LTA2079 Theories of Love
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsWhat is love? Where does it come from, what does it ask of us, and how does it alter our minds, bodies, values, and relations? Are sex, friendship, and marriage necessary for love, or do they inhibit love's fullest expression? In this course, we will examine how influential writers have conceived and contested love's meanings across a range of cultural contexts. Focusing primarily on erotic love (erôs), we will consider how such meanings relate to notions of art, beauty, conjugality, legality, pleasure, sexuality, spirituality, and transgression, both in their original era and our own. Particular attention will be paid to differences of race, class, age, gender, and authority as incitements to, and/or impediments of, relations of love and eroticism.
Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Arts and Humanities
- Level: Intermediate Liberal Arts (UGrad)
- Course Number: LTA2079
- Number of Credits: 4
QTM3615 Time Series and Forecasting
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsThis course is about the analysis of time series data in the context of various real-life forecasting situations pertaining to business and non-business areas, such as sales, banking, healthcare, sports, and global warming. The objectives of the course are: to provide practical experience with time series data to predict future outcomes; to provide a framework for comparing alternative models in terms of predictive accuracy; to cultivate an appreciation of various types of times series modeling approaches; to provide advanced exposure and experience in programming to build, test, and apply time series models; and to develop skills at communicating results effectively. The software used throughout the course will be Excel and R/RStudio. Effective teamwork and professional presentation of analyses and recommendations will be required during this course.
Prerequisites: AQM2000 or permission from instructor
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Mathematics Analytics Science and Technology
- Level: Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Liberal Arts (UGrad)
- Course Number: QTM3615
- Number of Credits: 4
GDR4610: Topics in Women's Studies
4 Advanced Liberal ArtsThis course provides a forum to examine and discuss contemporary women's and girls' roles and positions. The course will address the following topics: first and second waves of feminism, sexuality, psycho-social influences on gender construction, paid work and structures of inequality, women and social protest and family configurations. At the beginning of the course, we will read some historic documents as background to the women's movement in the United States. Although the main focus will be on women and girls in the United States, we will also discuss women's positions in other countries as well. Because femininity and images of women are balanced, and often countered, by masculinity and images of men, we will spend time discussing men in relation to women. Integral to this course is recognition of how race, class, ethnicity and sexuality converge to influence how women negotiate their political, social and cultural roles. Finally, we will attempt to become _enlightened witnesses_ to the social construction of femininity and masculinity, and use our understanding to notice stereotypical portrayals as well as new, liberating images of women and men.
Prerequisites: 2 Intermediate Liberal Arts Courses (CSP, LTA, HSS)
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: History and Society
- Level: Advanced Liberal Arts 4600 Requirement (UGrad),Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Liberal Arts (UGrad)
- Course Number: GDR4610
- Number of Credits: 4
EPS 1001: Transformation Through Entrepreneurial Leadership
3 Credits course for Humanities and Entrepreneurship Certificate Students Only
The Transformation Through Entrepreneurial Leadership course cultivates core career and life skills by helping students transform their self-perception and agency by developing an entrepreneurial mindset that supports their ability to overcome challenges and seize opportunities.
The course helps students understand how entrepreneurial thinking and acting can enable them to become an entrepreneurial leader while defining their unique strengths and capabilities based on their self-identified value systems.
The course is experientially-based, providing students with feedback and an opportunity to build and reflect on their individual entrepreneurial leadership skills. Students will engage in interactive sessions with Babson faculty and be supported by Babson students; work on an individual entrepreneurial leadership project; and discover how Babson's entrepreneurship methodology, Entrepreneurial Thought and Action (ET&A), applies to their individual entrepreneurial journey.
This course is offered over 12 weeks with classes held in person once a week for three hours. Students will discover that being an entrepreneur goes deeper than developing a business. In the first part of the course, they will build upon what they learned in "The Art of the Self" course as they further explore how they can cultivate their entrepreneurial abilities, passions, and strengths.
As they discover what inspires them, students will learn about the United Nations Global Goals and how those connect to their own lives and to opportunities in the market. They will strengthen their ability to solve problems through Babson's ET&A methodology and discover how these skills connect to opportunities they can secure once they venture out. Through support, they will learn how to create the story of self, seeing themselves as entrepreneurs with experience and expertise to address real world problems. The course concludes with students' final deliverable, a presentation of their transformed personal narrative as an entrepreneurial leader capable of creating social impact.
Prerequiste: Course is for Humanities and Entrepreneurship students only
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Entrepreneurship
- Course Number: EPS1001
- Number of Credits: 3
HUM4607: Trauma, Culture, Transformation
4 Advanced Liberal Arts credits
What is trauma and how does it impact individuals and societies? The word comes to us from the Greek "wound," and so it has come to mean a lasting injury made by a violent or startling event that penetrates a person's psychic boundary system. The difference between a wound and a traumatic wound is that the latter does not heal; rather, it results in post-traumatic stress, which in turn creates cycles of repetition of uncannily similar events until the event has been "worked through." While the term is largely attributed to Sigmund Freud's 19th and early 20th century work, in fact many of his sources came from classical Greek texts, meaning the concept and experience of trauma have been around for centuries.
In the past, knowledge about trauma came predominantly from psychoanalysis; to a lesser extent, literary theory has explored how cultural texts reflect phenomena related to trauma such as repetition, disruptions of time and temporality, and fragmented points of view. Post-Traumatic Stress was a chronic, cyclical dis-ease with devastating consequences. In the past decade, however, neuroscientists have exponentially advanced our understanding of trauma and its relation to our bodies, not just our minds, and theorists have shown how trauma is also a cultural phenomenon, transmitted from one generation to the next. Most importantly, this new research also shows proven pathways to transformation and healing-pathways that also correspond to collective movements for healing our world.
Starting with Freud's foundational work and the classical texts that inspired him, we will study how cultural texts have represented both traumatic stress and methods for its healing. From there, we move quickly to study new developments in the understanding of trauma and post-traumatic stress, including methods of healing and transcending traumatic repetition that have gained traction in broader change-making contexts. We will conclude our study by exploring the concept of Transformational Literacy operating at the MIT Presencing Institute, and how the notion of collective trauma invites collective healing responses as together we bring "the emergent future" into being.
Prerequisites: Any Combination of 2 Intermediate liberal arts (HSS, LTA, CSP)
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Arts and Humanities
- Level: Advanced Liberal Arts 4600 Requirement (UGrad),Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Liberal Arts (UGrad)
- Course Number: HUM4607
- Number of Credits: 4
SCN3601: Triumphs and Trials of the Pharmaceutical Industry
4 advanced liberal arts credits
In 2022, the US pharmaceutical market was valued at over $1.2 trillion, forecasted to reach more than $2 trillion dollars by the year 2025. Bringing a new drug or therapeutic agent to the market is a complex process that can take upwards of a decade with a hefty price tag upwards of $2 billion dollars. The United States pharma industry spends about $60 billion yearly on drug research and development, generating approximately half of the $1.2 trillion market. As a result of this significant investment, the pharma industry has made great strides in the treatment of many diseases and developed therapies that have changed the world, including the development of antibiotics to treat infection and drugs like insulin, which have saved hundreds of thousands of lives Research, technological advances and development have led to new and innovative approaches to treat cancer, has reduced HIV infection from a 100% mortality rate to a chronic illness in the US and led to the development of a vaccine against COVID19 in record time. Despite making many significant scientific strides, public opinion of the industry is lower than ever before. It has been plagued with controversy after controversy about questionable practices including intellectual property arguments, skyrocketing costs, exorbitant executive payouts and inequitable vaccine access across the world. Additionally, a seemingly arbitrary drug pricing system and the indisputable role the pharma industry played in the opioid crisis, have fed into the significant public relations problem the industry currently faces. This course will focus on real world considerations that drive both the good and the bad of the pharmaceutical industry. We will discuss the triumphs and challenges that occur in bringing a drug from bench to bedside, and explore some of the questionable practices that have been connected to the industry. We will discuss the process and impacts of new drug development, translational medicine, and drug pricing models, investigating the ethics of balancing patient access, scientific innovation and the sustainability of a complex and often inefficient system. By the end of this course, students will appreciate the complexity of drug development system and understand the critical scientific and ethical challenges the pharmaceutical industry faces in bringing a drug to market.
Prerequisites: Any NST1XXX course
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Mathematics Analytics Science and Technology
- Level: Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Liberal Arts (UGrad)
- Course Number: SCN3601
- Number of Credits: 4
LTA2015 Truthful Fictions: Biographical Novel, Memoir & Biopic
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts Credits
What do works as disparate as Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton, Spike Lee's Black KkKlansman, Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet, Craig Gillespie's I, Tonya, and Tara Westover's memoir Educated have in common? The past two decades have produced a remarkable surge in biographical fictions (what Alain Buisine coined "biofictions" in 1991). Similarly, as three-time memoirist Mary Karr argues, memoir is in its heyday, with a massive increase in readership in the past twenty years or so. And the popularity of biopics, defined by George Custen as films "minimally composed" of a life or "portion of a life" of a real person have become a tidal wave that threatens to spill over into tsunami. What explains why "true life" stories have become the go-to dinner for fiction writers? In this course, we will explore how memory and forgetting, experience and perception, fact and invention, public and private history, personal relationships, social and political forces intersect in these popular literary and cinematic forms. We will examine the myriad ways authors and directors construct an auto/biographical self, how these may differ from the selves of lived experience, and what these forms suggests about how we navigate a world in which truth is often questioned (or even under siege) and fiction may achieve an honesty that more purportedly "truthful" narratives fail to convey.
Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Arts and Humanities
- Level: Intermediate Liberal Arts (UGrad)
- Course Number: LTA2015
- Number of Credits: 4
OIM3650 UI/UX Design for Web and App Development
4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits
If you want to become a designer, or if you want to improve your coding and development skills, this course is for you. You will learn how to use Figma and other tools to prototype your designs and experiment with AI to boost your productivity. You will also learn how to make better decisions for your websites, mobile apps, and more. OIM3650 is a 14-week course that focuses on user interface design for web-based projects, apps, and sites. You will learn how to design responsive and user-friendly interfaces using advanced CSS techniques and JavaScript frameworks and libraries such as Bootstrap. You will also learn about the key principles of design that guide good interface design, the role of UI in your business success, and the difference between user interface design and user experience (UX). You will gain hands-on experience using tools like Photoshop and Adobe XD to create wireframes and prototypes and take a deep dive into how to use Figma for prototyping. You will also try the latest AI methods for rapid prototyping. This course will teach you both theory and practice of UI for all kinds of web-based projects. It is suitable for those who want to understand how design choices affect their business, and those who want to enhance their web-based projects.
For more information about this course, please review this video: https://babson.instructuremedia.com/embed/693ca0f0-1836-4477-9e57-1acb9c65dc62
Prerequisite: OIM3690 or experience in HTML and CSS
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Operations and Information Management
- Level: Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Liberal Arts (UGrad)
- Course Number: OIM3650
- Number of Credits: 4
OIM3635 UI/UX Design for Web and App Development
2 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits
OIM3635 takes a deep dive into user interface design for web-based projects, apps and sites. Students will learn the key aspects of what makes a solid and usable interface on the desktop, a tablet and a mobile device. This course will explore advanced techniques in cascading style sheets (CSS), as well as leverage JavaScript libraries such as jQuery. As part of the course, students will learn about the principles of design, how they relate to solid interface design, and the importance of the UI as it relates to generating and maintaining your business. The course will also introduce the concepts and tools to make working prototypes and wireframes using tools like Balsamiq and Lucidchart. This course will underscore the importance of UI for all types of web-based projects, looking at theory as well as taking a hands-on approach. It is designed for those that are interested in taking web-based projects to the next level as well as those that are interested in how the choices you make as a designer can affect your business.
Prerequisites: MIS3690 or MIS3640
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Operations and Information Management
- Level: Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Liberal Arts (UGrad)
- Course Number: OIM3635
- Number of Credits: 2
LIT 4673: Unruly Ghosts: Modern Irish Literature & Culture
4 advanced liberal arts credits
Ireland is haunted by its history as a colony and by the traumatic experiences of famine, emigration, and language loss. Yet at her 1990 inauguration President Mary Robinson spoke not of postcolonial ghosts but of "a new Ireland, open, tolerant, inclusive [....] a new pluralist Ireland…," reflective of optimistic post-independence conditions. The mid-1990s to the late 2000s were a period of rapid economic growth-the 'Celtic Tiger,' the 'Boom,' the 'Economic Miracle'-transforming Ireland into one of the wealthiest countries in Europe and spurring seismic social and cultural change. That accelerated, unchecked economic growth has now expressed itself in early 21st century discontents and reckonings. In cultural specters, so to speak. The critical questions raised by Irish Studies are not confined to Irishness and Irish identity; they are ethical, global questions. Our class will study how modern Irish fiction, drama, and film tackle some of the most pressing issues of our time. Our topics will include late capitalist volatility; economic precarity; institutional abuses; immigration, displacement and belonging; language dispossession; and climate crisis.
Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Arts and Humanities
- Level: Advanced Liberal Arts 4600 Requirement (UGrad),Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Liberal Arts (UGrad)
- Course Number: LIT4673
- Number of Credits: 4