AcademicsSummer Courses

Civil Society & Community Studies

CSCS 130 – Community Newswriting
Newswriting of interest to individuals, families, and communities.

CSCS 155 – Social Media Social Justice
Social media is a strategic tool to help organizations, advocacy groups, and individuals advance social justice initiatives to create a more equitable future. Analyze historical campaigns to evaluate social media presence, audience focus, communication goals, content resonance, storytelling techniques, and audience engagement. Explore ethical topics tied to social media as a communications and organizing medium including: first amendment rights and the emerging regulation of social media platforms; source authenticity and the weaponization of misinformation in an era of rapidly evolving technology; privacy in an increasingly connected world; biases built into our technology; and equity of technology access.

CSCS 510 – Design & Write Grant Proposals
Theoretical and practical background in designing and writing grant proposals. Develop skills to locate funding opportunities, summarize program elements, create budgets, and write competitively. Emphasizes writing skills, budget creation, building collaborative partnerships, understanding funder interests and priorities. Analyzing requests for proposals, writing needs statements, methods, budgets, peer review.

Consumer Science

CNSR SCI 111 – Financial Life Skills
Applied personal finance in college and after graduation. Financial values and behaviors, debt and credit, housing, transportation, retirement planning, investing, spending and saving plans.

CNSR SCI 173 – Consuming Happiness
As the saying goes, money can’t buy happiness — but in modern America, we certainly try. This course will provide an overview of the study of happiness and well-being, examine how consumers engage in consumption in pursuit of happiness, as well as explore the emergence of the experience economy, and the intersection of money and well-being. Students will read academic and popular pieces on positive psychology, prosocial spending and explore the psychology of persuasion in the promises associated with this industry. In addition to integrating visual media, students will have the opportunity to experience first-hand whether the advice works in their own lives.

CNSR SCI 175 – Introduction to Consumer Finance
Introduction to consumer finance and the concepts and methods used in consumer planning and financial management. Topics covered include budgeting, credit, investing, insurance, taxes, retirement, estate planning, mortgages, and an introduction to behavioral finance. Discuss methods for calculating, planning, and allocating resources to attain specific financial objectives.

CNSR SCI 201 – Consumer Insights
Provides basic training in quantitative data analysis, with an emphasis on descriptive and inferential statistics with consumer research applications.

CNSR SCI 257 – Introduction to Retail
Foundational knowledge of the retail industry including the retail process, the evolution of the industry, key drivers and trends to provide a framework and set of concepts that will support the remainder of the core retail courses.

CNSR SCI 360 Sustainable and Socially Just Consumption
Examines how consumers influence sustainability and social justice through their purchases and how policy and globalization influence their choices.

CNSR SCI/HDFS 465 Families & Poverty
Introduction to research at the intersection of family and poverty studies. Learn how family behaviors vary by socioeconomic status; how romantic relationships, childbearing, and childrearing may be implicated in poverty; what the consequences of poverty are for family functioning and children; and about the role of policy in influencing families and poverty.

CNSR SCI 501 Special Topics- FINRA SIRE® Exam Preparation

CNSR SCI 657 – Consumer Behavior
Analyses from social and psychological perspectives. Motivation, perception, learning and attitude formation. Effects of social class, family structure, cultural backgrounds and reference groups.

Design Studies

DS 240 – Human-centered Design and Business
Design thinking is an iterative problem-solving process geared toward producing innovative solutions for complex and persistent problems in various fields and organizations. Its process, culture, and value system from both design and business point of views will be covered: Empathetic understanding of the end users, problem definition rooted in systems thinking, ideation with a strong emphasis on creativity, visualization and prototyping, testing rooted in a set of research methods, and finally, the importance of iteration in bringing about innovative solutions. The path from project to market will also be explored, with an understanding of how one might balance desirability, feasibility and viability.

DS 579 – Virtual Reality
Introduces students to the field of virtual reality and focuses on creating immersive, interactive virtual experiences. Survey topics include historical perspectives on virtual reality technology, computer graphics and 3D modeling, human perception and psychology, human computer interaction and user interface design. This course is designed for students with backgrounds in Computer Science, Engineering, Art, Architecture and Design. Students will work in interdisciplinary teams on projects, culminating in a final event that will be showcased to the public. While not an official uisite, the class will be technologically motivated; therefore students should be comfortable learning new software. The class will utilize publicly available game design software which provides tools and services for the creation of interactive content. While not necessary, students may find it helpful to have taken classes in programming and computer graphics (such COMP SCI 559: Computer Graphics) or in 3D mode.

Human Development & Family Studies

HDFS 174 – Cultural Diversity of Families
An introduction to racially and culturally diverse families with application to personal life. Focuses on structural factors impacting all families, such as demographic, economic, and historic trends, which illuminate the similarities and distinctions among and within racial and ethnic groups.

HDFS 262 – Development of Young Child
A basic foundation for understanding development from conception through middle childhood. Theoretical foundations, research findings, and practical applications.

HDFS 263 – Development from Adolescence to Old Age
A basic foundation for understanding development from adolescence through old age. Theoretical foundations, research findings, and practical applications.

HDFS/CNSR 465 Families & Poverty
Introduction to research at the intersection of family and poverty studies. Learn how family behaviors vary by socioeconomic status; how romantic relationships, childbearing, and childrearing may be implicated in poverty; what the consequences of poverty are for family functioning and children; and about the role of policy in influencing families and poverty.

HDFS 517 Couple Relationships
Romantic relationships are universally desired, and individuals around the globe agree about what successful intimacy entails: we all want to be loved, supported, and cared for by partners we hold in high esteem. Nevertheless, intimate relationships can be difficult to form and maintain. Explore a range of theoretical perspectives and methodologies to understand how it is that intimate relationships develop, thrive, or deteriorate over time. Connect intimate relationship science to real life experiences.

Interdisciplinary Courses

INTER-HE 201 Belonging, Purpose and the Ecology of Human Happiness:EcoYou
This course explores the art and science of purposeful living by integrating academic knowledge with issues real and relevant to students’ lives including: identity and belonging; happiness, purpose and meaning; self-awareness and self-presentation; romantic, peer and family relationships; material culture, consumer behavior and financial well-being; and connections to community, culture, and society. From the microbes that inhabit our guts to political revolutions sparked by a tweet, human lives are embedded in an ecology of complex, interdependent systems. Using the lens of Human Ecology, you will address “big questions” like: How am I connected to others and to larger systems? What brings happiness and works for the “greater good” in human lives? An overarching goal of the course is to help you understand yourself as embedded in the web of ever-evolving interconnected networks, an “EcoYou.” Human Ecology is a systems approach to studying and understanding relationships between humans and their everyday environments; it is a civic and socially conscious orientation that is committed to understanding and improving the quality of human lives. Human Ecology is inherently interdisciplinary drawing on research, theories and methods from diverse fields such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics, public health, biology, and art and design.

INTER-HE 202 – SoHE Career & Leadership Development
Provides an introduction to leadership development, career development and career readiness competencies for students in the School of Human Ecology.

INTER-HE 601 Internship
Develop career-readiness skills while applying academic knowledge in a workplace setting.