Literature & Ethics: Levinas and Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate

Steve Shankman, English & Classics, Honors College, Director of Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Does the reading of great works of literature make you a better person? This class, taught with a mix of students from the UO Honors College and inmates at the Oregon State Penitentiary, wagers that it does – and offers to university students, as part of the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, an opportunity to go behind the walls of prison and challenge their assumptions about prison and crime.

Building Classroom-Community Connections Throughout the Environmental Studies Program

Kathryn Lynch, Environmental Studies

Promoting civic engagement while producing students who have an awareness of environmental issues, this proposal also enables an understanding of the various approaches used to solve these problems. Creating learning opportunities for Environmental Studies and Environmental Science majors, it will offer students a way to practice using new knowledge, as well as develop communication, collaboration and leadership skills.

Advanced Writing in Spanish

Shelley Morello, Andy Rothgery, Alex Zunterstein, Gina Herrmann, Robert Davis, Romance Languages

Offering the more than 700 Spanish majors at the UO an opportunity to develop their skills at written expression earlier in their academic career, this new course will provide the necessary transition from oral proficiency and general literacy in Spanish to the demands of advanced work that is squarely rooted in all of the Humanities. In time this model will more than 1100 majors in French, Italian and Spanish.

designBridge: A Model Service Learning Approach to Architectural Education

Nico Larco, Juli Brode, Architecture and Allied Arts

The mission of designBridge is an extension of the educational mission of the university and AAA, recognizing that today’s educational needs may not be wholly met in the classroom, therefore offering a service learning approach that takes on small community projects and creates a platform for direct and engaged learning.