UWW0468  [3 Credits]
Working With the Exceptional Child
Donna Brent

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If they are to meet the needs of all students, competent teachers must bring to the classroom a solid theoretical and practical knowledge of educational strategies. While veteran teachers are familiar with traditional methods of instruction, this course is designed to enhance their repertoire of skills in order to serve students who may have traditionally been excluded from the mainstream classroom. Information about the various types of diverse learners as well as practical suggestions for classroom modifications will be given.

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This is a non-credit tutorial required of all incoming U.W.W. students.

This brief course is designed to help students become familiar with the online teaching tools that will be used in U.W.W. academic courses. With a good understanding of some basic technology applications, students will be better prepared to engage with their professors on a more intellectual level with less technological frustration. This objective will be fulfilled as they work with email, instant messaging, uploading documents, blogging, discussion boards, online library access, and logging into computers and the network if you visit the campus. U.W.W.'s goal is for the underlying technology to be a tool rather than a roadblock to students' academic achievement.

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Innovative approaches to landscape management and ecology begin at the local scale, in our own neighborhoods and communities. With each step we leave our fingerprint on nature, transforming the patterned movements of water, nutrients, and species. How these alterations perpetuate environmental change and in turn, the quality of our daily lives is rarely appreciated and often poorly understood. Given nature's dynamic character, how can we recognize our "fingerprint" and with a trained eye, foster healthy ecosystems where we live? In this course, we will explore the counterpoint of human settlement and environmental health. Particular focus will be given to changes at the interface of urban-natural systems as described within our own watersheds. These patterns will provide a basis for adaptive management strategies particular to the area where we live.

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Who isn't interested in questions such as:

1. What makes us "human"?
2. How did we come to be where we are?

It is hard to imagine a topic that brings these questions together better than "the evolution of language." If "language" is one of the crucial human characteristics (next to, among others, "consciousness","art" and "religion"), perhaps, as many believe, the most crucial characteristic, it comes as no surprise that we simply must wonder how this remarkable ability came about (and when). But this topic is not an easy one and most people do not have the "tools" to discuss it fruitfully. This course offers an investigation into the origins of language. To that end, students must gain insight into what language is (for) and how it works. They will explore the evidence (from paleontology and archaeology) that sheds lights on the evolutionary development of our bodies and our mind. They will study processes that cause languages to change over time and learn about ways of reversing time so that they can reconstruct the earliest forms of language. Finally, having delved into the past of human language, they will speculate about its future.

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This course introduces students to Shakespeare and studies how he is received across time and space. Some pre-reading of his works or preliminary knowledge of his life and writing is preferred, though not required. Students are required to participate in reading and discussions of at least three of his plays in some detail along with supplemental texts on his life, theater, social-cultural contexts, and history of adaptation. In particular, students will review his reception in history and around the world -- from his time to our time, from Africa to America -- and will think beyond the box of Early Modern drama or literature. They will explore especially how Shakespeare's configuration of social relations in terms of race, gender, and class in his texts is understood in different cultures.

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This course will provide students with a comprehensive overview of domestic violence, including exploration of definitions, causes and interventions. Students will learn about the experiences of and responses to domestic violence in specific social contexts, with a focus on less visible contexts and underserved populations. They will examine violence within various family structures and intimate relationships including racial/ethnic minority and immigrant groups and gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender relationships; in various community settings including college campuses and the military; and among people with disabilities.

While an emphasis will be placed on social work practice and policy implications, the course is interdisciplinary and will examine the issue of domestic violence from various disciplines such as sociology, criminal justice, women's studies, and psychology.

This course will utilize theoretical and empirical literature, case studies and vignettes, and guest lectures by community experts filmed during the Fall 2007 Relationship Violence Seminar Series at Skidmore College.

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This course examines the American West in transition from the "Old West" of myth and reality to the "New West" of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In addition to discussing the myriad aspects comprising the "Old West," including both the West of imagination and the West of harsh realities, the course covers the difficult and often painful social and cultural transformation from the predominantly rural West of wide open spaces and accessible wilderness areas to a West that is dominated by unfettered and rapid population growth, an influx of big money, and economic development based on tourism and subdivision. This course addresses the effects these disruptions have had on traditional land values and lifestyles, including the reactions of the Native American population. Through memoirs, environmental and community studies, newspaper articles, and topic-specific essays, students will examine the issues and crises that the West currently faces. Our discussions will focus on such topics as environmental degradation, the collapse of traditional western communities, and multiculturalism.

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Students in this course will acquire a working knowledge of a variety of information systems, and determine the appropriate use of information systems to solve problems. They will explore the role that the underlying technologies play in management decision making and e-commerce. The course will address the major social and ethical issues involved in online commercial activities, including security and privacy, and the legal challenges posed by a commerce medium that has no political boundaries.

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This is a 1-credit course.

This 1-credit course will cover the skills needed to find, evaluate, and use relevant sources of information. Students will learn how to conduct scholarly research using print and electronic resources in the library and the Internet. Topics will include research strategies, exploring library databases, finding images, effective searching with Google, evaluating and citing sources, avoiding plagiarism, and developing a bibliography.

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Utilizing selected readings, current journal articles, and the World Wide Web, this course will provide an interdisciplinary introduction to several health issues. Students will examine the effect society has on health, disease, and health care seeking patterns. Students will examine current social theories and knowledge about health-related attitudes, behaviors and systems. Lastly, students will also examine how our present health care system affects the health of certain members of society more than others.

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Growing up in America over the last 150 years has not been a single experience, but depending on gender, social status, race, psychological state, etc., it could have been just about anything. And of course, those of us who read about the phenomenon of “growing up in America” are experts, as we have already done it (or are in the process of doing it!). In this course students will read a variety of literary texts that examine these various experiences to see 1) if there is a core experience that we might identify as “growing up in America” and 2) how these experiences resonate with their own personal experiences. Students will be expected to respond on-line to questions posed with each reading as well as respond to issues posted by other students. In addition, each student will keep a personal journal of his or her reactions to the readings.

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UWW0940  [3 Credits]
Studies in Caribbean Civilization
Charlesworth Ephraim

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The primary objective of this course is to develop a critical awareness of the processes constituting the multicultural development of Caribbean societies and Caribbean identities. A crucial question to be considered, particularly in light of the process of "globalization," is whether the Caribbean is anything more or less than a string of island nations and ethnic/linguistic blocs.

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