SEN 1345: Coming of Age Narratives: The Art of TV, Film and Popular Culture

Instructor: Kristina Dang

This seminar will explore the genre of coming-of-age TV shows with themes such as love and sex, gender, substance use, wealth and class, and generational trauma. We will watch shows such as Degrassi, Euphoria, Gossip Girl, Glee, and One Tree Hill. Through engaging lectures and interactive discussions, students will be able to contextualize the TV shows they watch. Additionally, students will contribute to conversations by sharing TV shows they enjoy. By the end of the course, we will have a profound appreciation for the art of visual storytelling and depiction of real-life experiences in pop culture.

COM7503 Communicating and Collaborating in Virtual Teams

3 Elective CreditsIn this fully online course, students will learn how to successfully collaborate and communicate in virtual teams. Students will begin by reading and discussing course readings on organizational and global communication; virtual communication; and theoretical frameworks of the use of AI technologies in order to build a working knowledge of current collaboration technologies and effective communication in different contexts. Using this knowledge as a backdrop, students will explore and analyze the impact that these technologies have on business and communication. Students will apply their communication knowledge to a practical experience with existing virtual collaboration tools through shorter group assignments, guest speakers, interviews with remote workers, and a longer writing and oral presentation final project.

During the course, students will be expected to hold virtual class and group meetings, use and evaluate collaboration and project management tools, reflect on their virtual communication and leadership experiences, lead weekly remote group work, and write a final professional research report analyzing the communicative and collaborative effectiveness of state-of-the-art technology used in today's corporate environment.

In this revamped offering, our Babson students will be paired with Nord University (Norway) students for half of the Spring semester to engage in an exciting VE/COIL project. VE/COIL, which stands for Virtual Exchange/Collaborative Online International Learning, is an emerging global exchange opportunity for students and faculty to collaborate across institutions. Students will complete a consulting project for Yara International, a Norwegian company. In this project, students from Babson will partner with Nord University students virtually in a true global experiential learning environment.

Prerequisites: None

MKT3501 Communicating for Consumer Behavior Change
4 Free Elective CreditsIn this course, students learn and draw upon interdisciplinary theories in psychology, marketing and persuasion/influence to explore the nature of behavioral change at the individual, consumer and societal levels. Centered around a major social marketing project, students will test theories of persuasive communication and choice architecture to explore how to use the knowledge of human experience to shape behavior for social good.

Prerequisites: None

COM3504 Communicating in Global Virtual Teams
(Formerly MOB3504)
4 Advanced Management CreditsIf you took and passed MOB3504, you cannot register for COM3504, as these two courses are equivalent

In this course, students will learn how to successfully engage, collaborate and communicate in global virtual teams. Students will begin by reading and discussing assigned course reading on global communication, virtual collaboration, organizational communication, and writing in groups in preparation for a major cross-institutional global project.

In collaboration with Marshall School of Business at USC, students will participate in the 6-week global Virtual Business Professional (VBP), project, which puts students in diverse international teams using Slack's communication platform to complete a written social media assessment project for Google, Amazon, or Starbucks. At the conclusion of the project, faculty teaching in the program will choose the best report for each company. Google, Amazon, and Starbucks are partnering with the project and a representative from each company will pick one of the three winners.

Students will be expected to hold virtual meetings, use project management tools, create online presentations, and write a final report using state-of-the-art technology used in today's corporate environment. The VBP project runs from approximately week 4 to week 9 of the academic semester. During this time, class work will include discussing experiences working in the project, identifying and considering shared challenges, and engaging with scholarly and popular reading that can help students in the project.

Prerequisites: None

POL4645 Comparative Latin American Politics
4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits

Comparative politics is a core subfield of Political Science and International Relations. The study of comparative politics has a lively and engaging body of scholars who are dedicated to understanding the potentials and limitations of democracy. The field has developed many interesting areas of research focusing on the comparison of political systems, national institutions, gender rights, environmental issues, and economic development.

This is an advanced level course, focused on contemporary Latin American politics. The course begins with an introduction to theories and methods of comparative politics, and a brief overview of basic concepts in political science such as different forms of government, electoral systems, and democratic systems. The course then discusses six central themes in comparative politics in Latin America: Party Systems and Political Representation, Economic Development and Inequality, Environmental Policies, Gender Policies, Regional Migration, and Foreign Relations. In each of these six themes, we will use cases from various Latin American countries for an in-depth discussion.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

HSS2033 Comparative Politics
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsComparative politics is a field that seeks to understand political dynamics within states and to understand a variety of political phenomena common in many countries. This course will use such cases as Britain, France, Russia, China, Iran, India, and Brazil to look at issues of nationalism, economic policies, institutional design, development, and social change. Comparative Politics is also characterized by a methodology that seeks to illuminate the reasons for similarities and differences across countries and provide some tools to think more critically about various political claims and proposals.

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

OIM9530 Competing on Analytics
(Formerly MIS9530)
1.5 Intensive Elective Credits

If you took and passed MIS9530, you cannot register for OIM9530, as these two courses are equivalent

Meeting Dates TBD
Drop Deadline TBD

McKinsey Global Institute is predicting a shortage of over a million managers and analysts with the analytics know-how to make effective decisions. In this course, you will learn about some of the most important analytics-related trends, how enterprises and entire industries are being transformed by analytics, and how to build a competitive data strategy and team. We will also discuss various approaches and tools for analyzing structured and unstructured data.

To complement our strategy discussion, we will explore some popular business intelligence tools. You will have the opportunity to get "hands-on" with a few of these tools.

The highlight of this course will be an industry-specific team project employing concepts and best practices discussed in class.

Note (1): If you have professional analytics experience, please contact the professor in advance of registering to assure alignment with your interests and needs.

Note (2): You will need a reasonably current PC or Mac. Mac users will need to download an app from the Apple AppStore. Details will be provided in advance of class.

OIM3600: Computer Science for Business Students

4 advanced liberal arts credits

This course, Introduction to Computer Science for Business Students, is designed for business students who are interested in learning about the fundamental concepts of computer science. The course covers a wide range of topics including hardware, the internet, programming in Scratch and Python, basic algorithms, web development using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, SQL, and Flask. In addition, the course also covers important concepts in cybersecurity. Throughout the course, students will work on multiple projects including a final capstone project that integrates and applies the knowledge and skills learned in the previous sessions. Group work and projects are significant elements of the course, as students will have the opportunity to collaborate and learn from each other in a team setting. By the end of the course, students should have a strong foundation in computer science and be able to apply these concepts in a business context.

Prerequisites: None

MBA7541 Conscious Capitalism: How Business can Heal our World
(Formerly Building and Leading Conscious Business)

3 CreditsBusiness-as-usual is no longer an option. It has led to rising income inequality, devastated ecosystems and widespread social unrest. We are at a turning point in how we think about the role and purpose of business in society, with both the Business Roundtable and the World Economic Forum recently issuing calls for Stakeholder Capitalism and purpose beyond profit. Led by the co-founder of the fast-growing global Conscious Capitalism movement (www.ConsciousCapitalism.org), this course immerses students in a new business philosophy that challenges business leaders to re-imagine why their organizations exist and to consciously create long-term value for all stakeholders, including society and the planet. Research shows that companies that embody the principles of Conscious Capitalism substantially outperform their peers financially over the long term, while simultaneously promoting intellectual, social, cultural, emotional, spiritual, physical and ecological well-being. Students will learn in depth how to implement the tenets of Conscious Capitalism: higher purpose, stakeholder orientation, conscious leadership and caring cultures. In addition to discovering their personal higher purpose, they will critically examine the evidence on the impact of practicing Conscious Capitalism on the tangible and intangible well-being of all stakeholders; develop an understanding of systems thinking as an essential discipline for the practice of Conscious Capitalism; learn how to transform a conventional business into a conscious business; and embark on a lifelong journey of personal transformation to become more conscious human beings and leaders. The course incorporates a blend of discussions, interactive exercises, guest speakers, personal mastery exercises and a group project that entails performing a Conscious Business Audit of a company.

HUM4620 Constructing and Performing the Self
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsIn Constructing and Performing the Self students will examine and attempt to answer the most fundamental of questions: Who am I? A question this significant cannot be adequately answered by any one approach, thus the course brings together two very different approaches to guide the investigation. Psychological studies of identity marshal the tools and methods of science to develop and test theories that describe and explain the self. Theater studies bring interpretative and aesthetic perspectives to represent and reveal identity. In this course, these two approaches will be purposely inter-mingled: the questions asked and the answers derived will be informed equally by psychology and theater. Students will see, on a daily basis, how each field informs, supports, and speaks to the other. While there are some class sessions and assignments explicitly grounded in only one field to build students' fluency, the major activities of the semester will require both.

Given how personally applicable both psychology and theater are, students' own sense of identity will be the central text in this course. Like Tom in The Glass Menagerie, students are both the main character in their own life stories and also the narrator of them. This course aims for true interdisciplinary integration, and students will be called upon to use and apply the theoretical work as they build and create an original solo performance about a key moment in their lives. Our hope is that by semester's end students will have taken a concrete step forward in understanding and articulating their sense of self and feel comfortable and confident in their ability to perform for a live, public audience.

Students are asked to alternate between four roles in this course: scholar, writer, actor, and critic.
- Scholars consume information in analytical ways and produce new knowledge that is deeply grounded in their foundational knowledge.
- Writers produce new works, both analytical and creative, that take a novel position and support it.
- Actors give life to both old and new characters, conveying their shifting objectives over time to impact an audience.
- Critics evaluate texts (in our case, performances) with a constructive, thoughtful, and respectful approach that brings new insights.
Some days students will only adopt one role, other students will be asked to oscillate between the
them.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)