The Copper River Delta Alaska Climate Change Reporting Project

Mark Blaine, Dan Morrison, and Deborah Morrison, School of Journalism and Communication

This project entails building a team of students, preparing them through research and study coursework, immersing them in field work in Alaska, then producing multimedia reporting for multiple channels. The project team has developed a three-year plan; this first year builds capacity and program proof-of-concept by immersing a dedicated team in the region and producing multiple stories. The courses include a readings course, fieldwork in the summer, and a production course in the fall. Built around understanding and reporting critical perspective, the Copper River Delta Alaska Climate Change Reporting Project immerses students and faculty in the complex issues of climate change and place. This particular area is an environment known for global focus on stories about climate change and becomes a globally unique site for telling the story of climate change to the world.

Developing a Second Year Experience for the Wayne Morse Scholars Program: Multiyear Cohort-Based Learning

Daniel J. Tichenor, Philip H. Knight Chair of Social Science

The Tom and Carol Williams Fund initially provided seed funding to establish the Wayne Morse Scholars program for sophomores and juniors in 2013-2014. The Wayne Morse Scholars program offers an opportunity for a select group of undergraduate students to study public affairs and American politics from practical, analytical, and ethical perspectives. This project targets an important gap by developing a new, distinctive second-year experience for returning scholars in the 2014-2015 academic year. At the heart of this project for the second-year cohort are supervised internships, group projects tackling a public problem, and a special seminar to bridge these experiences with scholarship and research. Additional components of the second-year experience supported through this funding will include research, leadership training workshops, meals with visiting speakers and scholars, and other programs.

Japanese Prints and Their Techniques

Akiko Walley, Department of the History of Art and Architecture

This new, experimental 300-level course on Japanese prints aims to alter students' understanding of what it means to study art history and the humanities in general. The methodologies employed in this course are geared toward helping students realize that study of art history (or again more broadly any humanistic studies) can be active and very much relevant to their daily lives. To be offered in the fall of 2014, in close collaboration with the Department of Art and the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (JSMA), this will be an innovative object-centric (and experiential) art historical course. It will combine classroom lectures with special viewing sessions in the JSMA of representative examples of Japanese prints and hands-on learning about major printmaking techniques in a series of printmaking sessions led by Prof. Charlene Liu (Associate Professor of Printmaking, Department of Art).

Integrated Product Design and New Business Modeling

Jason Germany, School of Architecture and Allied Arts, Product Design Program
Nathan Lillegard, Lundquist College of Business, Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship

At the core of this course initiative is a new approach to interdisciplinary studies. Although undergraduate students have the ability to take a range of courses from across campus, very few of these courses model the interdisciplinary experience that exists outside the academic realm. This course seeks to combine two fields of study, product design and business entrepreneurship which will not only allow teams of undergraduate students to tackle new venture opportunities but also allow for these students to learn complementary skills and theories. This course will bridge the skills of design and business planning by combining proven fundamentals of product design with a newly emerging paradigm for business planning and developing.