Fall 2020

Studio instruction in cello. There will be an emphasis on creating and working towards an end-of-term project for each student. Students must have had at least three years of cello study.

The process of building a practice and developing a vision of how your work interfaces with the larger community will be the major focus of this class. This class is designed to be a combination of research and making with the materials that one has at hand. The class is meant to build and support the development of comprehensive work. Each student will develop projects based

“People are sitting at a table having dinner, that's all, but at the same time their happiness is being created, or their lives are being torn apart."-Anton Chekhov In this advanced acting course, we will delve deeply into the life and plays of Anton Chekhov through research, discussion, and performance. Chekhov’s plays present an actor with both unique challenges (buried

This course is the first of a four-course chemistry sequence covering general, organic and biochemistry. Students do not need to take the entire sequence. We will focus on introductory chemical principles, including atomic theory, classical and quantum bonding concepts, molecular structure, organic functional groups, and the relationship between structure and properties. The

Molecular behavior is very important and impacts all aspects of life.  Everything from the efficacy of a drug to how many summers a plastic pool float will last can be altered by modifying something's chemical structure.  A molecule's structure is important because it influences the molecule's reactivity.  In this course students will hone their ability to

It is trite but true: kids grow up so fast. In this course we will discuss the incredible growth of infants, toddlers, and children in multiple domains (physical, cognitive, emotional/social). We will discover how growth in each domain affects the others. We will explore enduring topics of discourse in child development, such as nature and nurture, individual differences, and

Chromophilia, a term coined by contemporary artist David Batchelor, refers to intense passion and love for color. What is it about color that has the power to induce reverie, and conversely to manipulate, or disgust? What is the role of color in painting? How does color work? How do we understand and respond to color from phenomenological, poetic, philosophical, and societal

Software is rarely built by one person. It takes a team of people, technical and not, to make a piece of code become a product. This class will present ideas and techniques for designing and developing software from conception to deployment.  This class will provide experience working with version control, testing, debugging, refactoring, and programming with exceptions.

Year 2020. The Republic, a fledgling, young country, has left decades of relative prosperity and entered an era marked by poor governance, a world-shaking pandemic, the open persecution of oppressed minority groups, and a ruling class determined to maintain its wealth and power. The first half of this course will deconstruct the foundational social, economic, and governance

Building on the elements of the Future of Work courses (Future of Work: Alternative Organizations Future of Work: Individual Capacity) this practicum based course focuses on creating prototypes of organizing models that hold livelihood, participation and mutual support as equivalent. Optimising for impact and meaning, within the context of deliberate development, students will

This is a course primarily for notating composers,to give them the experience and pleasure of composing in a few of the musical structures often used in the Western Music of the 18th and 19th centuries. We will study works that exemplify Sonata Form, Theme and Variations, Passacaglia, and Fugue, among others, and try to create our own versions of these. In the early twentieth

This course is open to composers who want to work in a focused way on an ambitious composition project, or to those who have a specific musical research project they wish to pursue. Musical research projects could include such things as a serious study of a composer or musical topic, or a detailed analysis of a musical work. The class will meet in small groups and individually,

Computational Craft is an intro course in industry standard 3D modeling software Rhinoceros. This course will cover a wide breadth of techniques that range from basic 2D drawing to complex 3D construction. While this course is aimed at teaching technical skills, it will also have a rigorous focus on aesthetics and design concepts. It's ultimate goal being a feedback

A close look at how the unix operating system runs processes. Topics include machine-level data representation, C code and its compiled x86 assembly, virtual memory, process swapping, stack overflows, forking, the system heap, how compiling and linking are implemented, and inter-process communication. This material is a standard intermediate level part of undergrad computing

No matter our focus, data and information are relied upon in making decisions, building hypotheses, or in trying to show the connection of one idea or thought to another. In order to better understand (or argue against) a claim, we need to make sure we understand what the data is telling us and how it can be interpreted. This course will build towards understanding the basic

This course will present an interdisciplinary approach to the theory of conflict resolution. Theories of conflict resolution, not mediation skills, will be introduced and then explored through a number of different prisms. These will include the macro issues of the nature of peace, the environment, the media, NGOs, as well as the role of religion and the Bible. There will also

This course will present an interdisciplinary approach to the theory of conflict resolution. Theories of conflict resolution, not mediation skills, will be introduced and then explored through a number of different prisms. These will include the macro issues of the nature of peace, racism, the environment, the media,  as well as the role of religion and the Bible. The

Contemporary Ceramics Processes is a foundational overview of the techniques and materials common to a modern ceramics studio. Methodologies and medium explored will be (but not be limited to) wheel throwing, mold making and slip casting, slab building, extrusion, 3D printing, material science, electric and gas kiln firing, and mixed media. Each mode or material will be

COVID19 paralyzed much of the United States, and it will permanently alter the way we think and behave. But pandemics are not new.  This course starts by examining the history of pandemics and how they have influenced human history and culture. Using Vermont as a model we will then focus on how the COVID19 pandemic has impacted this state. We will look at the origin of the

This course ranges from the republican art of nation-building in the 19th century to modernism, magical realism, and the postmodern. While there will be some discussion of standard tactics such as stylistic nuances and artists’ biographies, it is expected that we will rapidly develop sufficient ability to focus on movements, theory, and politics, thus treating the works as

This class will look at how we are all responsible to co-create the world that we want to live in, particularly right now during this global pandemic. What are the skills and capacities we need to learn and practice in improvisation, complex systems analysis, emergent structuring, conflict transformation and collaboration? We will hear from professional practitioners either on

Explicit and implicit biases contribute to inequity and significant achievement gaps in education.  Research has shown a connection between success in early childhood education and imprisonment. Equity in Education is equitable when outcomes are similar for all students without regard to race, gender, ethnicity, class, language, ability, or sexual orientation. 

From Hong Kong’s Anti Extradition Bill, One Country/Two System, The "Umbrella Movement," China's One Belt One Road, COVID-19, the US-China trade war, China digital currency, LGBT right in Taiwan to Taiwan’s Election in 2020, among other topics, students will use authentic materials, such as print articles, videos and other media as springboards to analysis and

We performers, makers, and listeners think of sound as music’s medium, but we don’t just hear music: we feel it. We will play with embodiment and as the origin of dynamic, felt experience and with proprioception as the bridge connecting our innate musical understanding to the abstract language of musical sound. Students’ weekly homework--listening, conducting, and following

How can we be together and create something together, when we are physically not in the same space and time? In weekly sessions, with body-centered minds, we will interview each other, and exchange conversations, poems, ideas, songs, drawings and inspirations. In addition, movement practices will be introduced in each weekly session in order to activate and facilitate the body