Native American and Latina/o communities in the Southwest have utilized the various plant materials available in the region for alleviating their physical and spiritual ailments. From the mundane use of ubiquitous herbs to treat stomachaches to the more exceptional use of psychoactive plants for spiritual purposes, communities in the Southwest have created a knowledge base and a cultural practice focused on the utilization of plant materials for medicinal purposes. The goal of this course is to allow students to make connections between the cultural significance and the chemical efficacy of these medicinal practices. We explore and 研究 several of the medicinal practices of these communities and quantify the active components of these substances using simple laboratory techniques. 在这个过程中, students will come to better understand the culture and chemistry of traditional medicine of the Southwest.

Your friend claims that they can tell whether coffee was added to cream, 或者把奶油加到咖啡里. 你怎么知道他们说的是真话? How do you know if it’s a good idea to buy a lottery ticket today? (Surprise: sometimes it is a GREAT idea, but only if you buy a lot of them!). 本课程将回答这些以及更多的问题, while introducing students to an array of simple but powerful concepts in discrete mathematics and statistics. We will discover how these ideas can deepen our understanding of the world in sometimes surprising ways. 主题包括基本组合学, 二项式系数, 拉丁方块和实验设计, 概率, 假设检验, 并假定值. This course assumes no mathematical or statistical background and does not overlap significantly with AP Stats or Calculus.

This course offers an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of environmental justice. 在半个街区的过程中, we will create a working definition of environmental justice and examine youth-led efforts to combat environmental racism. We will identify local and global attempts to reconcile economic development with environmental protection and investigate how the resulting policies reflect systems of power. 学生 will apply course content to create an artifact designed to disrupt a local environmental dilemma affecting systemically marginalized youth in Colorado.

We all have gone through years of schooling to be where we are. 回顾我们的旅程，我们是如何走到这里的? Is it parental support, school district, teachers and classmates, our own effort, luck? In the United States, about 1/3 of the population (aged 25 and older) has a college degree. It is generally accepted that college education raises lifelong earnings and quality of life. 但是，是什么让一些人比其他人更容易上大学呢? 在这个课堂上, we will survey various sources and manifestations of educational inequalities in the U.S. 采用定性和定量相结合的方法. 使用定性方法, we will investigate the ways in which education quality is shaped by student and teacher identities, and assumptions about historically marginalized communities and their relationship to property tax-based school funding models. We will also explore the overall landscape of education inequality as it relates to race, 性别, and family background by extrapolating national representative surveys. 通过这个过程, we will learn the complementary ways in which qualitative and quantitative analyses can help us understand our own educational journeys.

在生态方面, an organism’s umwelt (German for “environment”) is the particular way that an organism senses, 使有意义, 并且确实“存在”在他们的世界里. 以这个概念为出发点, this interdisciplinary course will discuss the importance of “worldview” across fields of animal behavior, 生态保护, 批判社会理论. We will explore how diverse perspectives are essential for human and non-human animals alike, touching especially on Western and Non-Western worldviews as valuable sources of knowledge. 加强与不同动物的接触, 的地方, 和人民, this field-based course will provide students with an opportunity to experience different Colorado localities (e.g., Sandstone Ranch, Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, Denver Indigenous Community Center, etc.,). 学生 will practice multiple forms of knowledge production including scientific inquiry, 定量分析, 书面和口头沟通, 艺术表现. 在整个课程中, we will reflect on our own unique and indispensable ways of contributing to the world and what this means for students as members of the 科罗拉多大学 community.

而图画小说, 视频游戏, and blockbuster hits differ significantly from traditional secondary sources, popular culture heavily influence the ways people understand the past. 在本课程中, 学生将阅读, 看, 玩, and analyze a range of historical and contemporary popular media sources to think about not simply the past, 而是人们如何构建, 消费, 了解不同平台的历史. 我们将考虑历史探究的价值, 为什么故事要以特定的方式呈现, 以及历史学家如何看待受众, 现在的信息, 与信息源接触, and get people to think about the past in unconventional ways.