Dietrich College Interdisciplinary Courses

66-003 Contested Histories: The Israel-Palestine Conflict

Intermittent: 1 unit
Join one of several small groups of students, faculty and staff in discussing Neil Caplan's remarkable book "The Israel-Palestine Conflict: Contested Histories" (Second Edition). There will be six options for book discussion groups, each led by an expert faculty member, taking place in late February and early March. In-person and remote options will be available. Discussions will explore the contested Palestinian and Israeli narratives of events and aim to move readers beyond assigning blame to wrestling with the complexities and contradictions of the conflict. Is there a chance for peaceful resolution? Registered CMU students who attend a discussion group lead by a university expert and a discussion group with Caplan will receive one unit of academic credit.

66-101 Dietrich Introductory Seminar: College & University Success Strategies

Fall: 3 units
This course is designed to help first-year students build a strong foundation for success in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Through interactive discussions, self-reflection, and hands-on activities, students will develop the skills, mindset, and knowledge necessary to navigate the transition to college life. Students will explore campus resources and opportunities such as undergraduate research, internships, and study abroad to help them make the most of their Dietrich experience. By the end of the course, students will feel more connected to the Dietrich College community and be equipped with the tools needed to navigate their college journey with confidence and purpose. This course is only available to be taken by first-year students in their first semester at Dietrich College.

66-106 Applied Quantitative Social Science I (QSSS students)

Fall: 9 units
The first course in the QSSS core sequence provides a fast-paced introduction to a range of methods in the quantitative social sciences. Organized around a set of case studies, the course introduces the language and methods of empirical research through a combination of seminar-style discussions of academic papers, and hands-on lab work using the statistical software R. Students will replicate results from a high-profile labor market discrimination paper, explore agent-based models of neighborhood segregation, and scrape Wikipedia data to examine imbalances in gender representation. Enrollment restricted to QSSS students.

66-122 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Beyond Earth

Spring: 9 units
The aim in the course is to foster in students a planetary perspective, to see Earth in its context of the cosmos and to see humans in their relation to real or possible forms of life in the universe. The obsession with outer space is found among scientists, business people and politicians, in deed and story, in film and even computer games. If we are to fully appreciate the potentials of space, we must also consider the search for intelligent life in its scientific and societal aspects, and investigate how we could adapt our systems of communication to reach species across distances that may be physically insurmountable. This interdisciplinary course will be taught by scholars from distinct cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Course materials will be taken from scientific literature, the history of science, and science fiction. We will explore scientific writing and reasoning, the space race between global powers, space travel and colonization, and the promise and pitfalls of interspecies and interspace communication. A planetary perspective, once achieved, can change the way one sees other inhabitants of this planet - as partners in survival in a universe which sets enormous odds against it, or as unwelcome intruders grasping for scant resources within this thin epidermis of soil, air, and water which surrounds Earth and makes our lives possible.

66-123 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Science on Stage

Spring: 9 units
Art and Science and #8212; two fields of study that are most often considered diametrically opposed. Art is frivolous entertainment. Science is hard rational fact. In this Grand Challenge course, we hope to break that supposition or at least examine it in great detail. Specifically, we will use theater to argue that drama can produce challenging, demanding and intelligent work that showcases the impact of science on current discourse. We want to link the two cultures. The word "theater" has the same etymological root as "theory" - both words come from the Greek thea meaning view. This shared origin demonstrates ways we can work to analyze and interpret both fields and show the common ground between these two cultures. As we attend to plays and writing ranging from Tom Stoppards Arcadia and Michael Frayns Copenhagen to Caryl Churchills A Number and Oliver Sacks Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, our class discussions will consider questions that include: Why is science a trend in contemporary theater? Does it reflect on our dependence on technology? What kinds of questions are being asked when science or scientific theory is presented on the stage? Are people attracted to plays about science because of their difficult subject matter or does it does it lack the engagement of popular culture? In addition to integrating humanities and scientific approaches within Dietrich College, this course will utilize the expertise of both individuals in the School of Drama and the producers in the local theater community, and local science writers. Finally, in addition to weekly writing assignments, the course will ask students to produce original dramatic scenes that incorporate scientific exploration which will, ultimately, lead to staged readings of their work.

66-125 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Democracy & Data

Fall: 9 units
From gerrymandering to online political ads, data is being used in ways that raise urgent questions about the integrity of democratic elections. But the relationship between democracy and data goes far beyond elections. In a world of constant surveillance, in which vast amounts of data are gathered from our phones, our computers, and from other facets of our lives - and in which new breakthroughs in machine learning and data analytics make such data dramatically more powerful - what does it mean for average citizens to have control over their own lives? What does democracy mean?

66-126 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Voting: An American Tradition

Fall: 9 units
This course investigates the sacred American practice of voting, the cornerstone of American democracy, using the 2020 election cycle as our laboratory. The course uses a multi-disciplinary approach, examining the topic from several different perspectives. We'll investigate social movements to expand the vote, the role of technology, game theory, polling, predictions, electoral mapping, social media, the structures of American governance, and more. Questions include: What is the electoral college? Who gets to vote and why? How well is that vote accounted for? How can voting systems be compromised? Why is it so hard to predict who will win? How do people make decisions? How useful are polling and amp; predictions? What disrupts voting? Why is turnout so low? How does money play a role in the election cycle? Why do we vote the way we do? How is social media changing elections? What are global best practices? Did the founders even intend for a mass democracy? (The answer is no!) Many of you will be first-time, eligible voters in one of the most remarkable presidential campaigns in American history. We'll build your skills as new democratic citizens, of this nation or others, and help you make sense of the history-making U.S. news cycle. A note on partisanship: All political viewpoints are welcome in this class. This is a course on how we navigate and account for political difference in a diverse, disparate nation. This is something we'll practice in class, while we will also study that very process across the nation.

66-127 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Environmental Justice

Fall: 9 units
Wondering what the "Green New Deal" proposal is about? Does it seem like you have to choose between protecting people and protecting the planet? How does environmentalism connect to struggles over social justice and human rights? This first-year interdisciplinary seminar is an introduction to the Grand Challenge: Environmental Justice. In Giovanna de Chiro's words, the environmental justice movement is working "toward building diverse, dynamic, and powerful coalitions to address the world's most pressing social and environmental crises global poverty and global climate change by organizing across scales and 'seeking a global vision' for healthy, resilient, and sustainable communities." In this seminar, we'll study the history and science behind two interconnected challenges for environmental justice: global climate change and fine-particulate air pollution. Both types of pollution start with combustion of fossil fuels. Particulate air pollution kills roughly 7 million globally each year; these air pollution deaths happen close to the source, with unequal levels of exposure and risk for people according to class and race. Climate change, mostly from carbon dioxide and methane emissions, is spread globally and lasts well beyond our lifetimes, yet the effects are again disproportionately based on class and race. In this course, we'll explore the science, history, ethics, and public perception of these problems, with implications for Pittsburgh and the planet, and for the near- and long-term future.

66-128 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Palestinian and Israeli Food Cultures

Spring: 9 units
In a region beset by conflict, how do food cultures allow us to approach cultural intersections and connections? This course is designed to provide students with a historical, cultural, and linguistic understanding of the hybrid nature of Jewish and Arab cultures, and the multiple ethnic contributions to local food cultures in Israel and Palestine. The two instructors, from the fields of Jewish history and Arabic Studies, will introduce students to the history, literature, film, and languages of the region, as well as to critical scholarship on food and foodways in the Palestinian and Israeli context. Students will have the opportunity to engage in cooking either locally or in Philadelphia - subject to travel restrictions - and to learn from Michael Solomonov and Reem Kassis, two award-winning US-based celebrity chefs and authors of Israeli and Palestinian cook books respectively. Throughout the semester we will also host a range of guest speakers who will deliver lectures on our course topic in the classroom and in the community.

66-129 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Unreality: Immersive and Spatial Media

Intermittent: 9 units
Virtual news stories and game worlds are accessible by putting on cardboard goggles, theme parks are engineered to provide convincing multisensory experiences, and workforces are reliant on augmented views of factory floors. Immersive and spatial media constitute a suite of emerging technologies that offer the opportunity to expand arts, entertainment, science, design, commercial enterprises and countless other domains in ways that were previously limited to science fiction. The potential for augmented reality to disrupt our current technological ecosystem is tremendous. Many of these technologies are now 50 years old and just starting to enter the commercial realm. As immersive experiences and augmented realities become more integrated into our work and leisure, do we need to worry about the ways that unreality affect our experiences of reality, or our interactions with each other? How do we know that we can trust our senses to tell us what is real? How do we begin to grapple with the ethical, cultural, social, technological, and regulatory implications of this shift?

66-131 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Culture, Sports, and Conflict in/and VR

Intermittent: 9 units
Sports have been celebrated for bringing people together; yet, sports have also been a locus of tensions and conflict that most of us only experience from the sidelines. We understand sports, the people, and their cultural impact through the stories that we tell about them in such places as museums, stadium tours, and Halls of Fame as well as in books, documentaries, and podcasts. Through immersive technologies, these stories are brought to life and bring fans to the heart of the action. In this course, students and faculty together will seek to achieve two main objectives: (1) examine ways in which cultural and societal values are reflected in sports and (2) how Virtual Reality (VR) technology can help design experiences that enhance the users' awareness of these issues by engaging with these cultural and societal perspectives. Within project teams, we will first unpack sports stories that are squarely situated at the crossroads of sports and culture(s). Then we will explore the role of VR technology to help craft these narratives. In doing so, students will discover what it means to write stories for VR experiences. The course will culminate in students proposing an immersive experience about a sports conflict of their choice.

66-132 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Health in Unhealthy Times

Intermittent: 9 units
We live in times when health is a major global concern, whether we worry about the increase in Covid-19 cases, await our immunization, strive to understand the disproportionate impact of the disease on BIPOC populations, or debate mitigation measuresnot to mention ongoing concerns with common chronic illnesses such as diabetes, cancer, autoimmune disease, depression, anxiety, etc.. Health, or lack thereof, has always been a critical part of the human experience, and it is fundamentally impacted by different human experiences. This seminar will introduce students to the scientific aspects of health, its political and social determinants, ethical constraints, historical roots, as well as to the cultural and communicative skills required to dialogue about health, make decisions, and engage empathically with others in their health stories. We will read and discuss a broad variety of materials from medical science articles to social psychological experimental reports and personal or literary narratives about health. The course is divided into three components: health and preventative behaviors, managing chronic health challenges, and coping with disruptive health experiences. We believe these components can represent a broad array of interest and engage students on a personal level.

66-133 DC Grand Challenge Seminar: We're Not Beyond Race: Race and Identity in America

Intermittent: 9 units
Race matters. How have social institutions and historical factors led to the belief systems and stereotypes that shape how race is experienced in American society, and how do these belief systems affect the way individuals come to view and define themselves and others? This course considers how race and identity affect peoples lived experiences - how they think, feel, and act - in America. In this course, we will examine the structural and systemic origins of the racial status quo, as well as the way that individuals navigate the social and racial landscape of modern-day America. Including insights from psychology, literature, economics, sociology, and history, the course will focus on how race matters at both a societal level and an individual level. We will consider different racial situations throughout American society to understand how individuals navigate and experience race and identity. Throughout the course, we will watch films, read literature, and analyze music and art that reflect the experience of race and identity.

66-134 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Native Americas: Facts and Fictions

Intermittent: 9 units
How did Indigenous people respond to the challenges of populating the American hemisphere and creating complex, diverse and dynamic cultures, languages and political entities? How did they survive, adapt to, and resist the conquest and colonization of their lands, and ensuing social and cultural dislocations? How have they resurged politically, culturally, artistically and intellectually in recent years? This course considers the history, experiences, and perspectives of native populations across the Americas. It seeks to reckon with the facts of the Native American experience, while challenging the fictions of stereotypes and narratives that have often relegated Indigenous people to the social and cultural margins of the nations in which they now live. After introducing students to a few of the myriad Indigenous groups of North, Central and South America, we will then survey the implications of the era of European conquest and colonization. Well consider the implications of the rise of new nations in the Americas, as new and intensifying campaigns of violence were unleashed against Indigenous populations. We will consider the rise of Native American civil rights and political and cultural sovereignty movements from the late 20th century forward, as they coalesced into major political challenges to native marginalization and demands for recognition and reparation of historical injustices. Finally, we will explore how contemporary Indigenous artists, authors, and political and social activists are reimagining indigeneity (the condition and experience of being Indigenous) in ways that demonstrate how indigeneity is not a fixed kind of identity, not one that is confined or defined in any way by a static conception of tradition, but rather one that challenges the present and reimagines the future in dynamic and creative ways.

66-135 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Designing Better Human-AI Futures

Intermittent: 9 units
This course will explore the societal impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) based decision-making systems, especially focusing on the societal biases they may enhance or reduce. Students will gain a fundamental understanding of how these systems are designed and work, as well as the role of data in mitigating or enhancing biases. The course is multidisciplinary in nature and brings together social scientists, engineers, data scientists, and designers to tackle the grand challenge of dealing with issues of bias and fairness in Human-AI collaborative systems, ranging from the data that is used to train them, to their human creators that are responsible for deciding how they work and get used. Students will investigate policy, technology and societal elements aimed at reducing and mitigating the impact of AI biases that can negatively impact society, especially its vulnerable members.

66-136 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Becoming Resilient in Challenging Times

Spring: 9 units
What does it mean to be resilient—emotionally, relationally, and collectively—in the face of disruption, uncertainty, or change? In this course, we define resilience as an intersectional capacity of individuals, communities, and systems to adapt, recover, and grow in response to adversity, disruption, or change—drawing on psychological, social, ecological, and artistic resources to sustain well-being and support transformation. We'll explore these layers through the lens of graphic storytelling, using comics and visual narratives to examine stories of wellness, identity, trauma, and individual/ collective recovery across cultural contexts. Drawing from works originally written in English or Spanish (all readings available in English), we'll explore how artists use color, composition, symbolism, and visual form to surface what is often left unsaid in conversations about health and healing. Students will analyze how visual techniques express resilience across race, geography, and sociocultural systems—and will experiment to create their own graphic narratives using comic-making tools and artistic strategies. Emphasis will be placed on storytelling as both personal reflection and public advocacy. The course includes hands-on projects and community-facing components: students will collaborate to design community-engaged projects—such as school visits, public showcases, or partnerships with local organizations—to share and expand the impact of their work. Through reading, making, and sharing stories, students will develop artistic, critical, and civic tools for imagining a more connected and compassionate future.

66-137 DC Grand Challenge Seminar: Causes and Consequences of Health Disparities

Spring: 9 units
Why do some people live well into their nineties while others are more likely to die at an earlier age? The answer to this question can be more complex than one might think. Life expectancy can be influenced by a host of individual and population-level factors. This course is designed to critically examine the social factors research has found to impact individual and population health experiences. This course will introduce students to the multiple approaches to researching the complex problem of health disparities in the United States with particular emphasis on perspectives from the social sciences and humanities. Specifically, students will examine how factors such as socioeconomic status, education, crime, housing, health care and food availability play important roles in the production of disparate health. Students will examine psychological factors that can create disparate health experiences and the impact of such disparities on psychological health. We will address health disparities at the individual and population levels, learning how disparate health experiences are historically and socially produced, and how such disparities produce negative physical and mental health outcomes for individuals and minoritized populations. At the end of the course, students will present a collaborative group project that examines a specific facet of US health disparities and offer a proposed solution. Using a multi- disciplinary perspective, we will challenge students to discover just how important seemly unimportant interpersonal and structural factors can be in explaining health disparities and how important it is for society to take measures to address these disparities.

66-138 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Militarizing Freedom Arms in U.S. Culture

Spring: 9 units
This seminar examines the way American culture and politics have utilized the tools, tactics, and values of the military during both war and peacetime. Utilizing several disciplinary perspectives, including history, rhetorical criticism, fictional narrative, and the discourse of public policy, we will consider the different ways that gun culture, military mobilization, veteran affairs, and police power have influenced American society, including how people relate toor fearone another. We will explore some historical roots of the U.S.'s militarized culture, alongside the linguistic, argumentative, and narrative trends that have contributed to urgent democratic issues like police brutality, domestic terrorism, and the rise of the carceral state. This course will address themes and questions such as: - American exceptionalism: Does violence play an extraordinary role in American and culture, in contrast to other nations? What are its historical antecedents? - The escalation of violence in American political culture: Why does political polarization engender violence? Do traditional appeals to "freedom" accelerate such violence? - How has America become a country of prisons and mass incarceration? - Global impacts: How does the U.S.'s militarized political culture impact nations and people beyond its borders?

66-139 DC Grand Challenge Seminar: Reducing Conflict Around Identity and Positionality

Spring: 9 units
Learning to reduce conflict requires understanding positionality and identities, and why and how societies build barriers in their populations. In this interdisciplinary course, students will learn how to talk to each other and strangers about identity: its defining characteristics and how our bias influences our judgments. The social sciences elements will stress Social Identity Theory, bias, stereotypes, and in-groups and out-groups. The humanities elements will include close-reading strategies and incorporate conceptual frameworks from cultural studies, literary studies, and narrative theory. In addition to practicing the methodologies in these two disciplines, students will undertake two projects. In the first project, they will develop and implement a semi-structured interview protocol for their campus peers centered around belonging. In the second project, students will employ close reading techniques to analyze Young Adult novels that address complex questions of identity, isolation, bias, and rejection. Working with one novel and Project 1 data, each team of social sciences, humanities, and data specialists will create a website to highlight inclusive successes and challenges. This final cohesive 'picture' of themes pertaining to feelings of belonging on our campus will help guide the CMU community toward deeper understanding and acceptance practices.

66-140 Grand Challenge Seminar: Equitable Access and Success in Higher Education at CMU

Spring: 9 units
Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action have reignited the debate about equitable access to higher education. Affirmative action has been challenged many times, which highlights the complex nature of providing equitable access to higher education in a society that is not "equal" on many measures. Students from historically marginalized communities are often at a disadvantage when it comes to accessing higher education. Even those who are admitted to college may not have the tools or resources to succeed. Throughout its history, and especially since the 1960s, Carnegie Mellon has undertaken multiple initiatives to provide equitable education to underserved populations. This course explores these initiatives, both past and present, as well as the broader debates about affirmative action. As a highly selective institution, CMU serves as an important case study for exploring the challenges and opportunities for achieving equitable access and success in higher education. This course will focus on two CMU programs aimed to address the problem of inequitable education, namely SCOPP and CMAP/CMARC. We will draw on primary sources from the CMU Archives and students will be asked to analyze these sources using historical and linguistic approaches. We are interested in exploring how the language used in discussions of affirmative action and student identities changes over time and in response to different historical factors. Students will collaboratively engage with primary source material to develop a final creative project that considers the history of various affirmative action initiatives at CMU and makes connections between these earlier efforts and today's programs. Class meetings will consist of group discussion and small activities as well as guest speakers. Outside of class, students will complete readings, written assignments, reflections, and a collaborative project.

66-141 DC Grand Challenge Seminar: Freedom of Speech & Academic Freedom

Intermittent: 9 units
This Grand Challenge course offers a comprehensive exploration of the principles, controversies, and significance of Freedom of Speech (FOS) and Academic Freedom (AF). By exploring actual and hypothetical cases, students will analyze the complex dilemmas that arise when we try to balance two interests: maximizing freedom of expression and creating an inclusive, respectful community. By engaging a wide range of disciplinary perspectives and methods of inquiry from philosophy, history, psychology, law, etc., students will examine how different policies and norms impact these competing interests and vice versa. Students will practice informed and constructive dialogue within the seminar to facilitate independent thought, rigorous inquiry, and how to discuss difficult topics productively. Course topics will include: - the rights and responsibilities involved in FOS for both individuals and institutions, - the history and current state of the law with respect to FOS, - the history and state of university policies and practices about AF for research and education, including scholarship, artistic freedom, teaching, in particular trigger warnings, safe spaces, censorship, protest, and controversial outside speakers, - developmental perspectives on how children learn about freedom of expression, - FOS in advertising, media, and social media, including recommendation algorithms. The broader goal is to empower students to become informed, responsible, and productive members of Carnegie Mellon's transformative university community.

66-142 DC 1st Year Seminar: Surviving & Thriving in the Information Age

Spring: 9 units
The average person today has access to a vast amount of information, far and away exceeding what was available to previous generations. However, this information flow is increasingly shaped by algorithms and artificial intelligence, influencing how we perceive and interpret it. This Grand Challenge course will examine the complexities of living in a world of information overload, especially when much of it is algorithmically delivered. Integrating the perspectives of computer science, cognitive science, neuroscience and philosophy, we will explore the nature of information, its structure, and the connection between information and meaning. We will then shift to studying the process of learning, focusing on its core principles and how human learning interacts with the information we encounter to shape our knowledge and understanding. We will also delve into how this capacity can become biased, making us overly sensitive to certain information while ignoring or overlooking other types. In this course, we will analyze these biases and their impact on our behavior, both positively and negatively. We will also explore how algorithms filter information for us (e.g., social media) or even create it (e.g., ChatGPT) and the effects of this filtering on knowledge and comprehension. The class will be hands-on with technology, experimenting with different AI tools to enhance the learning experience, while also developing the skills to collaborate with peers in productive discussions around these complex issues.

66-143 DC Grand Challenge Seminar: Achieving Justice, Equity, and Freedom

Spring: 9 units
This course will introduce first year students to the challenge of protecting and promoting human rights in a world fraught with conflict, political strife, economic exploitation, and environmental hazards. We will focus on how human rights frameworks can be used to make the world more just, equitable, and free. We will begin by discussing the theoretical foundations of human rights and the development of human rights institutions in the 20th century. Students will learn how rights have been constructed through legal action, activism, and treaty negotiations in the past and examine the emergence and contestation of new rights today. We will explore why particular rights frameworks are privileged in some societies but not others. We will then focus on how practitioners investigate and document potential rights violations around the world, including in our own backyard. The instructors bring disciplinary expertise in history, journalism, and data analysis, and the course will feature guest lectures by legal experts and human rights practitioners. Topics covered will include genocide and other war crimes; political repression; economic, social, and cultural rights; environmental rights; migration and refugees; gender identity and sexuality; and indigenous rights. By the end of semester, students will be prepared to propose an action plan to address a specific human rights challenge in a community that they are familiar with. In previous semesters, our students have worked on projects related to deaths in Pennsylvania's jails and prisons in partnership with local organizations, proposed a project to assess human rights violations of migrants at the US/Mexico border, and conducted an international open source investigation of human rights violations using online media and satellite imagery.

66-144 DC Grand Challenge Seminar: In Transit: Exile, Migration, and Culture

Spring: 9 units
The world is currently experiencing the worst refugee crisis since the end of World War II. Large numbers of people are forced from home for political, personal, or racial reasons, and many others leave home because of grinding poverty and need. Conflicts about the mass migration provoked by this crisis have emerged all over the globe, from the United States, Latin America, and Europe, to Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and even Oceania. Writers, filmmakers, and artists have attempted to address the plight of refugees and migrants in their works, and many writers, filmmakers, and other artists are themselves refugees or migrants. Pittsburgh has a unique institution, City of Asylum, whose mission is to assist and advocate for persecuted writers and other artists. It hosts the largest residency program in the world for writers living in exile under threat of persecution or worse: death. The goal of this Grand Challenge Seminar is (1) to familiarize students with todays plight of refugees (e.g., social, political, economic factors; cross-cultural comparisons; dynamics of class, race, gender, and nationality), and (2) introduce them to a variety of textual (literary and theoretical) and visual materials and to the resources available through City of Asylum. Through readings, discussions, guest speakers, short papers, and group film projects/presentations, students will examine the ways in which writers, filmmakers, musicians, and other artists have addressed exile and migration in their work by constructing, revising, and reinventing images and cultures of the homeland. Students will explore a variety of texts (e.g., films, documentaries, art, music, photography; prose, poems, and presentations by exiled artists; archival materials; news reports, articles) and meet with and interview exiled writers and other artists.

66-145 DC First Year Seminar: Appalachia: Development, Decline, and Identity in America

Spring: 9 units
The Appalachian region, which stretches from Georgia to New York's southern tier, has a particular place in American history and memory. This course will examine the political, literary, economic, and historical narratives that surround the region, as well as examining the role that Appalachia can play as a model for developing regions in other parts of the world. The paradoxes of Appalachia have confronted American culture since its first settlement by Europeans in the 18th century: a region of unparalleled biodiversity, it has nevertheless been characterized by ongoing poverty and isolation. Politically, it has given rise to both progressive collective action and conservative rhetoric. Economically, its natural resources have been widely exploited by outside economic and industrial interests. Its inhabitants have been characterized as either fiercely independent or widely dysfunctional, giving rise to the archetypes of Mountaineers, Rednecks, or Hillbillies. Its cultural ethos has resisted ready inclusion into mainstream culture. This course will examine these paradoxes by utilizing history, literature, and public policy documents that detail the ongoing debates surrounding Appalachian development, while consulting with several invited writers, political figures, and artists who have interpreted the regions role in American history.

66-146 DC 1st Year Seminar: From Pandemics to Politics: Modeling Complex Social Systems

Fall: 9 units
Most of the major issues confronting humanity-such as injustice, discrimination, climate change, financial collapse, ecosystem survival, and disease epidemics-are the result of complex social systems. Such systems have multiple interacting parts that create a whole that is radically different than its constituent parts. Unfortunately, traditional scientific methods that focus on reducing systems to their parts and then analyzing each part provide little insight into complex systems. In this seminar, we will explore the behavior of complex social systems including issues such as discrimination and injustice. We will examine how to model and understand social issues using various tools such as computation and game theory, and various field perspectives including economics, finance, philosophy, political science, and sociology. As part of this class, students will collaborate in teams to develop their own models of social processes.

66-147 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: (Mis)Trust in Research

Fall: 9 units
Why is there declining public trust in research and expertise? What kinds of skills are needed to assess the quality of research, and how prevalent are they in the general public? Finally, what can experts do to address the erosion of trust in research? This course will allow students to investigate the various causes of declining trust in research, such as data manipulation, plagiarism, and conflicts of interest in how research is funded, among others. We will explore the various disciplinary perspectives on research validity, and compare and contrast these with public perspectives on research validity. Along the way, students will be introduced to evidence synthesis methodology, a broad research approach that allows researchers to assess large bodies of literature and find points of consensus in any topic area such as climate change, vaccines, economic inequality, etc. Students will work in teams to formulate their research questions on a topic of their selection and then conduct evidence synthesis projects related to (mis)trust in that research area. The evidence synthesis project will have multiple stages of design and implementation and culminate in a final presentation of their findings as to how trust in research can be improved.

66-148 Introduction to Community Engagement

Intermittent: 3 units
This course is designed to prepare students to actively and thoughtfully engage in their community. Students will evaluate various models for community engagement and community-based leadership and examine ethical and social justice issues related to college and university involvement in the community. Through course discussions and direct engagement with community leaders, students will develop the ability to consider multiple perspectives, demonstrate cultural humility and critically reflect to make meaning from experiences. Students will create a plan to infuse community engagement into their academic journey that aligns with their values. This is part of the Dietrich College Community Engagement Fellowship and is only open to students that have been accepted into the program.

66-151 DC Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Equity and the Environment

Fall: 9 units
How does air quality in one city differ from air quality in another? Do citizens have a right to clean air, regardless of where they live? How does global climate change impact the discussion of environmental and human health? The answer to these and other questions about environmental quality are complex and manifest at global and local levels. Access to environmental "justice," that is, the right to a healthy environment, is linked to social factors like race, ethnicity, indigenous identity, income, educational status, and geographic location, among others. By analyzing the case of Pittsburgh, a city in the rust belt and Appalachian region that is working to "reimagine" its environmental identity, students will trace past environmental issues and define current environmental concerns that may manifest both locally and globally. They will use environmental justice as a framework to examine how environmental issues are defined and how policies are created and enacted when different voices are included. Students will explore these topics as they relate to multiple sectors (e.g., air and water quality, agriculture, industry, transportation, architecture) and environmental impacts like human physical and mental health or global climate change. Students will also be introduced to concepts like "sustainable science" and "sustainable humanities," and study how environmental problems and solutions are framed in different cultures, communities, and academic disciplines ranging from science to social science and art.

66-152 Dietrich College Grand Challenge Seminar: Gender: Contemporary Issues

Intermittent: 9 units
In recognition of the ubiquity of gender in politics, this course fosters a constructive dialogue on several contemporary debates on issues of gender. These issues will be addressed from a multi-disciplinary perspective, in particular humanistic and social psychological approaches. Varied assessments are included in the course to encourage vigorous engagement with the material, including short paper, debate, journaling, poster, and oral presentation. Students will have opportunities to work collaboratively and individually on projects engaging topics such as intersectionality, single-sex education, reproductive justice, trans issues, and precarious masculinity.

Course Website: https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/gened/fall-2021-and-beyond/year-1/grand-challenge/index.html

66-181 Grand Challenge Seminar

Fall and Spring: 9 units
In their firm desire to perfect the new Constitution, which defined and limited the powers and roles of their new government, the founding fathers insisted on explicit statements that would protect the rights of the new nation's citizens. Indeed, the protection of these essential rights in many ways drove and defined their successful rebellion from Britain. This impulse resulted in ten amendments to the Constitution, which we have come to know as the Bill of Rights. The very first (and arguably considered at the time as the most essential) of these was the First Amendment, which we sometimes call the "free speech" amendment to the Constitution. This amendment guarantees every U.S. citizen five freedoms: freedom of religion, speech, press, peaceable assembly, and the freedom to petition the government for redress of grievances. This course examines the historical and philosophical roots of this key constitutional amendment, how it has been fleshed out and defined over time through case law, and the bases of some more recent critics of this amendments and current interpretations.

66-182 Grand Challenges Seminar: Preserving History with Blockchain Technology

Spring: 9 units
Historical information, artifacts, and relics provide a window to our past and help us understand our present and foresee and prepare for the future. During times of conflict and internecine warfare, it is essential to preserve objects of historical and cultural heritage. Blockchain is a block of data chained together. It does three noteworthy things: 1. digitization, 2. tracing, and 3. security. For any non-digital historical data, Blockchain can provide digitization. For any data that requires tracing, such as scientific findings, religious information, or scriptures (including Hadith/sayings of the Prophet (s)), so on, tracing can play a pivotal role in going back to the originator and understanding the change on the way, as well as preserving it from any changes (which is part of security). Blockchain also involves a mining process, which includes stakeholders that audit the information of any newly added block of data, making Blockchain auditable, which is significant for history. Using topics from blockchain technology, history, preservation, and science, this course provides students with the grand challenge of understanding how bitcoin and cryptocurrency can assist in providing potential solutions to the problems of authorship, impermanence, managing shared ownership, and stewardship of artifacts taken through war or colonialism. Many institutions and archives are considering and advocating the merits of blockchain-based repositories. In this Grand Challenge course, we want to examine how the seemingly opposed fields of study - history and blockchain technology - can be synergized to create a futuristic museum that captures monuments and artifacts, making them accessible to future generations.

66-195 Documenting Israeli and Palestinian Food Cultures: Teaching and Travel

Spring: 9 units
How does the study of food cultures allow us to approach cultural intersections, conflict, and peacemaking, especially in a region as fraught as Israel and Palestine? This course, cotaught by CMU faculty in the departments of History, Modern Languages, and the Entertainment Technology Center, is designed to provide students with a historical and cultural background about the hybrid nature of Jewish and Palestinian-Arab cultures and the multiple ethnic contributions to food cultures in Israel/Palestine, as well as with media-tech skills, with the aim of preparing them for travel to Israel and the West Bank during Spring Break 2023. In the weeks leading up to the trip, the professors will introduce students to the history, literature, film, and language(s) of the region, as well as to critical scholarship in food studies. Students will also begin developing and creating their own personal narrative experience in the media of their choice. During the trip, students will participate in documenting local food cultures through film and other media. Upon their return, they will work on the production of a collaborative multi-layered interactive documentary (iDoc) meant to capture their first-hand experiences with local and regional cuisine practices in Israel and the West Bank, and present separate small group final projects based on these experiences. Specific course themes will include: the shared history of Arabs and Jews from the rise of Islam to Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain) and the Ottoman Empire to the modern and contemporary history of the Arab-Israeli conflict; the history of Sephardi, Ashkenazi, and Mizrahi Jewish immigration and contributions to Israeli cuisine; Palestinian identity, culinary traditions and gendered aspects of food practices; the politics of food; and Palestinian and Jewish voices in literary contexts. To apply to be considered for this course, go to https://forms.gle/UbixDaA9xCBhNaoP8

Course Website: https://forms.gle/UbixDaA9xCBhNaoP8

66-204 Film Festival

Spring
Students will take on the project of planning and managing a film festival that draws a college- and city-wide audience. Students will collaborate on all aspects of the festival: selecting films, generating and distributing marketing materials, designing and scheduling events, arranging facilities and general logistics, coordinating internal and external public relations, organizing fundraisers, rallying the local communities - in short, all the aspects involved in making the event a spectacular/sensational success! A unique feature of this course-cum-festival will be several directors' participation as guest speakers on the festival theme and other issues informing their films. Previous Film Festivals have covered such topics as: Democracy, Mechanization, Realism, Globalization, Migration, Media and Work. This course is also designed to supplement the study of film with the historical, political and sociological background that students need for critically analyzing the images and ideologies they see on the screen and understand how those images effect our views of the past and present time. NOTE: Interview with course instructor required prior the registration.

66-215 The Innovation Trials

Fall: 9 units
This course will examine some of the most influential intellectual property court battles throughout history and their impact on innovation. This course is geared toward students curious about Americas industrial development and interested in the political and business strategies behind the greatest innovations and technological advances of the past several centuries. The course will answer the who, what, where, when, why and how of a number of legal cases involving various technologies and areas of innovation and place them in their historical context.

66-216 Connecting with the Pittsburgh Community

Spring: 6 units
This course is designed to engage students in an exploration of various communities within the Pittsburgh area. Students will examine the ways that local organizers have been able to effectively promote positive social change. Students will develop the ability to honor the histories of diverse communities in the region while learning about the communities and the ingredients of successful communities. This course is part of the Dietrich College Community Engagement Fellowship and is only open to students who have been accepted into the program.
Prerequisite: 66-148

66-221 Topics of Law: Introduction to Intellectual Property Law

Intermittent: 9 units
This course provides students with an overview of patent, trademark, copyright, and trade secret laws. Goals for the course include identifying intellectual property (IP) rights and understanding how to take the necessary steps to protect and enforce those rights. Many recent developments in IP law will also be covered.

66-225 Politics, Persuasion, and the Press

Intermittent: 6 units
This course, conducted in the wake of a brutal presidential election, an assault on the Capitol, and a second impeachment, is intended to examine American politics and to look at how the political system in the United States and its interchange with the press shape the process of making policy. It is one part history, one part political science, one part policy studies, with special emphasis on local and national politics. In this course, students will be exposed to the 18th century Constitutional origins of the American political system as well as the 21st century implications of the American political systemall in the context of political upheaval in a country that, until recently, cultivated an air of stability. Through challenging readings, guest speakers, and yeasty class conversation, this course is intended to provide insights into the political system of the preeminent power in North America and, even now, around the world. In addition to the course readings alluded to below, students will be expected each day to have read in detail the Post-Gazette and either The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times, plus websites of your choice. (Rationale: Even in the Internet age, it remains the case that, in the United States, when one person involved in politics and government encounters another by 9 AM, each will have assumed of the other that they have read both The Journal and The Times.)

66-226 Law and Literature

Intermittent: 9 units
This course offers a real-time understanding of significant legal issues that undergraduates, including those who might be considering careers in law, need to know about. Even those not specifically interested in law will benefit from the medium we use, which is that of imaginative fiction. Scenes from stories (and some films and popular culture media) that deal with law provoke our dicussions, including well known trial scenes (MERCHANT OF VENICE [Shakespeare], BILLY BUDD SAILOR [Melville]), portraits of men and women in the profession of law (GREAT EXPECTATIONS [Dickens], THE FALL [Camus], "A Jury of Her Peers" [Glaspell]; and narratives that show how the rhetoric of law sometimes fails to grasp the problems of less powerful communities (TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD [Lee]; THE FIXER [Malamud]. Students will want to read these and other stories, and to screen films and TV shows about law, with some care, so the course always links the skill of reading well with the policies of a sound approach to the institutions of power. There is no final exam, but there will be a final paper of the student's choosing as discussed with the instructor, and other shorter responsibilities during the semester. The instructor will work closely on each student's writing skills as the semester proceeds. Richard Weisberg has taught both law and English Literature for many years, has practiced law in New York and in federal court, has been an appointee of Pres. Obama, and has been awarded the French Legion of Honor for his work on behalf of the human rights of World War II victims of French racial and religious laws.

66-236 Introduction to Environmental Ideas

Fall and Spring: 9 units
By recognizing that environmental problems are themselves complex and require insights from social, political, and scientific perspectives, the interdisciplinary Program in Environmental and Sustainability Studies (ESS) prepares students to gain proficiency in different disciplinary habits of thinking. As part of this endeavor, students take part in informed discussions about interpretive lenses; ways of seeing; and thinking about social, cultural, and historical contexts for interpretations of environment and sustainability. This seminar-style course introduces key methods and approaches for interdisciplinary inquiry within a framework of Environmental Humanities and Environmental Justice. Scholar Giovanna de Chiro writes: "The term 'environmental justice' emerged from the activism of communities of color in the United States in the latter half of the twentieth century...They advocate for social policies that uphold the right to meaningful, democratic participation of frontline communities in environmental decision making." The implications of disciplinary narratives and approaches to questions of environment and sustainability, and the implications for social justice, are a key and repeated question in the course. The role of poverty as a cultural, political, and historical phenomenon is a motif in many of our discussions. We'll explore contrasting historical, cultural, and disciplinary explanations for hunger, famine, and food insecurity. Further, we'll explore how so-called "environmental" explanations for food scarcity, which rationalize the persistence of hunger and poverty in the 21st century, have distracted from decades of expertise, reminding us that hunger and poverty are social problems. In contrast to these so-called "environmental" explanations, there is no scarcity of food in the present era. This course will examine how these narratives contradict each other, and why it matters.

66-300 Using Collective Leadership to Pursue Community Goals

Fall
This course serves as the third required course in the Dietrich College Community Engagement Fellowship. This course is designed to further prepare students to actively and thoughtfully engage alongside a community focusing on a topic of the students choice. This course will bring together prior topics of cultural humility, asset-based framing, cultural competence, and community-based leadership models alongside additional topics (such as collective leadership, tailored community-focused communication, among others) responsive to their community-based learning experiences. This will prepare students to narrow their focus on a topic and community in preparation for their capstone project.
Prerequisites: 66-148 and 66-216

66-307 Independent Study

All Semesters
This course is intended for students with a special interest in an interdisciplinary area in the humanities and/or social sciences not covered by a normal course. Readings and other works are developed by the student and an individual faculty member. The number of units will be assigned at the time of registration based on the number of hours to be completed (decided in advance with the sponsoring faculty member).

66-310 Reflecting on Experiential Learning

All Semesters: 1 unit
This asynchronous course is used to fulfill the Dietrich College General Education Experiential Learning requirement. Experiential Learning occurs when a student participates in an opportunity that allows them to apply what they are learning in the classroom to a real-world context. This may include internships, undergraduate research with a faculty member, community engaged learning, study abroad or work-based learning through structured consulting projects. This course serves as a complement to an experiential learning activity and students enrolled are expected to engage in critical reflections about their experience. Registration is by permission-only; contact the Experiential Learning Team at dietrichexperiential@andrew.cmu.edu

66-320 Dietrich College Internship

All Semesters
Internships-for-credit allow students to apply course-based knowledge in a non-classroom setting, under joint supervision and evaluation by an on-site supervisor and a faculty sponsor. Approved internships must conform to college guidelines for internships-for-credit, and are available by permission only arranged through Director of Experiential Learning, Baker Hall 160. Interested students should contact dietrichexperiential@andrew.cmu.edu.

66-400 Dietrich College Senior Honors Colloquium

Fall: 1 unit
The purpose of this course is to provide students admitted to the Dietrich College Senior Honors Program with a shared set of intellectual and practical sessions that will enhance their senior honors thesis experience. The course will consist of seven bi-weekly 80-minute meetings. Each will be organized around a theme and related topics that are relevant to the senior honors thesis experience, and that take advantage of both the high caliber and interdisciplinary diversity of the course members. Guest visitors will also be a common feature of the course. Topics could include: the meaning(s) of "honors;" getting started and keeping pace: the ebb and flow of an independent research project (including how to recognize and avoid procrastination; forging a successful relationship with your thesis advisor - the myth of the separation of research from writing; writing for publication); ethics in research; "interdisciplinarity," or the "unity of knowledge;" funding for research; preparing for and delivering effective presentations; intellectual property rights, and human subjects policy. Guest speakers invited to address and engage class members in discussion/debate of topics that lend themselves to interdisciplinary discussion and debate (e.g., stem cell research, which calls into play science, ethics, etc.). Course requirements will include mandatory attendance, occasional readings (where appropriate), acting as co-leader for at least one session, and - at course's end - (a) a written, formal preliminary thesis statement and action plan, endorsed by the thesis advisor, and tentatively, (b) a brief oral presentation of the thesis statement and plan to the class + thesis advisors during the last class meeting. All students will participate in critiques of fellow-students' presentations and plans.

66-402 Dietrich Leadership Development Seminar

Fall and Spring: 9 units
The Dietrich Leadership Development Seminar is for juniors and seniors in Dietrich College wishing to advance their understanding of leadership theory and practice and to develop their own skills in this regard, while creating a context for their lifelong leadership development. The course is predicated on a six pillar model proposing that ideal leaders must at once be visionary, ethical, engaging, tactical, technical - including sub-expert conversancy in realms beyond their own expertise, and reflective - including both personal mindfulness and assessment against clear metrics. In this context, the course includes a focus on strategic planning, teamwork, cultural awareness, conflict resolution, risk management, sustainability and personal welfare, professionalism, personal financial planning, and ongoing professional development. The course includes an attendance requirement and active engagement in class discussion, assigned readings/videos/podcasts (2 hours/week), self-selected experiential opportunities (2 hours/week), reflective journaling (2 hours/week), three hour-long one:ones per semester with the instructor, special guests who are leaders in various occupational and service domains, a mid-term, a final, and a final presentation. The course includes case studies and role plays to amplify the learning experience. The course is limited to twelve students, with registration based on approval of the faculty member.

66-403 Community Engagement Fellowship Capstone

Spring
This course serves as the final component of the Dietrich College Community Engagement Fellowship and is designed to engage students in completion of their culminating project. The course will build on students' work in the previous semester in which they identified a community, established an understanding of the community goals and proposed a plan to pursue one of these goals. During the semester, students will implement their capstone project utilizing the knowledge and skills developed during earlier stages of the program. Working with a mentor who is also a community stakeholder, students will implement their project, solicit feedback from the community, evaluate project effectiveness and make appropriate changes. Students will also articulate ways their project can be sustained and present their findings to a variety of audiences.
Prerequisites: 66-148 and 66-216 and 66-300

66-501 Dietrich College Senior Honors Thesis I

Fall and Spring: 9 units
This is the first semester of a two-semester sequence that culminates in an original, year-long independent research or creative project. The course is open only to students who have been approved for entry into the Dietrich College Senior Honors Program. Thesis topics are selected by faculty and students, and reviewed and approved through the senior honors program application process. Dietrich College senior honors students are also required to participate in the annual Meeting of the Minds Undergraduate Research Symposium, offering either an oral presentation or poster session based on their senior honors thesis

Course Website: http://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/undergraduate/programs/shp/index.html

66-502 Dietrich College Senior Honors Thesis II

Fall and Spring: 9 units
This is the second semester of a two-semester sequence that is the culmination of an original, year-long independent research or creative project. The course is open only to students who have been approved for entry into the Dietrich College Senior Honors Program. Thesis topics are selected by faculty and students, and reviewed and approved through the senior honors program application process. Dietrich College senior honors students are also required to participate in the annual Meeting of the Minds Undergraduate Research Symposium, offering either an oral presentation or poster session based on their senior honors thesis
Prerequisite: 66-501
Course Website: http://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/undergraduate/programs/shp/index.html

66-503 Dietrich College Senior Honors Thesis

All Semesters: 18 units
This course is a one-semester alternative to the two-semester Dietrich College Senior Honors Thesis sequence 66-501/66-502. The course is open only to students who have been approved for entry into the Dietrich College Senior Honors Program, and whose senior honors thesis project has been approved as a one-semester undertaking. Thesis topics are selected by faculty and students, and reviewed and approved through the senior honors program application process. The thesis culminates in an original independent research or creative project. Dietrich College senior honors students are also required to participate in the annual Meeting of the Minds Undergraduate Research Symposium, offering either an oral presentation or poster session based on their senior honors thesis.

66-504 Senior Capstone I

All Semesters: 9 units
Dietrich College student-defined majors (primary or additional) must complete a senior capstone project for at least 9 units (in one semester), or 18 units across both semesters of the senior year. The capstone project culminates in an original independent research or creative project that draws on all of the strands of the student's particular student-defined program. This course is the first in a two-course capstone sequence open only to seniors who have been admitted to the Dietrich College Student-Defined Program as a primary or additional major, and who choose the two-semester capstone sequence option. The second course in the sequence is 66-505, Senior Capstone II. Projects are proposed by eligible students, and must be approved by a member of the faculty who agrees to be the project's primary advisor, as well as by the Dietrich College Student-Defined Program Director. These approvals must be secured no later than registration week of the semester prior to the start of the student's senior year. NOTE: For Dietrich College student-defined majors (primary or additional) who are accepted into the Dietrich College Senior Honors Program and who successfully complete a senior honors thesis based primarily on their student-defined major, the senior honors thesis fulfills the student-defined major capstone requirement.

66-505 Senior Capstone II

All Semesters: 9 units
Dietrich College student-defined majors (primary or additional) must complete a senior capstone project for at least 9 units (in one semester), or 18 units across both semesters of the senior year. The capstone project culminates in an original independent research or creative project that draws on all of the strands of the student's particular student-defined program. This course is the second in the two-course capstone sequence, and is open only to seniors who have been admitted to the Dietrich College Student-Defined Program as a primary or additional major, and who have chosen the two-semester capstone option. The first course in the sequence is 66-504, Senior Capstone I. Projects are proposed by eligible students, and must be approved by a member of the faculty who agrees to be the project's primary advisor, as well as by the Dietrich College Student-Defined Program Director. These approvals must be secured no later than registration week of the semester prior to the start of the student's senior year. NOTE: For Dietrich College student-defined majors (primary or additional) who are accepted into the Dietrich College Senior Honors Program and who successfully complete a senior honors thesis based primarily on their student-defined major, the senior honors thesis fulfills the student-defined major capstone requirement.

66-506 Senior Capstone

All Semesters: 9 units
Dietrich College student-defined majors (primary or additional) must complete a senior capstone project for at least 9 units (in one semester), or 18 units usually spread across both semesters of the senior year. The capstone project culminates in an original independent research or creative project that draws on all of the strands of the student's particular student-defined program. This course is a one-semester option for student-defined majors who propose a 9-unit/one-semester capstone project; it is also an 18-unit/one-semester alternative to the two-semester Senior Capstone sequence (66-504/66-505) for Dietrich College student-defined majors who choose the 18-unit capstone option, but who are unable to spread these units across both semesters of the senior year. The course is open only to seniors who have been admitted to the Dietrich College Student-Defined Program as either a primary or additional major. Projects and unit values are proposed by eligible students, and must be approved by a member of the faculty who agrees to be the project's primary advisor, as well as by the Dietrich College Student-Defined Program Director. These approvals must be secured no later than registration week of the semester prior to the start of the student's senior year. NOTE: For Dietrich College student-defined majors (primary or additional) who are accepted into the Dietrich College Senior Honors Program and who successfully complete a senior honors thesis, the senior honors thesis fulfills the student-defined major capstone requirement.

General Dietrich College Courses

65-198 Research Training: History

Intermittent: 9 units
For Fall 2021: The Pittsburgh Queer History Project The Pittsburgh Queer History Project (PQHP) is an ongoing research effort to collect and catalog archival material that document the experiences of LGBTQ people in Pittsburgh and its environs from the second half of the 20th century to the present. The PQHP is co-directed by Prof. Tim Haggerty, the Director of the Humanities Scholars Program and Dr. Harrison Apple, a BXA graduate of Carnegie Mellon who received a doctorate degree from the University of Arizona in 2021, studying with the noted trans scholar Susan Stryker. Students will meet with community activists, learn how to conduct community outreach, organize archival material, and help formulate research questions based on these documents. There is no prior experience needed. The Dietrich College research training program is open to second-semester first-year students and sophomores with a 3.0 QPA or by petition. By permission of the relevant professor and the Director of Undergraduate Studies. Students sign up for these courses through both the History Department and the Dietrich College Dean's Office.

65-200 Applied Quantitative Social Science I

Fall: 9 units
The first course in the QSSS core sequence provides a fast-paced introduction to a range of methods in the quantitative social sciences. Organized around a set of case studies, the course introduces the language and methods of empirical research through a combination of seminar-style discussions of academic papers, and hands-on lab work using the statistical software R. Students will replicate results from a high-profile labor market discrimination paper, explore agent-based models of neighborhood segregation, and scrape Wikipedia data to examine imbalances in gender representation. Enrollment restricted to QSSS students.

65-201 Pathways in the Humanities

Fall
Fall 2025: In this seminar, HSP students will have the first-hand opportunity to explore the ways in which their educations in the humanities prepare them for future experiences and careers. Students will participate in a series of guided reflections about their own interests and strengths, and network with alumni and professionals in a variety of fields; alumni and other guests will regularly participate in class discussions, in person or via zoom. As part of their coursework, students also will learn about scholarship, internship and job opportunities, and participate in a workshop geared toward helping them prepare cover letters, resumes, proposals, and applications. For those majors who already have a similarly-focused course, students can take for fewer credits, while further building their network of mentors and peers.
Prerequisite: 65-102

Course Website: http://www.hss.cmu.edu/hsp/

65-203 Applied Quantitative Social Science II

Spring: 9 units
Applied Quantitative Social Science II is the second course in the QSSS core sequence. Conducted in a seminar format, the course will feature guest lectures from a series of faculty at CMU. Students will discuss ongoing research across the social sciences, and over the course of the semester will develop a research project proposal. Seminar participation is limited to QSSS students.