Honors Seminars 2024-2025
*Seminars will be added throughout the year so check back often.
Fall 2024
Cal Poly Counseling and Psychological Services
Whether they are serious or casual, romantic or platonic, with colleagues or family or roommates, relationships can be defined in many ways. In the Relationships 101 seminar we will focus on the many aspects of nurturing healthy relationships. We will explore effective communication, relational self-awareness, identification of needs and boundaries, consideration of various cultural experiences and intersecting identities, and how to navigate conflict; all while building community.
Organic molecules are all around us. From pharmaceuticals to pheromones to polymers to petroleum products, we encounter them daily. We will take a broad look at the diverse functions of organic compounds. In this seminar we will explore a variety of questions that organic chemistry can answer, such as: How does soap work? What clever ways do flowers attract bees for pollination? How many components give Skittles their color? How are polymers made? How do we identify substances at the scene of a crime? No prior knowledge of chemistry is required. Occasional laboratory activities (such as making nylon or isolating plant components, etc.) and/or demos will be included.
This honors seminar explores select literary and cultural works from “America’s tropics”—island territories in the Pacific and Asia that have been, or continue to be, colonial possessions of the United States. Drawing from the fields of Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander studies scholarship, this course will examine how seemingly unrelated places such as Hawai‘i, Guam, the Philippines, and others can be connected through the shared circumstances of U.S. empire. Some of the central questions that we will ask in this seminar include the following: How does the analytic of U.S. empire challenge ideas of American exceptionalism? How can the examination of literary and cultural texts offer new ways of “seeing” American culture and politics? While this course pays special attention to cultural productions—which include works of art, literature, film, and music—we will also read scholarly sources to inform our reading practices.
In the time that it takes for you to read this course description, it is estimated that more than 1,000 birds will have died as a result of collisions with human-made structures, in the United States alone. The vast majority of these, as many as 1 billion bird fatalities, are due to collisions with glass windows. In this research-based seminar, students will have the opportunity to partner with Morro Coast Audubon (an environmental nonprofit on the Central Coast and local chapter of National Audubon Society) and Bird Friendly Campus (a research group at the University of Washington focused on making campuses safer spaces for birds) to generate data on how birds are affected by buildings at Cal Poly. The data we collect in this course will contribute to the local and global understanding of how birds are affected by human made structures, and what steps we can take at Cal Poly to help mitigate collisions. You will be required to put in 1-2 hours of time outside of our class meeting time to receive credit for this class.
Honors Seminars in Previous Years