Fall 2025 Seminars
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Global Understanding: Place, Culture, and Society
HNRS 2011 Gen Ed Credit: Humanities, Writing Intensive
Instructor: Melanie Robbins
Tuesday & Thursday, 9:30-10:45am
How do the places we live and visit shape who we are and how we see the world? In this course, students will explore the connections between place, culture, and human experience. By examining different communities, environments, and the ways people interact with their surroundings, students will discover how geography influences culture, society, and human interactions. As part of the course, students will participate in an international virtual exchange, engaging with university students from partner institutions around the world—past partners have included universities in Algeria, France, Japan, Mexico, Peru, and Poland, among others. Through virtual discussions, you’ll share and explore cultural characteristics, values, and perspectives. By the end of the course, students will gain a deeper understanding of how geography and culture shape identities and how our views of the world are influenced by the places we call home.
Psychiatry, Ethics and the Law
HNRS 2011 Gen Ed Credit: Humanities, Writing Intensive
Instructor: Dan Moseley
Monday & Wednesday, 2-3:15pm
Psychiatry, more than any other branch of medicine, is innervated with ethical and legal considerations. There are no anti-cardiology or anti-oncology movements, but there are anti-psychiatry movements. Why does psychiatry come under ethical and legal scrutiny in a way that other branches of medicine do not? Is psychiatry different than the other medical sciences? We will examine the historical development of psychiatry and focus on its legal and ethical dimensions. We will also study landmark legal cases and discuss how they have shaped clinical practice and research. We will also explore the various ways that psychiatry, criminal justice and the criminal law overlap. Course materials will include academic articles, legal cases, book chapters, and films. In this Writing Intensive course, there will be weekly writing assignments, a mid-term and final exam, and a final research paper.
HNRS 2011 Gen Ed Credit: Humanities, Writing Intensive
Instructor: James Smith
We begin with a story that for more than thirty years has produced the obvious need for the class to discuss moral relativism. That discussion will lead to interrelated topics dealing with the relation of the social sciences to philosophy, with the nature of inference, and with some introductory considerations of the cognitive status of moral claims. These considerations will include issues regarding inferential justification, the nature of the American founding, domestic and foreign diversity, and methods for the presentation of sound argumentation in cases of moral importance in the professions. Students will complete three exams of four or five mini-essays each, a longer semester essay, and a final exam with four or five mini-essays, each of these five requirements weighted equally in the determination of the course grade. Each of the five requirements may be submitted optionally in draft form for instructor critique before final, almost always revised, later submission. Together, this work will result in a course-long conversation about content and how to write about it successfully. This course design has for years emphasized the skills associated with writing and writing improvement as those five different extended essays are submitted for instructor feedback for improvement prior to final submission.
HNRS 2014 Gen Ed Credit: Science, Writing Intensive
Instructor: Raymond Mattingly
Tuesday & Thursday, 12:30-1:45pm
The course will focus on a series of case-based discussions and presentations on major topics from contemporary and historical drug discoveries that have had major impacts on our society. Examples of current issues include the efficacy of antidepressants, tobacco use and vaping, treatments for COVID-19, and fentanyl in the opioid epidemic. Classic case studies include thalidomide treatment of morning sickness, penicillin and the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, and steroids for neonatal respiratory distress. Historical examples include quinine treatment for malaria, morphine for pain relief, and gold as a panacea. Short lectures will be interspersed through the course to introduce the basic principles of drug action and discovery and their impacts, with consideration of problems that arise from issues such as drug access and costs due to differences in age, ethnicity, and other cultural and societal factors. The course will include a guest lecture by a leading pharmacologist from the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
HNRS 2116 Gen Ed Credit: Writing Intensive
Instructor: Tom Robbins
Tuesday & Thursday, 2-3:15pm
Since the 2018 United State Supreme Court decision striking down the federal ban on sports gambling, sports betting has become legitimate, and increasingly popular. But, successful betting on sports is hard, the odds are literally stacked against you. Confusing terms such as the hold, a parley, prop bets, the drop, and hedging, are common, and the odds are expressed in terms that are hard to understand. In this course we dig into the details of the sports betting market. We will investigate the structure of each of the 3 major types of sports betting; parimutuel, points-based, and odds based. We will examine the betting options on major US sports including football, basketball, baseball, hockey and MMA. We will use basic probability concepts to understand our chances of winning, or losing, and we will investigate the fundamental differences between betting on sports and betting on games of chance like roulette or dice. We will look at ways to apply analytics to predict outcomes and will investigate the efficiency of the betting market to see if it is possible to consistently “beat the market”. We will examine how common biases and fallacies, such as the hot hand fallacy and the gamblers fallacy, impact betting behavior. We will apply what we learn in a series of simulated bets where students bet play money on real sporting events and their project grade depends on their ending bankroll.
HNRS 2012 Gen Ed Credit: Fine Arts, Writing Intensive
Instructor: Gerald Weckesser
Monday & Wednesday, 5-6:50pm
This course will explore creativity, art, and craft through the act of making. Students will be introduced to several disciplines within Art and Design, in an experientially based class. Students will create objects to better understand the creative process. It is the intimacy of our hands with raw materials that we gain a greater insight into our creative production, influencing the way we see the world around us, what we value, and impresses upon us a respect for artists, designers, and makers.
HNRS 2116 Gen Ed Credit: Writing Intensive
Instructor: Corey Pulido
Monday, Wednesday & Friday, 9-9:50am
In this course, we will develop the build to launch scenario. Students will learn how to ideate and determine the difference between ideas and opportunities. How to prototype their business findings and build a plan to launch a business by the end of the semester. This is a fast paced exposure to entrepreneurship.
Ghosting Premature Death: Promoting Prevention in Eastern North Carolina
HNRS 2116 Gen Ed Credit: Writing Intensive
Instructors: Ashley Burch & Linda Bolin
Monday, 2-5pm
Premature death is defined as death that occurs before the average age of mortality in the population. In the U.S. up to half of premature deaths, also known as early death, are considered preventable through lifestyle modification. In this course we will examine biases in healthcare, economic, and social determinants of premature death. Students will explore population health, and health outcomes in Eastern North Carolina with a focus on outreach and health promotion/prevention strategies to reduce premature death through faculty led seminars and participation in the SERVIRE (Stopping Early Reversible Vital organ damage In Rural Eastern North Carolina) mobile van outreach programs. This is a writing intensive (WI) credit course.