Students at the Honors Summer Institute will enroll in one honors college courses and receive 3 college credits upon successful completion of the course.

Course offerings for HSI 2008

The Institute in Forensic Science: CSI @ HSI
Investigating the Chemistry of Medicinal and Natural Products
Investigating the Mind Behind Crime

The Institute of Creativity
Science, Alchemy, and Magic in the Age of Shakespeare
Art and Digital Imagery

Course offerings for the Institute in Forensic Science:

Investing the Chemistry of Medicinal and Natural Products - Dr. Veljko Dragojlovic
Natural products are molecules synthesized by the living organisms. Based on their role in living organisms, naturally occurring compounds are divided into primary metabolites, which are subject of study of biochemistry, and secondary metabolites, which are a subject of study of chemistry of natural products. In this course we will study structure of some secondary metabolites, their biological function and their mechanism of action. Such knowledge may help us answer important biological and biochemical questions: What is their origin of biological molecules? What is their evolutionary origin? What mechanisms have predators developed to deal with, or even exploit, signal chemicals? Study of natural products provides direct benefits to humans. Molecules that are biologically active are of interest either as possible pharmaceuticals themselves or as lead compounds for development of new pharmaceuticals. Students will learn about uses and abuses of natural products and their derivatives. At the beginning of the course, students will receive an introduction to organic chemistry.

Investigating the Mind Behind Crime -
Dr. Barbara Bjorklund
Why do people behave the way they do?  What motivates someone to be aggressive or partake in criminal behaviors?  In this course, we will examine both biological/genetic and environmental factors that have been implicated in criminal behavior.  We will begin by reviewing the basics of genetics, biology and brain structure/function.  We will then expand our focus to consider which of these factors may explain criminal behavior and the extent of environmental influences.  Some criminals often exhibit psychological/personality disorders, so we will next examine the characteristics and potential causes of these disorders.  In the final part of the course, behavioral profiling techniques will be examined.

Course offerings for the Institute of Creativity:

Science, Alchemy, and Magic in the Age of Shakespeare - Dr. Michael Harrawood
Experience and Experiment in Early Modern Europe … Writing the Scientific Revolution
What we now know as he Scientific Revolution was largely made possible by the printing press and the success of print culture in the 16th and 17th centuries.  The wide circulation of printed materials — entertainments, poems, songs, treatises, pamphlets, religious arguments, advertisements, personal invective and polemics, diaries, “how to books,” political tracts — shifted the boundaries of how people in Europe understood both their world and the world to come.  In this course we will follow the changes in how knowledge itself was understood, as these changes in the written records.  We will look at examples from many of the types of printed materials mentioned above, coming to understand how knowledge itself both expands — to allow for the dignity of labor and craft — and contracts — to exclude magic and the occult — in the 16th and 17th centuries.  We will work towards the founding in London of the Royal Society and the determination by the Society of “the matter of fact” as the purest and basic form of knowledge.  This course should change the way we think about both Shakespeare’s age and our own.

Art and Digital Imagery - Dorotha Lemeh
The late 20th century and 21st century saw an increase in the use of computer graphics, photography, and video in contemporary art.  This addition of digital imagery has opened the door to interesting uses of technology in installation art, performance art, video art, painting, photography, sculpture and printmaking.  In this course we’ll focus on the figure and ideas of representation.  Students will have hands-on opportunities to use of newer technologies (computer graphics, digital photography, and video) in order to analyze and represent the figure in a real and virtual environment.  Artists such as Bill Viola, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Krzysztof Wodiczko, and Cindi Sherman are a few artists who are making use of these tools when talking about the absent and present body.  Students are encouraged to explore creative ways in which to incorporate the figure in their artwork.

Updated September 27, 2007