Honors Seminars for Fall 2023 and Spring 2024
The following criteria will be considered for registration for all Honors Seminars:
- Seniors will be given priority to register for Honors seminars.
- We will consider the student’s progress towards the completion of their Honors Baccalaureate (i.e. number of Honors credits taken, second language fulfillment status, and a cumulative GPA of 3.5 and above).
- The seminar is advantageous towards the student’s field/s of study and/or future career plans.
SPECIAL NOTE: Please call or email our office to indicate your seminar preferences. We recommend selecting at least two to three seminars that interest you to ensure seminar placement.
Fall 2023 Honors Seminars
Death Becomes Us: The Mystery of Mortality and the Need for Meaning
HONR 400-001 (4 credits)
Prerequisites: HONR 201 & HONR 202, or HONR 301
Time: W/F 9:00 – 10:50 am
Place: NAH 337
Instructor: Dr. Thomas P. Donovan, Honors College
Course Description
This seminar seeks to critically explore the role of mortality awareness in the creation of cultural meaning systems. We will explore how our beliefs and values provide a crucial antidote in the face of mortality and against feelings of insignificance and meaninglessness, while also contributing to creating "made-up minds" in the face of uncertainty. We will also explore how challenges to our systems of belief often inspire defensive and aggressive responses to this perceived mortal threat and the implications for our present global reality. This course will examine how humans across cultures manage the enormity of our awareness of finitude and the efforts to give meaning to our temporary existence.
Thomas Patrick Donovan has been teaching graduate and undergraduate students since
2004, and has served as a Faculty Fellow in the Honors College at Montana State University
since 2011. He holds a doctorate in Psychology and is particularly interested in the
existential questions regarding living a meaningful life that inform the human condition
the world over.
Design Thinking for Our Community
HONR 494-001 (4 credits)
Prerequisites: HONR 201 & HONR 202, or HONR 301
Time: M/W 10:00 - 11:50 am
Place: NAH 325
Instructor: Professor Amanda Rutherford, Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering
Course Description
In this upper division seminar course, we explore the process of design thinking in our multidisciplinary class through solving real world problems in our community. In Fall 2018, we will be applying the design thinking process to complex problems facing our MSU community and beyond. Examples of past projects are widely varied ranging from re-designing Move-In day on campus (see http://www.montana.edu/news/16319/honors-college-students-design-plan-to-improve-move-in-day) to assisting community non-profits like GVLT, CHP and the Community Cafe to solve tough problems facing their organizations. While the course is open to all honors students, we are especially seeking those students in humanities, basic science, arts and architecture and business majors. The seminar is capped at 16 and no more than 50% of its students will be from any given college.
Prior to Dr. Amanda Rutherford Prior beginning her 15+ year teaching career at MSU,
Mandy was a R&D engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Working there sparked
an interest in all things nuclear that she hasn't been able to shake since. Currently
Mandy is the lead instructor for EGEN 310, Multidisciplinary Engineering Design. She
also co-teaches the honors version of this course, Design Thinking for Our Community,
and has taught a slew of other classes in the NACOE. She is also one of Bobcat Goldwater
Scholars!
Gender and Sexuality in Rural American Music, Media, and Landscapres
HONR 494-002 (4 credits)
Prerequisites: HONR 201 & HONR 202, or HONR 301
Time: M/W 3:10 – 5:00 pm
Place: NAH 331
Instructor: Professor Andrew Keegan, Liberal, University and Earth Sciences
Course Description
Gender and Sexuality in Rural American Music-, Media-, and Landscapes draws from a range of disciplines, including music, film, and literary criticism; cultural theory; sociology; cultural geography; political ecology; and environmental humanities to provide students with a survey of gender and sexuality studies in the context of rural American culture. While gender and sexuality form the principal analytical frameworks through which the texts and other media of this course will be engaged, students will also examine issues of race, ethnicity, indigeneity, class, and religiosity as they relate to various rural American cultural artifacts. Through musical, cinematic, and literary representations of rural American culture, students will explore five broad themes which include: Country Femininities, Country Masculinities, Country Music and Working-Class Formations, Queering Wilderness and the Southwest Borderlands, and Troubling Metronormativity and Rural Imaginaries.
Andrew is an early-career scholar whose academic interests are situated at the intersection
of gender and sexuality studies, queer theory, and geography. He earned his bachelor of the arts in international relations and history from Richmond,
the American International University in London, UK, in 2014. In completing his graduate work in MSU’s Master of Public Administration program in
2018, Andrew developed an original program that synthesized quantitative and qualitative
social science research methods as well as qualitative geospatial data visualization
techniques to operationalize the questions of how LGBTQ people perceive public lands, how
this influences individual and collective sense of attachment to place, and how these
factors coalesce to inform how LGBTQ people exercise their citizenship on and in cultural
landscapes like national parks in the United States. Most recently, Andrew anticipates earning a second master’s degree from University
College Dublin in the subdiscipline of critical geographies where his scholarship
explores the performative and affective production of queer country music lifeworlds. He has taught across several departments at MSU, including University Studies, Liberal
Studies, and Earth Sciences.
Creation of Fictional Worlds
HONR 405-001 (4 credits)
Prerequisites: HONR 201 & HONR 202, or HONR 301
Time: T/R 1:10 – 3:00 pm
Place: NAH 337
Instructor: Professor Kent Davis, Honors College
Course Description:
Kent Davis holds an MFA in Acting from the University of California, San Diego and a BA in Dramatic Literature from the University of Pennsylvania. Davis is the author of the A Riddle in Ruby trilogy - three speculative fiction novels for young readers, published by HarperCollins/Greenwillow Books. Davis has over thirty years of professional experience as an award-winning actor, director, and playwright at regional theater venues like La Jolla Playhouse, Mark Taper Forum | Center Theater Group, Odyssey Theater Ensemble, the Vancouver International Fringe, and the Bedlam Theater in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is the former Artistic Director of the Equinox Theater Company. He is an Assistant Teaching Professor at MSU in the Honors College and the School of Film and Photography.
Wolves in Yellowstone: A Social, Scientific and Photographic Journey
HONR 408IN-001 (4 credits)
Prerequisites: HONR 201 & HONR 202, or HONR 301
Time: T/R 9:00 – 10:50 am
Place: NAH 337
Instructor: Dr. John Winnie, Department of Ecology
Course Description
In this seminar, we will explore society's historic and current attitudes towards wolves framed in the context of wolf reintroduction in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. Further, we will evaluate wolves' role as ecosystem engineers by examining how they influence prey population dynamics and behavior, and in turn look at how changes in prey may be influencing plant communities. Students are expected to read, understand, synthesize and discuss content and concepts from the social and life sciences, and use this knowledge to inform opinions and positions they express verbally and in writing. In addition, over the course of the semester, students will develop natural history photography skills through a combination of in-class instruction, independent assignments, and 2-3 field trips to Yellowstone National Park and surrounding lands. Students will use their photos to illustrate the ecological effects of wolf reintroduction, and related conservation issues and controversies, in seminar presentations and their final papers.
John Winnie Jr., PhD, is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Ecology Department here at MSU. He started doing wolf and elk research in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in 2000, publishing regularly on topics ranging from animal behavior to the influences predators have on prey population dynamics, to trophic cascades. Dr. Winnie is also an avid natural history photographer whose work has been widely published.
The Art and Science of Medicine
HONR 411RS-01 (4 credits)
Prerequisites: HONR 201 & HONR 202, or HONR 301
Time: M/W 1:10 – 3:00 pm
Place: NAH 337
Instructor: Professor Don Demetriades, Department of History and Philosophy and University Honors
Course Description
Designed for students from all academic disciplines, this seminar will focus on just how broadly and profoundly contemporary medicine touches all of our lives. It will examine the underlying principles of medicine through the lens of literature, science, art and related fields. The why of suffering and disease, the how of healing, and the role both patient and physician play in individual health will be explored. Medical professionals will be invited to visit the seminar.
Professor Demetriades is the past coordinator of the humanities curriculum for the Inteflex Program (Integrated Pre-med/Med Program) at the University of Michigan. He currently serves as an Assistant Teaching Professor for the MSU Honors College (nine years) and the History and Philosophy Dept. (fifteen years). He holds a BA in Philosophy and Classics (Michigan), an MA in Philosophy (Michigan), and was a Doctoral Candidate in Philosophy (Michigan). He is also a veteran of thirty-six marathons and twenty ultra-marathons.
Unleashing Scientific Innovation Through the Creation of Art
ARTZ 309IA-001 (4 credits)
Prerequisites: HONR 201 & HONR 202, or HONR 301
Time: T/R 3:10 – 5:00 pm
Place: NAH 337
Instructor: Professor Paul Waldum, Honors College and Department of Education
Course Description
Through this interdisciplinary course, students will explore creativity and innovation through the creation of art through individual and group projects. Through this work, the students will develop a creative and collaborative mindset that will give rise to innovation and the expansion of knowledge in the students’ academic fields of interest. Students will be afforded hands-on opportunities for original and innovative exploration, conceptualizing, creative problem solving and critical thinking, while developing a high level of understanding of the creative process across disciplines through the creation of art. The course will culminate in a public exhibition of the students’ creative works.
Paul Waldum has taught all levels of Art Education for over 30 years. Currently he teaches for MSU in both the Honors College and College of Education. He holds a BA degree in Art Education (Montana State University), and an MS degree in Curriculum and Instruction/Art Education (Black Hills State University, South Dakota). His landscape paintings are exhibited in numerous museums and galleries throughout the West. He recently donated a 60” x 96” painting, “Spring Along Knox Ridge Road – Missouri River” for the new MSU Norm Asbjornson Hall.
Spring 2024 Honors Seminars
Death Becomes Us: The Mystery of Mortality and the Need for Meaning
HONR 400-001 (4 credits)
Prerequisites: HONR 201 & HONR 202, or HONR 301
Time: W/F 12:10 – 2:00 pm
Place: NAH 337
Instructor: Dr. Thomas P. Donovan, Honors College
Course Description:
Does it matter that we are the only creatures we know of who are aware of their own mortality? Does this awareness shape our beliefs and therefore our behaviors? Does consciousness of our eventual finitude impel us to create culture, symbolic meaning systems, and immortality schemas in order that we may compensate for and manage our fears? Is it possible that fear of death figures profoundly into human conflict, racial and ethnic tensions, the so-called “battle of the sexes” and contemporary “culture wars”? Might death anxiety undergird both our greatest triumphs and our most heartbreaking tragedies? As mythologist Joseph Campbell explains, the first function of myth in cultures across the planet is reconciliation of our awareness of mortality by anchoring human existence in meaningful belief systems as the crucial antidote against an insignificant life and meaningless death. To delve into these complex questions, our inquiry will necessarily involve an interdisciplinary approach, utilizing the fields of philosophy, theology, psychology, history, mythology, literature, sociology, and science.
Thomas Patrick Donovan has been teaching graduate and undergraduate students since 2004, and has served as a Faculty Fellow in the Honors College at Montana State University since 2011. He holds a doctorate in Psychology and is particularly interested in the existential questions regarding living a meaningful life that inform the human condition the world over.
Design Thinking for Our Community
HONR 494-001 (4 credits)
Prerequisites: HONR 201 & HONR 202, or HONR 301
Time: M/W 10:00 – 11:50 am
Place: NAH 337
Instructors: Professor Amanda Rutherford, Industrial and Management Systems Engineering
Course Description:
In this upper division seminar course, we explore the process of design thinking in our multidisciplinary class through solving real world problems in our community. We will be applying the design thinking process to complex problems facing our MSU community and beyond. Examples of past projects are widely varied ranging from re-designing Move-In day on campus (see http://www.montana.edu/news/16319/honors-college-students-design-plan-to-improve-move-in-day) to assisting community non-profits like GVLT and HRDC. While the course is open to all honors students, we are especially seeking those students in humanities, basic science, arts and architecture and business majors. No more than 50% of its students will be from any given college.
Prior to beginning her 15+ year teaching career at MSU, Mandy was a R&D engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory where she worked in the areas of structural dynamics and damage identification. At MSU, she has been the curriculum lead for EGEN 310, Multidisciplinary Engineering Design for the last 17 years and was a co-founder of the Bill Wurst Makerspace. She has taught multiple offerings for the Honors College, including T&C, Our Nuclear Age, and Design Thinking for Our Community. She’s also proud to be an alumnus of the growing group of Goldwater Scholars!
Developing Sustainability Entrepreneurship
HONR 494-002 (4 credits)
Prerequisites: HONR 201 & HONR 202, or HONR 301
Time: T/R 1:10 – 3:00 pm
Place: NAH 337
Instructors: Professor Amy Williams
Course Description:
The course contains four primary, interrelated themes that will help students explore how factors inside and outside businesses affect their trajectory. Guest lectures will be used to underscore key learnings within each theme by speaking to their experiences.
- Social Impact - The power to change behavior lies in the hands of individuals - often of individuals in leadership roles presiding over workplace actions. This course will explore how power, product outcomes and ethics intersect.
- Design Thinking - Design is creative, non-linear, aesthetically function forward, and user-informed. This class investigates how and why this approach yields better designs.
- De-Risking - This course will explore the turning of ideas into fundable ventures using strong problem solving, prototype ideation, and communication skills. This section will teach specific practices for validating or disproving assumptions.
- Implementation - Businesses exist within complex social, fiscal, and resource systems. Ensuring a positive social impact requires understanding of existing systems along with their inputs, incursions, and practice histories. Systems thinking incorporates the existing component structures with innovation expectations to shift behaviors and process engagement, which leads to systemic change. Students will critique existing systems to challenge their product to market trajectory.
As an experienced designer, entrepreneur, and educator, Amy has unparalleled expertise in guiding teams through innovation processes and in teaching human centered design. Amy is a professor and Ed.D. who has created sustainability focused curricula at several different universities. She is also a champion of women and the planet we love. She encourages individuals to question the status quo and do the hard right thing at every turn. As a creative leader, Amy inspires strategic creativity and enables practice change by breaking through barriers to empower future leaders to act authentically and with agency.
Critical Perspectives in Leadership
HONR 406-001 (4 credits)
Prerequisites: HONR 201 & HONR 202, or HONR 301
Time: M/W 5:10 – 7:00 pm
Place: NAH 337
Instructor: Professor Richard Broome, Jake Jabs College of Business & Entrepreneurship
Course Description:
Leadership issues permeate every aspect of our lives. The purpose of this course is to encourage students to develop and exercise critical thinking skills concerning the different issues impacting leadership in the 21st century.
Student will explore such topics as:
-- Historical and contemporary theories of leadership
-- The explosion of technological advances in the 21st century, which are having a significant impact on leaders
-- Crisis leadership
-- Recent societal changes that impact leaders
-- The impact of the 24X7 news cycle on leaders
-- New definitions of power within a cyber world
-- The impact of evolving values and ethics on leadership decision-making
-- Increasing corporate social responsibility and leadership
-- The looming leadership takeover by the millennial generation and generation Z
-- Operational leadership skills in the 21st century VUCA environment (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous)
This is a highly interactive class with an emphasis on class participation and student involvement. The various topical areas identified in the course schedule will be addressed through a combination of short lecture, then a longer discussion of assigned readings, exercises, presentations, group activities and analyses of case studies. The underlying assumption, which guides the teaching of this course, is that students learn best when actively engaged in their learning and exposed to a variety of perspectives. A course outline is attached; however, the instructor will provide weekly agendas, which will include specific assignments, typically via in class announcements and D2L.
Professor Broome has several years of significant leadership experience. He is a faculty member in both the College of Business and the Honors College where he currently teaches courses about leadership and entrepreneurship. He is also appointed to the faculty of The George Washington University where he helped create the curriculum and now teaches the leadership courses for a B.S. degree in Leadership for Global Disaster Response designed only for military members of the U.S. Special Operations Command (Navy Seals, Army Special Forces). For almost nineteen years he held leadership positions at the NASDAQ stock market, Computer Sciences Corporation and Booz Allen Hamilton. Prior to this, Professor Broome spent twenty-seven years in the U.S. Army, entering as a private and retiring as a full Colonel. Professor Broome was asked by two Presidents of the United States to serve on the White House staff at the National Security Council, where he was a member of the crisis management leadership team at the NSC. He has a B.S. degree in Psychology from Utah State University, an M.S. degree in Systems Management from the University of Southern California, and an M.S. degree in Computer Information Systems from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. He currently serves on the board of the MSU Leadership Institute, the editorial board of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle and is a former board member of HAVEN, a shelter for women who are victims of domestic violence. He is the author of three novels.
Understanding Shakespeare from Folio to Performance
HONR 407IA-001 (4 credits)
Prerequisites: HONR 201 & HONR 202, or HONR 301
Time: T/R 1:10 – 3:00 pm
Place: NAH 329
Instructor: Professor Kent Davis
Course Description:
This seminar will focus on the works of William Shakespeare through an academic and literary lens, but also through performance. Led by Kent Davis, a classically trained actor and director with over twenty years of experience at venues ranging from La Jolla Playhouse to the Mark Taper Forum to the Edinburgh Fringe, this seminar will analyze the works of Shakespeare from multiple facets including dramaturgical analysis, analysis from the actor’s perspective, verse work and choices of interpretation, and directorial interpretation of the plays. The goal: a holistic understanding of Shakespeare from page all the way to its ultimate expression, the stage.
Kent Davis has taught in the Honors College and in the School of Film and Photography since 2004. He has spent most of his life making stories as a writer, actor, and game designer. His kidlit trilogy, A Riddle in Ruby, is published by HarperCollins/Greenwillow Books. He holds a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and an MFA in Theater from UC, San Diego. Interests: narrative patterns, science communication, applied improvisation.
The Rural-Urban Divide in American Politics and Policy
HONR 494IS-001 (4 credits)
Prerequisites: HONR 201 & HONR 202, or HONR 301
Time: T/R 10:00 – 11:50 am
Place: NAH 337
Instructor: Dr. Eric Raile, Department of Political Science
Course Description:
The traditional geographic and demographic division in the United States between rural and nonrural areas has become nearly congruent with the major partisan and ideological political divide in the country. This is not an accident or a coincidence, but is, instead the result of decades-long trends with political, social, economic, and informational dimensions. Students will read a mix of liberal, conservative, and more neutral voices. The course will often look at these issues through an international development lens. The first part of the course investigates different perspectives about the decline of rural America, while the second considers economic and geographic sources of problems in rural America. The third part looks at interactions between political polarization and the rural/urban divide in the U.S., while the final part examines potential futures that might result from these fissures.
Dr. Eric Raile is an associate professor of political science and director of the Human Ecology Learning & Problem Solving (HELPS) Lab at Montana State University. He grew up in rural North Dakota. Following college graduation, he interned for a U.S. senator from North Dakota and subsequently worked for the U.S. government on international development issues. He earned a PhD in political science and has now worked for three different land-grant universities in the U.S. He has lived in Montana for more than 10 years. The HELPS Lab facilitates many surveys in rural areas, and Dr. Raile is also affiliated with Montana INBRE, which supports biomedical and health research in rural and Tribal areas of Montana. Finally, Dr. Raile has conducted research fieldwork in sub-Saharan Africa with support from the United States Agency for International Development.
The Art and Science of Medicine
HONR 411RS-01 4 credits)
Prerequisites: HONR 201 & HONR 202, or HONR 301
Time: T/R 3:10 – 5:00 pm
Place: NAH Room 337
Instructor: Professor Don Demetriades, Department of History and Philosophy and Honors College
Course Description:
Designed for students from all academic disciplines, this seminar will focus on just how broadly and profoundly contemporary medicine touches all of our lives. It will examine the underlying principles of medicine through the lens of literature, science, art and related fields. The why of suffering and disease, the how of healing, and the role both patient and physician play in individual health will be explored. Medical professionals will be invited to visit the seminar.
Professor Demetriades is the past coordinator of the humanities curriculum for the Inteflex Program (Integrated Pre-med/Med Program) at the University of Michigan. He currently serves as an Assistant Teaching Professor for the MSU Honors College (nine years) and the History and Philosophy Dept. (fifteen years). He holds a BA in Philosophy and Classics (Michigan), an MA in Philosophy (Michigan), and was a Doctoral Candidate in Philosophy (Michigan). He is also a veteran of thirty-six marathons and twenty ultra-marathons.
