing. It is all part of the tapestry of this course. We’ll have fun, and the sober moments will help us to understand our world better.
Al Gibson - I grew up in Chicago, IL and Gary, IN. Like the course, my career is a bit of a tapestry. Teaching is my fourth career. My first was as a skilled craftsman (pipefitter) in the auto and oil industries. I completed two 4-year apprenticeships during those years. Following that, I used the B.S. degree in Mechanical Technology I had earned from Purdue University Calumet during that period to become a maintenance supervisor in the steel industry. This included a 1-year supervisory training program. After working in steel, I went to work as a sales and applications engineer in the controls and gages industry. This experience allowed me to communicate with thousands of persons at all organizational levels, from top to bottom. Most were over the phone, and some were at their organizational settings. My main work was to help customers to design and implement their process systems. After some years at this position, having earned an MBA from Indiana University Northwest, I applied to a doctoral program in Management. This required me to leave the workforce and work exclusively on the doctorate, which was finally taken from Alabama in 1999. I’m married and love my career as an Assistant Professor in the Business Management Department.
Sports, Race, Gender and the American Dream
Class meets Monday & Wednesday, 10:00-11:15
This class will explore the role of sports in America, with particular focus on race relations and gender. We will look at the changes that have occurred in sports over the past fifty-five years as a window into understanding American culture. Starting with the 1930s, when Jesse Owens dominated track (and Hitler’s Olympics in 1936), and the years immediately after the Second World War, when Jackie Robinson became the first black to play major league baseball, we will examine many changes in sports and changes in American culture.
Many have portrayed participation in sports as a route to fulfilling the American dream of wealth and fame. For some athletes it has been that. For others, participation in sports has been a means to an education, and that education in turn has provided the means for entry into the middle class. And, for many, the dream of sports stardom has interfered with developing other abilities necessary for success in adulthood.
As we will see by looking at the experiences of such athletes as Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Arthur Ashe, Althea Gibson and Wilma Rudolph, the doors of opportunity did not swing open easily -- for blacks or for women.
Our readings will be interdisciplinary, and they will include work by journalists, a historian and some social scientists. Toward the end of the semester we will draw on the work of a sports sociologist to explore some of the broader societal issues related to sports -- we will, in his terms, go beyond "the myths and paradoxes of sport." In addition, we will see a number of films about sports and we will have a number of speakers.
Richie Zweigenhaft has been a member of the psychology department since 1974. He has been playing in what is certainly one of the longest-running noontime basketball games in the country – he, some other faculty members and a group of students began playing in 1976, and the game is still going. When basketball is not an option, he also likes to mountain bike. A former disc jockey on the college radio station, WQFS, he has directed the Communications Concentration since its inception in 1981. Over the past 25 years, his primary research interest has been in the ways that the United States power elite does (and does not) take in new members, especially women and people of color.
Poverty in America: Don’t Just Sit There, Do Something About It
Class meets Monday & Wednesday, 10:00-11:15
Despite being renowned as the “richest and most powerful nation in the world”, the United States is home to an increasing number of people who deal daily with severe and often interrelated challenges such as homelessness, hunger, illiteracy, drug and alcohol addition, etc. These challenges impact not only individuals, but also the long-term welfare of our nation. In addition, there are a significant number of those among us that comprise the “working poor”, a grouping that is regularly employed but nonetheless unable to improve their standard of life. While not technically “in poverty”, these people are not shielded from various challenges normally associated with the poor. Together we will examine the roots and cyclical nature of these social problems in the United States and focus on what individual citizens, social service organizations, corporate entities, and government agencies might offer in terms of short- and long-term solutions. Finally, we will look for some conclusions and to take actions that might in some ways address the social ills that impact the disenfranchised among us in Greensboro.
Southern Culture (On the Skids?)
Class meets Monday & Wednesday, 11:30-12:45
Southern Culture (On the Skids?) will be an exploration of Southern ways of life, ways of seeing, even ways of just being. We will look into the historical and cultural roots of music from blues to bluegrass to alt rock. We will delve into that sort of literature inspired by an air humid thick enough to cut from Zora Neale Hurston to Flannery O’Connor to Tim McLaurin. No look at the South and North Carolina would be complete without an examination of basketball, football and their religion-like status in certain areas. Of course we will plunge into religion the Old Time way to be sure, inquiring into the foundations of southern evangelicalism. An overarching theme of Southern Culture (On the Skids?) will be race and ethnicity in the South. In that vein we will also dig deeply into historical origins of the folks that call the region home…Scot Irish swineherders, English Cavaliers, Palatinate Farmers and religious dissenters, Quakers from all over, Moravians, Africans from diverse locales, Latinos, Asians and other migrants will all be considered and considered. We will execute this study through the use of film, books, articles, short stories, outsider art, and music.
I am Alvis Dunn. Southern culture is dear to me. I define such a thing rather broadly however as those things like music and art and food and the way we spend our time from beneath the Sweet Tea Line to Tierra del Fuego. I am a native of North Carolina but call my second home the Central American nation of Guatemala. My research and teaching focuses on the American South and Central America and issues of race and ethnicity as well as the manner in which people arrange their leisure time and what that says about their world view. I am a rabid basketball fan and player, a former manager of a live music venue, and an aficionado of North Carolina barbecue both East and West.
Green Tea and Thousand-Year-Old Eggs
Class meets Monday & Wednesday, 10:00-11:15
Do you like eating? Enjoy cooking? Are you interested in East Asian cultures? Curious to find out why “they” eat whale meat? Have you ever tasted chrysanthemum tea or eaten sea urchin? Join me in exploring East Asian foods and their cultural significance. We will identify and taste some of the foods typical of several East Asian cultures— specifically China and Japan. Using a variety of readings, films and culinary activities, we will discover the “culture” of food—the role it plays in the political, social, economic and religious fabric of East Asia. We will also investigate the globalization of food. As part of class activities, we will visit an Asian grocery store and/or restaurant, celebrate the Moon Festival, participate in the tea ceremony, and cook some of the dishes we read about.
Hiroko Hirakawa: I earned my Ph.D. from Purdue University and have been at Guilford College for nine years. A native of Fukuoka, Japan, I teach Japanese language and courses on aspects of contemporary Japanese society. Last summer I traveled in Japan with ten Guilford students. There we “tasted” an earthquake, a typhoon, and, of course, a variety of Japanese dishes. I love animals and am a proud mother of two adorable (feline) individuals.
Alternate Realities
Class meets Tuesday & Friday, 10:00-11:15
This course is designed to explore how we sense the world around us, how we interact with it, and how we can share it with others. We will use descriptive writing, images, and computer-simulated environments to discover how we think of all kinds of places, from a tree outside our building to a bustling city to the North American continent. We'll examine real-world places through exploration of the campus and the town in person, through mapping software, and through descriptive writings and historical fiction, including Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain. We'll also dive into the realm of imagined worlds through speculative works such as William Gibson's Neuromancer and J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings books. Finally, we’ll create our own imagined places, in writing, in games and simulations, and in interactive computer-based environments, where we'll explore three-dimensional visualization and virtual reality using Guilford’s computer resources.
The course will involve reading, writing, image processing, and extensive computer use. No prior knowledge of or special skills with computers are required, although they might come in handy. Part of the goal of the course is to figure out how computers, networks, and virtual places fit in with our real-life experience and with our written heritage.
Dave Dobson: Fall of 2008 will be the start of my twelfth year at Guilford, where I teach in the Department of Geology and in the computing major. I'm originally from Iowa, so my sense of reality includes big horizons and lots of corn. I attended Harvard University as an undergraduate and the University of Michigan for my M.S. and Ph.D. North Carolina and Guilford have become a new home for me, and I've enjoyed the small size and community spirit of Guilford tremendously. I'm trained as a marine geologist and paleoclimatologist, but I try to maintain my many other interests, including writing, computer programming (mostly games), and playing the tuba.