Courses

TNDY 310 – Communication & Collaboration in Transdisciplinary Work

Instructor: Shamini Dias, Director of Transdisciplinary Studies
Units: 2
Section: 1
Session: Module 2 (08/25 – 12/13)
Instruction Mode: Hybrid
Schedule: (see Class Session Schedule table below)

This course examines key principles and approaches for effective transdisciplinary teamwork and professional practice. Students will engage in experiential team-based learning to explore challenges and strategies for collaboration and communication in working across disciplines and with diverse stakeholders.

Key Concepts: Communication; Collaboration; Team Science Principles; Boundary Crossing

TNDY 312 – Transdisciplinary Inquiry

Instructor(s): Patricia Easton, Professor of Humanities
Units: 2
Section: 1
Session: Regular (08/25 – 12/13)
Instruction Mode: Hybrid
Schedule: (see Class Session Schedule table below)

This course introduces students to the evolution and perspectives of transdisciplinary inquiry. How do we tackle the world’s most complex societal challenges—climate change, public health crises, technological disruption, and global inequality—when no single discipline has all the answers? This course introduces students to the principles and practices of transdisciplinary inquiry, an approach that integrates diverse perspectives, methodologies, and stakeholder engagement to develop innovative solutions.

Through case studies, systems thinking, and hands-on exercises, students will learn to cross disciplinary boundaries, apply multiple methods of inquiry, and how to collaborate with real-world stakeholders. The course emphasizes the co-production of knowledge, ethical considerations in research, and the development of policy and action-oriented solutions.

Over seven weeks, students will engage with wicked problems, analyze their complexities, and design integrated interventions that bridge disciplinary methods of inquiry. This course is ideal for those interested in research, policymaking, sustainability, social innovation, and cross-disciplinary problem-solving.

Key Characteristics of Transdisciplinary Inquiry: Problem-driven, disciplinary boundary crossing, collaboration, holistic perspective, stakeholder engagement, co-creation of knowledge, reflective practice, integrative.

Key Learning Outcomes:

• Understand and apply transdisciplinary approaches to complex societal problems.
• Utilize multiple methods of inquiry, including qualitative, quantitative, and participatory techniques.
• Engage stakeholders and integrate diverse perspectives into research and practice.
• Navigate disciplinary boundaries to synthesize knowledge across fields.
• Develop practical, policy-oriented, and research-based solutions for real-world challenges.

This course is designed for graduate students from all academic backgrounds who are passionate about solving global and local issues through collaboration, innovation, and integrative knowledge.

TNDY 315 – Principles of Project Management for a Complex World

Instructor: Matthew Muga, Adjunct Instructor
Units: 2
Section: 1
Session: Module 1 (08/25 – 10/18)
Instruction Mode: Online
Schedule: (see Class Session Schedule table below)

Our world continues to evolve, becoming more and more complex each day. With that growing complexity comes numerous challenges especially for those working to enact positive change through project-based activities whether it be in industry, our communities, governments, or academia. However, numerous studies have shown that projects seldom get delivered on time, within budget, and delivering its scope and that is especially seen with projects dealing with incredibly complex or “wicked problems”. Understanding how to approach, plan, and execute projects that focus on driving change within highly complex systems requires a more holistic and transdisciplinary view of Project Management. In this course we will be exploring project management for highly complex issues. We’ll explore different styles and methods to lead projects taking a transdisciplinary approach, test and utilize popular IT project management tools. We’ll deep dive into project management and continuous improvement areas such as Scrum, Waterfall, Lean, and Six Sigma to review how these methodologies and frameworks can produce amazing outcomes on complex efforts. We’ll also explore critical elements of project management such as budgeting, communications, negotiations, risk mitigation and more.

TNDY 407Q – The Epicness of Gilgamesh: Sex, Power, and Placement in the Art Collection of CGU

Instructor: Tammi Schneider, Danforth Professor of Religion, Chair, Religion Department
Units: 4
Section: 1
Session: Regular (08/25 – 12/13)
Instruction Mode: In-Person
Schedule: Tuesday, 1:00 – 3:50PM

A former CGU trustee gave the University a collection painted by an important Syrian artist centered around the Epic of Gilgamesh, an ancient Akkadian text with third millennium Sumerian prototypes. In this course, we will examine the ancient myth of Gilgamesh, its modern discovery and impact it had on its interpretation, as well as concepts of religion, masculinity and gender revealed in the ancient text. We will also study CGU’s own art collection and, these paintings’ roots in the Syrian context of the late twentieth century, and students will mount an exhibit of the collection at CGU, incorporating experiential learning around the issues and mechanics of mounting and presenting an exhibit rich with historical and modern significance. The students will also write a catalogue to accompany the exhibit.

TNDY 408O – Critical Evaluation of California’s Criminal Justice System

Instructor: Gregory DeAngelo, Associate Professor of Economic Sciences, Director, Computational Justice Lab
Units: 4
Section: 1
Session: Regular (08/25 – 12/13)
Instruction Mode: Online (1-hour asynchronous component per week)
Schedule: Wednesday, 5:00 – 6:50PM

This course is an opportunity for students to obtain a deep understanding of the complex issues in the criminal justice system in California that brings about polarizing opinions on how best to address matters of public safety. Using systems thinking and a cultural and ethical lens, the course will focus on the administration of the criminal justice system, bringing together various perspectives, including discussions with practitioners. Course meetings will discuss trends in the criminal justice system, changes in laws and policies, the impact of alternatives to incarceration, and various other aspects of the criminal justice system. Throughout the course, students will be provided direct access to practitioners in the criminal justice system who will provide their firsthand experience working in the criminal justice system.

Competency Domains: Systems Thinking; Problem-Based Learning; Information Literacy; Cultural Literacy; Ethical Literacy; Negotiation; Team Building and Teamwork; Integration of Methods and Perspectives; Applied/Community-Based Research; Quantitative/Analytical Skills; Qualitative Skills; Complexity Theory.

TNDY 408V – Community Organizing for Change

Instructor: Bree Hemingway, Assistant Clinical Professor of Community and Global Health
Units: 4
Section: 1
Session: Full-Term (08/25/2025 – 12/13/2025)
Instruction Mode: Online
Schedule: Tuesday, 5:00 – 6:50PM

The world is facing a number of complex, wicked problems that affect the health and well-being of communities around the world. Addressing the injustices of health disparities alone can seem overwhelming. Collaborating with partners and the communities that one serves can help generate effective and innovative solutions to these issues. This course introduces students to methods for community organizing— drawing from several disciplines including public policy, history, cultural studies, communication, health promotion and psychology. The service-learning requirement is a unique component of the course that allows students to build, apply, and reflect on their skillset for effective community organizing. Small, inter-disciplinary teams of students will partner with a local community organization to complete ten hours of service learning in-person or virtually. In addition to the service hours, reflection assignments give students the opportunity to explore what they have gained from their experience and how the skills they have gained cross-cut multiple disciplines. Through this course students will be exposed to a mindset for collaborative policy change that can be applied in multiple fields and have the opportunity to refine and reflect on their capacity to support advocacy and community collaboration. The tools students will learn in this course can be used in several settings to address a broad range of societal issues.

Note: Class meets once a week for two hours with one hour of additional asynchronous instruction. The service-learning requirement is a unique component of the course. While working with the site in person or virtually students should maintain proper conduct and respect the code of conduct for the site. All completed hours must be verified by the site. By week four, students will need to submit their proposed plan for completing the service-learning hours. The student’s schedule will be determined by the site and the student.

TNDY 430 – Transdisciplinary Changemakers. Justice-Centered Frameworks for Education

Instructor: Tamar Salibian, Adjunct Faculty
Units: 4
Section: 1
Session: Regular (08/25 – 12/13)
Instruction Mode: Online
Schedule: Monday, 4:00 – 6:50PM

What does change mean in education? Why is change-making a critical leadership role for every teacher in every classroom? How do we lead transformations in formal and informal learning spaces? Audre Lorde famously wrote, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” Genuine changemaking as transdisciplinary action involves transgression, transcendence, and transformation. It is motivated by justice and positive futures grounded in boundary crossing that involves radical listening, curiosity, and generosity. In this course, we examine education as a wicked problem, a centuries old system designed to self-replicate and perpetuate oppression and inequities for a diversity of learners, and woefully misaligned with learning science and current and emerging education contexts. Working in teams, you will develop a transdisciplinary pedagogy of transformation using systems, design, complexity, and reflexivity lenses to create equity-minded processes for authentic, meaningful, and deep learning experiences that prepare all learners to flourish in an emerging and unpredictable world. We will synthesize learning sciences, pedagogical frameworks like Universal Design for Learning, multiliteracies, active learning, authentic assessment, outcomes-guided design, community and relationality. We will also integrate the artistic voice as we explore. To this journey, we invite you to bring your disciplinary perspectives, questions, identities, and lived experiences that connect the outer life of scholarship and teaching with your inner life of values, beliefs, and purpose. Through this process, you will create an explicit and living philosophy and methods that will evolve with your practice. Learning about education as a transformative process for justice, you have an opportunity to be transformed in turn as educator and leader.

TNDY 311 – Complexity Frameworks for Transdisciplinary Practice

Instructor: Shamini Dias, Director of Transdisciplinary Studies
Units: 2
Section: 1
Session: Module 2 (07/07 – 08/23)
Instruction Mode: In-Person, Intensive
Schedule: (see Class Session Schedule table below)

How do we understand complex, often gnarly, situations and figure out what to do … and not to do? And how do we do this in a rapidly changing world that is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous? In this course, we will work in teams to explore key frameworks for transdisciplinary sense-making, decision-making, and action planning in complex situations. We look at sense-making as a subjective, phenomenological process of situated and embodied cognition that engages the interaction of identities, bodies, motivations, social-emotional, historical, relational, and contextual elements. With this as our key frame, we will learn systems- and complexity-based sense-making tools such as concept, actor and perspective mapping, assumption analysis, multi-ontological sense-making, and foresight analysis. Using Design Thinking, we will apply these tools in exploring and responding to complex issues that matter across disciplines to articulate ideas and solutions for social good and positive futures.

Learning Outcomes By the end of this course, you will be able to:

1. Use systems and complexity tools to analyze and clarify assumptions and multiple perspectives in complex situations.
2. Apply foresight principles to examine emergent potentials for the future.
3. Analyze and address a complex issue using a Design Thinking process that is grounded in social good and positive futures.
4. Work collaboratively with peers from other disciplines in selecting, analyzing, and creating learning artifacts.
5. Critically reflect on and assess your inner development of transdisciplinary mindsets and skills.

TNDY 330 – Team Leadership and Diversity

Instructor: M. Gloria González Morales, Associate Professor of Psychology
Section: 1
Units: 2
Term: Module 1 (01/21 – 03/15)
Instruction Mode: Hybrid, Intensive
Schedule: (see table below)

This course is designed to provide concepts, tools, and strategies to create, promote and manage diverse and inclusive organizations and groups. To achieve both individual and collective belonging, we will target competences needed to apply integrative approaches that resolve the tension between diversity values and team functioning. For example, we will work on skills and tools that allow leaders to recognize and utilize the value of uniqueness, communicate across differences, and navigate the complex circumstances to enhance cohesion and coordination, and promote team trust and efficacy.

TNDY 331 – GenAI for Graduate Success

New course

Instructors: Robert Klitgaard, University Professor
Section: 1
Units: 2
Term: Module 2 (07/07 – 08/23)
Instruction Mode: Online
Schedule: (see Class Session Schedule table below)

Generative AI is transforming graduate education, opening powerful opportunities to elevate students’ academic and professional journeys. In this hands-on workshop, students will master ethical and innovative ways to leverage GenAI tools to personalize their learning, boost productivity, strengthen collaboration, and unlock new dimensions of creativity.

TNDY 405A – Heritage, Culture and Managing the Past in the Old World and the New

Instructor: Joshua Goode, Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and History
Units: 4
Section: 1
Session: Regular (05/19 – 08/23)
Instruction Mode: In-Person, Intensive (Requires International Travel)
Schedule: (see Class Session Schedule table below)

Costs:

• CGU Tuition + Fees (fellowship(s) and other aid applicable)
• Accommodations and Travel to England (Students are required to make their own travel arrangements)
• Course Fee: usually between $800 – $1000 (covers cost of site visits and other incidentals)

This course is a jointly taught, dual campus class that examines heritage management of historical sites and museums in both Los Angeles and the Bath region. While in Los Angeles, students from Bath and from CGU will explore important cultural heritage sites, including the Getty Villa, the San Gabriel Mission, Old Pasadena, Watts Towers, La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, El Pueblo de los Angeles Historic Monument, among other sites. In Bath, the students will use the university as home base to explore the city, named a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1987, and its many museums and historical sites, including its complete Roman baths, One Royal Crescent House Museum, and the Jane Austen Center. Outside Bath, we will explore Oxford and London to talk with museum leaders and heritage management experts. Stonehenge and the Victoria and Albert Museum are already planned as part of the itinerary outside of Bath.

The differences between the two locations, Los Angeles and Bath, will pose in very clear relief the different kinds of issues that face heritage management experts in both contexts. How do we protect and manage historical sites and collections? Where do we find funding for the arts and cultural patrimony in a complicated setting of public and increasingly private fund-raising? How do we convey and maintain the cultural significance of these sites to contemporary and future audiences? Particular focus will be placed on the structural and economic differences between the regions that define how the arts and heritage efforts are funded, and how broader, more globalized forces will define civic and national commemoration and historical education efforts in the future.

TNDY 408Y – Politics and Policy of Health Disparities

Instructor: Javier M. Rodríguez, Associate Professor, Field Chair for Policy
Units: 4
Section: 1
Session: Module 1 (05/19 – 07/03)
Instruction Mode: Online (1-hour asynchronous component per week)
Schedule: Tuesday/Thursday, 5:00 – 6:50PM

Illness, disability, and mortality are to an important extent—both at the public and individual levels—extended biological expressions of social contexts. This is what this course is about: to develop a transdisciplinary understanding of how social phenomena gets under our skin. Importantly, the study of epidemiological outcomes is intensely transdisciplinary. This is because the functioning and dysregulation of our body systems are patterned by environmental stimuli—and political, economic, social, cultural, and psychological processes are the structural components of the environments in which we are born, live, age, work, and play.

This course focuses on how our political system—i.e., the underlying historical institutional arrangement that emanates from the elected and non-elected state personnel that write, interpret, execute and enforce rules, regulations, legislation, and public and private programs—frame the social determinants of health. Our approach will be transdisciplinary because the forces that shape the social determinants of health happen in and are exclusive to the government—e.g., from regulating pollution and housing to work legislation, from tax cuts and taxing sugar-sweetened beverages and tobacco to schools and education, and from mass incarceration and the criminal justice system to Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. The proposed course emphasizes health disparities because the resulting distribution of public goods and services that stems from the political system is at the core of both triumphant and embarrassing transdisciplinary research. Still, only through transdisciplinary lenses we can develop an understanding of the power that relies in government to construct identities, belief systems, the norms that dictate human behavior, the demographic groups (e.g., age, race/ethnicity, gender) that define us as social beings and, in sum, the frameworks where our social life unfolds affecting our mental, behavioral and emotional wellbeing and health.

TNDY 430 – Transdisciplinary Changemakers. Justice-Centered Frameworks for Education

Instructor: Tamar Salibian, Adjunct Instructor
Units: 4
Section: 1
Session: Module 1 (05/19 – 07/03)
Instruction Mode: Online (3-hour asynchronous component per week)
Schedule: Wednesday, 4:00 – 6:50PM

What does change mean in education? Why is change-making a critical leadership role for every teacher in every classroom? How do we lead transformations in formal and informal learning spaces? Audre Lorde famously wrote, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” Genuine changemaking as transdisciplinary action involves transgression, transcendence, and transformation. It is motivated by justice and positive futures grounded in boundary crossing that involves radical listening, curiosity, and generosity. In this course, we examine education as a wicked problem, a centuries old system designed to self-replicate and perpetuate oppression and inequities for a diversity of learners, and woefully misaligned with learning science and current and emerging education contexts. Working in teams, you will develop a transdisciplinary pedagogy of transformation using systems, design, complexity, and reflexivity lenses to create equity-minded processes for authentic, meaningful, and deep learning experiences that prepare all learners to flourish in an emerging and unpredictable world. We will synthesize learning sciences, pedagogical frameworks like Universal Design for Learning, multiliteracies, active learning, authentic assessment, outcomes-guided design, community and relationality. We will also integrate the artistic voice as we explore. To this journey, we invite you to bring your disciplinary perspectives, questions, identities, and lived experiences that connect the outer life of scholarship and teaching with your inner life of values, beliefs, and purpose. Through this process, you will create an explicit and living philosophy and methods that will evolve with your practice. Learning about education as a transformative process for justice, you have an opportunity to be transformed in turn as educator and leader.

TNDY 330 – Team Leadership and Diversity

Instructor: M. Gloria González Morales, Associate Professor of Psychology
Section: 1
Units: 2
Term: Module 1 (01/21 – 03/15)
Instruction Mode: Hybrid, Intensive
Schedule: (see table below)

This course is designed to provide concepts, tools, and strategies to create, promote and manage diverse and inclusive organizations and groups. To achieve both individual and collective belonging, we will target competences needed to apply integrative approaches that resolve the tension between diversity values and team functioning. For example, we will work on skills and tools that allow leaders to recognize and utilize the value of uniqueness, communicate across differences, and navigate the complex circumstances to enhance cohesion and coordination, and promote team trust and efficacy.

TNDY 430 – Transdisciplinary Changemakers. Justice-Centered Frameworks for Education

Instructor: Tamar Salibian, Adjunct Faculty
Units: 4
Section: 1
Term: Regular (01/21 – 05/17)
Instruction Mode: Online
Schedule: Monday, 4:00 – 6:50PM

What does change mean in education? Why is change-making a critical leadership role for every teacher in every classroom? How do we lead transformations in formal and informal learning spaces? Audre Lorde famously wrote, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” Genuine changemaking as transdisciplinary action involves transgression, transcendence, and transformation. It is motivated by justice and positive futures grounded in boundary crossing that involves radical listening, curiosity, and generosity. In this course, we examine education as a wicked problem, a centuries old system designed to self-replicate and perpetuate oppression and inequities for a diversity of learners, and woefully misaligned with learning science and current and emerging education contexts. Working in teams, you will develop a transdisciplinary pedagogy of transformation using systems, design, complexity, and reflexivity lenses to create equity-minded processes for authentic, meaningful, and deep learning experiences that prepare all learners to flourish in an emerging and unpredictable world. We will synthesize learning sciences, pedagogical frameworks like Universal Design for Learning, multiliteracies, active learning, authentic assessment, outcomes-guided design, community and relationality. We will also integrate the artistic voice as we explore. To this journey, we invite you to bring your disciplinary perspectives, questions, identities, and lived experiences that connect the outer life of scholarship and teaching with your inner life of values, beliefs, and purpose. Through this process, you will create an explicit and living philosophy and methods that will evolve with your practice. Learning about education as a transformative process for justice, you have an opportunity to be transformed in turn as educator and leader.

TNDY 446 – Foundations in Data Storytelling

Instructor: Anthony Lyons, Adjunct Faculty
Section: 1
Units: 4
Term: Regular (01/21 – 05/17)
Instruction Mode: Hybrid
Schedule: Wednesday, 5:00 – 7:50PM

K-12 and higher education settings have many data systems including student information, learning management, curriculum tracking and survey platforms. How all this day can fit together and be used to answer key assessment and policy questions for educational leaders is a critical skill for educational data analysis. The key connection is to organizational mission and performance metrics. This course will explore what is available, how to evaluate the data strength, and transform data into better visual and dynamic reporting. This course is offered as a hybrid with both CGU and online meetings. This class is being designed to be hybrid with some sessions being at CGU and some sessions being held with virtual tools. It has not yet been determined what the ratio will be between traditional and online sessions. Given the online sessions, it is imperative that students have access to a working computer that has a microphone and camera and that the student has access to reliable internet service Students can always utilize the CGU computer labs if needed. Instructor is planning to introduce students to Tableau and Microsoft Power BI.

TNDY 402X – Persuasive Technology: Ethics and Social Impact

Instructor: Samir Chatterjee, Fletcher Jones Chair of Technology Design & Management
Section: 1
Units: 4
Term: Regular (01/21 – 05/17)
Instruction Mode: Online
Schedule: Tuesday, 4:00 – 6:50PM

Can computers change what you think and do? Can they motivate you to stop smoking, persuade you to buy insurance, or convince you to conserve water when you shower? The answer is a resounding “yes”. What are the ethics of unleashing this power?
Until recently, most software applications and technologies were developed without much thought to how they influenced their users. This perspective is changing. Today, industry experts and academics are embracing a purposeful and ethical approach to persuasive design.

This course integrates the latest research from multiple distinct disciplines: information and communication technology, design thinking, psychology, policy, and health sciences. Through this integration, we will explore the concept of persuasive technologies and the complications of power and ethics in its social impact in multiple industries.

Persuasive technology may be defined as any interactive computing system designed to change people’s attitudes or behaviors. The emergence of the Internet has led to a proliferation of web sites designed to persuade or motivate people to change their attitudes and behavior. Daily we encounter e-commerce sites with enough credibility that persuades their users to make financial transactions and to divulge personal information. Within the domain of mobile health, systems such as mobile applications for managing obesity and digital interventions to overcome addictive behaviors have demonstrated the huge potential of persuasive technologies for behavioral changes. More recently using AI and DeepFake technologies, election interference has become a real a problem. With AI, we now have powerful technologies at our disposal by which human behavior can be altered. What are the ethical ways to design such applications?

TNDY 408D – Hip Hop, Reggae, and Religion: Music and the Religio-Political Imagination of the Black Atlantic

Instructor: Kevin Wolfe, Assistant Professor of Religion, Horton Chair of Religion and Africana Studies
Section: 1
Units: 4
Term: Regular (01/21 – 05/17)
Instruction Mode: In-Person
Schedule: Wednesday, 1:00 – 3:50PM

Hip-hop and reggae are among the world’s most popular musical art forms. While contextualizing the emergence of these cultural formations, we will interrogate the dynamic relationships between them and the religio-political imagination of the Black Atlantic. The course will pay particular attention to the ways that the various cultures of hip-hop and reggae offer critique to Christianity and contemporary arrangements of power. Listening to the religio-political perspectives expressed in these cultural formations we will question whether or not the music provides a prophetic challenge to these arrangements. Giving attention to the music, from the Spirituals, to Hip-Hop, and Dancehall, we will contextualize it with an interest in understanding how it (if it) reflects a unique political imagination. Weekly, we will encounter material from numerous genres as we theorize the music.

TNDY 409D – AI for Humanity: Technology, Ethics, and Society

Instructors: Robert Klitgaard, University Professor, and Itamar Shabtai, Clinical Full Professor
Section: 1
Units: 4
Term: Regular (01/21 – 05/17)
Instruction Mode: Online
Schedule: Thursday, 4:00 – 6:50PM

“AI for Humanity” is an interdisciplinary course designed for all Claremont Graduate University (CGU) students, regardless of their primary field of study. This course explores the transformative power of artificial intelligence (AI) and its profound implications for human society. Students will gain a comprehensive understanding of AI technologies, ethical considerations, and practical applications to solve global challenges and improve human well-being. The course emphasizes the responsible and ethical use of AI to create a positive impact on humanity. This course prepares CGU graduates for future workforce demands by providing a balanced education that includes technical proficiency and ethical awareness aligned with CGU’s vision of promoting ethical leadership and social responsibility.

TNDY 310 – Communication & Collaboration in Transdisciplinary Work

Instructor: Shamini Dias, Director of Transdisciplinary Curriculum and Special Projects
Units: 2
Section: 1
Session: Module 1 (08/26 – 10/19)
Instruction Mode: Hybrid
Schedule: (see Class Session Schedule table below)

This course examines key principles and approaches for effective transdisciplinary teamwork and professional practice. Students will engage in experiential team-based learning to explore challenges and strategies for collaboration and communication in working across disciplines and with diverse stakeholders.

Key Concepts: Communication; Collaboration; Team Science Principles; Boundary Crossing

TNDY 312 – From Modern Thought to Wicked Problems

Instructor(s): Patricia Easton, Professor of Humanities
Units: 2
Section: 1
Session: Full-Term (08/26 – 12/14)
Instruction Mode: Course Cancelled In-Person
Schedule: (see Class Session Schedule table below)

Course Cancelled, Effective 08/01/2024

This course introduces students to the evolution and perspectives of transdisciplinary science and practice, how these differ and relate to other methodologies in knowledge creation, and why transdisciplinarity matters. We will explore this within the contexts of addressing the world’s complex or wicked problems, especially from the perspective of creating positive social impact.

TNDY 313 – Leadership Through Crisis

Instructor(s): Patricia Easton, Professor of Humanities
Units: 2
Section: 1
Session: Special Term (08/19 – 08/24)
Instruction Mode: In-Person, Intensive
Schedule: (see Class Session Schedule table below)

In this course, we explore two types of crises: explosive crises such as earthquakes and other natural disasters or war and refugee issues and creeping or slow-evolving crises “hidden in plain sight”, such as climate change or social health disparities. This exploration will help us distill key characteristics of leaders and leadership work in responding to these crises. We will explore the development from traditional leadership models to emerging models centering agility, ethical balance, and systems-based thinking that addresses crises to both contain them and shape actions for social and future good. As part of this course, you will work in teams to talk to leaders who have worked with crises and analyze specific cases of crises to determine effective leadership qualities, habits of mind, and actions in each case.

TNDY 336 – Analysis of Social Networks

Instructor: Wallace Chipidza, Assistant Professor of Information Systems & Technology
Units: 4
Section: 1
Session: Full-Term (08/26 – 12/14)
Instruction Mode: Online
Schedule: Tuesday, 4:00 – 6:50PM

Description: This course explores the defining characteristics of social networks, how they form and evolve over time, and ultimately how they influence various outcomes of interest. We utilize a variety of quantitative techniques (e.g. social network analysis and exponential random graph modeling) to understand the structure, formation, and evolution of social networks. Students learn how to effectively visualize social networks of varying size, from small to very large. Students also learn statistical and machine learning techniques to understand how individuals influence each other’s behaviors and attitudes in these networks.

Rationale: Social networks – sets of people with shared relationships – are all around us. We participate in them when we choose friends, seek advice from workmates, lend and/or borrow money from financial institutions, donate to politicians, and so on. The positions we occupy in these networks, whether we know it or not, exert powerful influences on various important outcomes: happiness, job and career satisfaction, and substance abuse among others. Only by uncovering the full structure of these networks may we begin to understand some complex phenomena that require collaboration among disciplines: business, economics, politics, sociology, psychology, information systems, among others. Students taking this class will collaborate to investigate complex phenomena at the intersection of various disciplines, e.g. students from public health, psychology and economics might collaborate to investigate patterns of adoption of new illicit drugs, and students from information systems and politics may work together to understand the spread of political misinformation on social media.

TNDY 407J CMC – Leader Development

Instructor: Becky Reichard, Full Professor, Division of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences
Units: 4
Section: 1
Session: Full-Term (08/26 – 12/14)
Instruction Mode: In-Person (see Class Note section below for important registration information)
Schedule: Thursday, 2:45 – 5:30PM
Location: Claremont McKenna College, Bauer Center Room 2

This course involves instruction in the design and practice of leader development from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Case studies of effective leaders and organizations will be examined, and a variety of assessment and development activities will be completed as part of the course. Students will learn how to develop others while experiencing the development techniques first hand.

Learning Objectives

• Develop knowledge of the contemporary theories and constructs being examined in the field of leader development across disciplines
• Develop knowledge and critical analysis of research and practice related to leadership development and communicate that knowledge to an educated person both in writing and orally
• Accumulate first-hand knowledge and experience in the practice of leader development and, thus, gain self-insight into one’s own leader development journey

Class Registration Note

Course is offered under a Avery Fellowship through Claremont McKenna College and is pre-approved for graduate-level credit. Self-enrollment through the CGU student portal is not available for this course. To enroll in this course, review the “CGU Students Registering at the Claremont Colleges” information available on the CGU Registrar site. Please note, because the course is pre-approved for graduate credit, you will not need approval from the Transdisciplinary Studies Program or the course instructor to enroll in the course. Please submit the cross-registration form directly to the Registrar’s Office by email @ student.records@cgu.edu. Please contact the Transdisciplinary Studies Program with any questions about this course.

TNDY 407V – Urban Studies

Instructor: Heather E. Campbell, Professor, Department of Politics & Government
Units: 4
Section: 1
Session: Full-Term (08/26 – 12/14)
Instruction Mode: In-Person
Schedule: Thursday, 4:00 – 6:50PM

Cities represent about 2% of the world’s area, 50% of the world’s population, 75% of the world’s energy consumption, 80% of the worlds carbon emissions. This class will ground students in an understanding of: the development of cities, aspects of the contemporary city, basic understanding of systems thinking and the urban system, how cities are believed to grow (or not), and how we might measure the complex known as “cities.” Once we have those foundations, we will turn to a variety of topical urban policy issues, including environmental justice, public safety, public health, housing, etc., and how recent research addresses such urban policy issues. Studying cities is inherently transdisciplinary since the city is a complex system of systems—the economic system, the governmental system, the transportation system, the environmental system, the social system, the public health system.

By the end of this class, successful students will:

1. Know major issues in urban studies, including social justice issues.
2. Know of several elements of importance to livable cities.
3. Understand something of systems thinking and why it is important to conceptualize cities as systems of systems.
4. Know of a number of different methods used in studying urban issues including historical analysis, qualitative observational analysis, multivariate regression, GIS, and ABM.
5. Develop and present a transdisciplinary, urban-issue “policy brief.”

TNDY 408V – Campaigning and Community Organizing for Change

Instructor: Bree Hemingway, Assistant Clinical Professor of Community and Global Health
Units: 4
Section: 1
Session: Full-Term (08/26 – 12/14)
Instruction Mode: Online
Schedule: Tuesday, 5:00 – 6:50PM

The world is facing a number of complex, wicked problems that affect the health and well-being of communities around the world. Addressing the injustices of health disparities alone can seem overwhelming. Collaborating with partners and the communities that one serves can help generate effective and innovative solutions to these issues. This course introduces students to methods for community organizing— drawing from several disciplines including public policy, history, cultural studies, communication, health promotion and psychology. The service-learning requirement is a unique component of the course that allows students to build, apply, and reflect on their skillset for effective community organizing. Small, inter-disciplinary teams of students will partner with a local community organization to complete ten hours of service learning in-person or virtually. In addition to the service hours, reflection assignments give students the opportunity to explore what they have gained from their experience and how the skills they have gained cross-cut multiple disciplines. Through this course students will be exposed to a mindset for collaborative policy change that can be applied in multiple fields and have the opportunity to refine and reflect on their capacity to support advocacy and community collaboration. The tools students will learn in this course can be used in several settings to address a broad range of societal issues.

Note: Class meets once a week for two hours with one hour of additional asynchronous instruction. The service-learning requirement is a unique component of the course. While working with the site in person or virtually students should maintain proper conduct and respect the code of conduct for the site. All completed hours must be verified by the site. By week four, students will need to submit their proposed plan for completing the service-learning hours. The student’s schedule will be determined by the site and the student.

TNDY 409B – Public Humanities & Civic Engagement: Excavating our Past, Imagining our Future

Instructor: Romeo Guzmán, Assistant Professor of History
Units: 4
Section: 1
Session: Full-Term (08/26 – 12/14)
Instruction Mode: Hybrid
Schedule: (see Class Session Schedule table below)

Class Note (08/14/2024): course title and description revised; course is no longer held in conjunction with C.A.S.A. Zamora and all in-person sessions per schedule below will be held on campus.

On the cusp of Claremont Graduate University’s centennial celebration, this course takes as its subject our university and its surrounding community, to explore the identity and community relationships of universities, especially in terms of social impact and futures. This course will be of interest to scholars and artists excited about boundary crossing – those deeply committed to public art, social scientists engaged with grassroots democracy, education, and policy, budding museum practitioners, and scholars committed the archive and public humanities.

As a transdisciplinary course, we make the university and its surrounding community the subject of our study, as we as the primary audience. We will use both primary and secondary sources to produce knowledge about place. At the intersection of public humanities in university settings, social arts practice/museum studies, and archival studies, this course seeks to answer the following questions: 1) How do the humanities intersect with other disciplines to build a collective sense of place, and why this is important. 2) What important social movements, intellectual trends, and key moments defined CGU? 3) How can the past inform our present and future in terms of our actions? 4) What are the best forms to share our collective past?

This course is both theoretical and practical. Readings and discussions will ground us in practices and methods from various disciplines, including archival studies, geography, museum studies, and digital humanities. Working collaboratively (or individually), students will design and implement a public-facing project, to be shared with the CGU and broader Claremont community. Projects can include things like walking-tours, pop-up exhibits, digital publications, digital storytelling, open mic sessions, zines, posters, etc. Students will have complete intellectual autonomy in both content and form. Each project will be allocated a budget.

TNDY 409C – Learning from Success: Principles for Taking on Big Issues

Instructor: Robert Klitgaard, University Professor
Units: 4
Section: 1
Session: Full-Term (08/26 – 12/14)
Instruction Mode: Course Cancelled In-Person
Schedule: (see Class Session Schedule table below)

Course Cancelled, Effective 05/01/2024

Despite our age of cynicism and defeat, there is hope in taking on the biggest issues facing our communities and our world. One key is to identify and learn from “bright spots,” namely things that are already working—and then scale these up. This highly interactive seminar covers quantitative and qualitative methods for finding examples of “success,” which is always partial and contestable. It presents culturally relevant participatory processes for learning from success and adapting ideas to local realities. Finally, it discusses how to scale up success. The course presents examples from public policy, business, public health, and education, drawn from around the world.

TNDY 430 – Transdisciplinary Changemakers. Justice-Centered Frameworks for Education

Instructor: Tamar Salibian, Adjunct Instructor
Units: 4
Section: 1
Session: Full-Term (08/26 – 12/14)
Instruction Mode: Online
Schedule: Monday, 4:00 – 6:50PM

What does change mean in education? Why is change-making a critical leadership role for every teacher in every classroom? How do we lead transformations in formal and informal learning spaces? Audre Lorde famously wrote, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” Genuine changemaking as transdisciplinary action involves transgression, transcendence, and transformation. It is motivated by justice and positive futures grounded in boundary crossing that involves radical listening, curiosity, and generosity. In this course, we examine education as a wicked problem, a centuries old system designed to self-replicate and perpetuate oppression and inequities for a diversity of learners, and woefully misaligned with learning science and current and emerging education contexts. Working in teams, you will develop a transdisciplinary pedagogy of transformation using systems, design, complexity, and reflexivity lenses to create equity-minded processes for authentic, meaningful, and deep learning experiences that prepare all learners to flourish in an emerging and unpredictable world. We will synthesize learning sciences, pedagogical frameworks like Universal Design for Learning, multiliteracies, active learning, authentic assessment, outcomes-guided design, community and relationality. We will also integrate the artistic voice as we explore. To this journey, we invite you to bring your disciplinary perspectives, questions, identities, and lived experiences that connect the outer life of scholarship and teaching with your inner life of values, beliefs, and purpose. Through this process, you will create an explicit and living philosophy and methods that will evolve with your practice. Learning about education as a transformative process for justice, you have an opportunity to be transformed in turn as educator and leader.

TNDY 315 – Principles of Project Management for a Complex World

Instructor: Matthew Muga, Adjunct Instructor
Units: 2
Section: 1
Session: Module 1 (05/13 – 06/29)
Instruction Mode: Hybrid, Intensive (see schedule below)
Schedule: (see Class Session Schedule table below)

Our world continues to evolve, becoming more and more complex each day. With that growing complexity comes numerous challenges especially for those working to enact positive change through project-based activities whether it be in industry, our communities, governments, or academia. However, numerous studies have shown that projects seldom get delivered on time, within budget, and delivering its scope and that is especially seen with projects dealing with incredibly complex or “wicked problems”. Understanding how to approach, plan, and execute projects that focus on driving change within highly complex systems requires a more holistic and transdisciplinary view of Project Management. In this course we will be exploring project management for highly complex issues. We’ll explore different styles and methods to lead projects taking a transdisciplinary approach, test and utilize popular IT project management tools. We’ll deep dive into project management and continuous improvement areas such as Scrum, Waterfall, Lean, and Six Sigma to review how these methodologies and frameworks can produce amazing outcomes on complex efforts. We’ll also explore critical elements of project management such as budgeting, communications, negotiations, risk mitigation and more.

TNDY 365 – Global Leadership

Instructor: Kristine Kawamura, Clinical Professor of Management
Units: 2
Section: 1
Session: Module 2 (07/01 – 08/17)
Instruction Mode: Hybrid, Intensive (Requires International Travel)
Schedule: (see Class Session Schedule table below)

This is an experiential class that includes global travel, experiential learning, and leadership development and transformation. Global travel is life-changing. As we uproot ourselves from the familiar, we are able to see not only ourselves but also others “whole against the sky.” (Rumi) During this course, we will travel to Vietnam, focusing on the richness, complexity, beauty, and challenges found in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and its surrounding region as well as the Mekong Delta. We will specifically be asking this question: How do leaders (at all levels) in Vietnam work to raise the level of economic/social development, prosperity, and overall wellbeing of a nation and its people—improving the quality of life of its people, balancing competing priorities, and competing on a global and regional scale—without compromising human, social, cultural, economic, and environmental sustainability?

In the course, students will learn and apply skills in systems thinking, transdisciplinary learning, cultural intelligence, cultural awareness, reflection, and leading change and transformation. The trip will be grounded in several lenses of study (history, sustainability, economic/social development, global leadership, among others), which will allow us to co-create a rich tapestry of knowledge and shared learning throughout the course.

Costs:

• CGU Tuition + Fees (fellowship(s) and other aid applicable)
• Travel to Vietnam (Students are required to make their own travel arrangements, i.e., passport, visa, airfare, etc.)
• Course Fee: between $3,500 – $4,010 (covers cost of accommodations + site visits + other incidentals)

View the 2024 Course Information Session Recording To Learn More

TNDY 430 – Transdisciplinary Changemakers. Justice-Centered Frameworks for Education

Instructor: Tamar Salibian, Adjunct Instructor
Units: 4
Section: 1
Session: Module 1 (05/13 – 06/29)
Schedule: Wednesday, 4:00 – 6:50PM

What does change mean in education? Why is change-making a critical leadership role for every teacher in every classroom? How do we lead transformations in formal and informal learning spaces? Audre Lorde famously wrote, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” Genuine changemaking as transdisciplinary action involves transgression, transcendence, and transformation. It is motivated by justice and positive futures grounded in boundary crossing that involves radical listening, curiosity, and generosity. In this course, we examine education as a wicked problem, a centuries old system designed to self-replicate and perpetuate oppression and inequities for a diversity of learners, and woefully misaligned with learning science and current and emerging education contexts. Working in teams, you will develop a transdisciplinary pedagogy of transformation using systems, design, complexity, and reflexivity lenses to create equity-minded processes for authentic, meaningful, and deep learning experiences that prepare all learners to flourish in an emerging and unpredictable world. We will synthesize learning sciences, pedagogical frameworks like Universal Design for Learning, multiliteracies, active learning, authentic assessment, outcomes-guided design, community and relationality. We will also integrate the artistic voice as we explore. To this journey, we invite you to bring your disciplinary perspectives, questions, identities, and lived experiences that connect the outer life of scholarship and teaching with your inner life of values, beliefs, and purpose. Through this process, you will create an explicit and living philosophy and methods that will evolve with your practice. Learning about education as a transformative process for justice, you have an opportunity to be transformed in turn as educator and leader.

TNDY 403E – Working Across Cultures

Instructor: Robert Klitgaard, University Professor
Units: 4
Section: 1
Session: Regular (05/13 – 08/17)
Instruction Mode: Online
Schedule: Thursday, 4:00 – 6:50PM

People in business, government, nonprofits, education, public health, and religious institutions increasingly find themselves working across cultures. This course addresses three broad questions.

1. How can you prepare for the challenges of working or studying in a different cultural setting?
2. Within your own institution in your own country, how can you take advantage of various kinds of cultural diversity?
3. How can you tailor policies, negotiations, and management practices to take account of different cultural settings?

Cultural competence arises at several levels: the individual, the institution, and the design and implementation of policies and programs. At each level, there are challenges of the head, the hand, and the heart. Fortunately, abundant research and practical experience can teach us how to do better. The course draws from many disciplines and uses examples from the United States and around the world.

This course should provide valuable knowledge and skills for both future professionals (in public health, business, education, public policy, evaluation, international relations, and more) and future professors.

This course teaches how to:

1. Address culture misunderstandings in ourselves and in our institutions.
2. Evaluate and manage the benefits and costs of various kinds of cultural diversity.
3. Apply lessons from what works in one cultural setting to a different cultural setting.
4. Improve negotiations across cultures.
5. Reframe our individual identities as multicultural.

TNDY 405A – Heritage, Culture and Managing the Past in the Old World and the New

Instructor: Joshua Goode, Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and History
Units: 4
Section: 1
Session: Module 1 (05/13 – 06/29)
Instruction Mode: In-Person Intensive (Requires International Travel^*)
Schedule: (see Class Session Schedule table below)

Costs:

• CGU Tuition + Fees (fellowship(s) and other aid applicable)
• Accommodations and Travel to England (Students are required to make their own travel arrangements)
• Course Fee: usually between $700 – $1000 (covers cost of accommodations + site visits + other incidentals)

This course is a jointly taught, dual campus class that examines heritage management of historical sites and museums in both Los Angeles and the Bath region. While in Los Angeles, students from Bath and from CGU will explore important cultural heritage sites, including the Getty Villa, the San Gabriel Mission, Old Pasadena, Watts Towers, La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, El Pueblo de los Angeles Historic Monument, among other sites. In Bath, the students will use the university as home base to explore the city, named a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1987, and its many museums and historical sites, including its complete Roman baths, One Royal Crescent House Museum, and the Jane Austen Center. Outside Bath, we will explore Oxford and London to talk with museum leaders and heritage management experts. Stonehenge and the Victoria and Albert Museum are already planned as part of the itinerary outside of Bath.

The differences between the two locations, Los Angeles and Bath, will pose in very clear relief the different kinds of issues that face heritage management experts in both contexts. How do we protect and manage historical sites and collections? Where do we find funding for the arts and cultural patrimony in a complicated setting of public and increasingly private fund-raising? How do we convey and maintain the cultural significance of these sites to contemporary and future audiences? Particular focus will be placed on the structural and economic differences between the regions that define how the arts and heritage efforts are funded, and how broader, more globalized forces will define civic and national commemoration and historical education efforts in the future.

TNDY 408Y – Politics and Policy of Health Disparities

Instructor: Javier M. Rodríguez, Associate Professor Division of Politics & Economics
Units: 4
Section: 1
Session: Module 1 (05/13 – 06/29)
Instruction Mode: Online (synchronous, with 1-hour asynchronous component per week)
Schedule: Tuesday/Friday, 5:00 – 6:50PM

Illness, disability, and mortality are to an important extent—both at the public and individual levels—extended biological expressions of social contexts. This is what this course is about: to develop a transdisciplinary understanding of how social phenomena gets under our skin. Importantly, the study of epidemiological outcomes is intensely transdisciplinary. This is because the functioning and dysregulation of our body systems are patterned by environmental stimuli—and political, economic, social, cultural, and psychological processes are the structural components of the environments in which we are born, live, age, work, and play.

This course focuses on how our political system—i.e., the underlying historical institutional arrangement that emanates from the elected and non-elected state personnel that write, interpret, execute and enforce rules, regulations, legislation, and public and private programs—frame the social determinants of health. Our approach will be transdisciplinary because the forces that shape the social determinants of health happen in and are exclusive to the government—e.g., from regulating pollution and housing to work legislation, from tax cuts and taxing sugar-sweetened beverages and tobacco to schools and education, and from mass incarceration and the criminal justice system to Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. The proposed course emphasizes health disparities because the resulting distribution of public goods and services that stems from the political system is at the core of both triumphant and embarrassing transdisciplinary research. Still, only through transdisciplinary lenses we can develop an understanding of the power that relies in government to construct identities, belief systems, the norms that dictate human behavior, the demographic groups (e.g., age, race/ethnicity, gender) that define us as social beings and, in sum, the frameworks where our social life unfolds affecting our mental, behavioral and emotional wellbeing and health.

TNDY 311 – Positive Futures. Systems. Design. Complexity. Foresight.

Instructor(s): Andrew Vosko, Associate Provost and Director of Transdisciplinary Studies
Section: 1
Units: 2
Session: Full-term
Instruction Mode: In-Person, Bi-Weekly
Schedule: (see table below)

How does one construct an equitable future? What is needed to tackle the problems of an increasingly interconnected world? Can healthcare be fixed? Education? The environment? Our traditional approaches have not been enough.

This transdisciplinary survey course offers a tools-based approach for building positive futures by more effectively addressing large-scale, high stakes, and complex realities. Going beyond traditional, disciplinary approaches, we will study how to build positive futures across four domains: 1) Systems thinking and analysis; 2) Design thinking and process, 3) Complexity thinking and problem-solving, and; 4) Foresight and futures strategy. Each domain will comprise one of the four modules in the course, and all modules will be linked by a shared ‘wicked-problem’ to tackle around equity and sustainability. Throughout the course, we will collaboratively problem-solve and re-frame our approaches and understanding to the most vexing issues of our world.

Key Concepts: Communication; Collaboration; Team Science Principles; Boundary Crossing

TNDY 312 – From Modern Thought to Wicked Problems

Instructor(s): Patricia Easton, Professor of Humanities
Section: 1
Units: 2
Instruction Mode: Hybrid (In-Person and Online, Asynchronously)
Session: Full-Term
Schedule: (see table below)

Please note the course will not meet in-person for session 03 on Friday, 02/19/2024, and all coursework for session 3 will take place online, asynchronously.

This course introduces students to the evolution and perspectives of transdisciplinary science and practice, how these differ and relate to other methodologies in knowledge creation, and why transdisciplinarity matters. We will explore this within the contexts of addressing the world’s complex or wicked problems, especially from the perspective of creating positive social impact.

TNDY 330 – Team Leadership and Diversity

Instructor: M. Gloria González Morales, Associate Professor of Psychology
Section: 1
Units: 2
Session: Module 2
Instruction Mode: Hybrid, Intensive
Schedule: (see table below)

This course is designed to provide concepts, tools, and strategies to create, promote and manage diverse and inclusive organizations and groups. To achieve both individual and collective belonging, we will target competences needed to apply integrative approaches that resolve the tension between diversity values and team functioning. For example, we will work on skills and tools that allow leaders to recognize and utilize the value of uniqueness, communicate across differences, and navigate the complex circumstances to enhance cohesion and coordination, and promote team trust and efficacy.

TNDY 404O – Collaboration Across the Public-Private Divide

Instructor: Robert Klitgaard, University Professor
Section: 1
Units: 4
Session: Full-Term
Instruction Mode: In-Person
Schedule: Tuesday, 4:00 – 6:50PM

This course explores how to design, lead, and manage public-private partnerships. We examine theoretical approaches from many disciplines, as well as experience from around the world, to analyze various forms of collaboration among governments, businesses, and citizens. We consider the practical challenges of making such partnerships work, using outstanding case studies. Along the way, we reconsider the meaning and practice of public policy and management. Examples are drawn from public health, education, international development, urban renewal, infrastructure, minimum-wage reforms, anti-corruption initiatives, and more.

TNDY 409A – The Practice of Self-Mastery: The Power of Attention

Instructor(s): Jeremy Hunter, Associate Professor of Practice, Founding Director, Executive Mind Leadership Institute
Section: 1
Units: 2
Session: Mod 1
Instruction Mode: In-Person
Schedule: see table below (Tuesday, 4:00 – 6:50PM)

This course introduces the fundamentals of self-mastery, namely the management of your nervous system and your attention. It focuses becoming conscious of how you construct reality and the results that construction generate. You will learn methods to transform the result so they are in greater alignment with your values, goals and visions for your life.

TNDY 408EPO – Mechanisms That Rule Our Social Universe

Instructor: Joshua Tasoff, Associate Professor of Economic Sciences
Section: 1
Units: 4
Session: Full-Term
Instruction Mode: In-Person
Schedule: Tuesday/Thursday, 1:15 – 2:30PM

Billions of years ago, chemicals formed on planet Earth that could replicate themselves. These were the progenitors of life. Over eons of evolution, autonomous living agents predated, cooperated, and competed with each other to eventually create the modern world of today. Across that history, there have been several recurring themes on how agents interact. In the course we will study fundamental forces that drive sociality at multiple levels, from viruses to markets. We will uncover some of the hidden mechanisms that rule our social universe. For example, we will discover why genes form chromosomes, why people form nations, and why the reasons for the two are similar. The emphasis will be on a few key ideas that have broad and profound application. In our journey, we will learn from where social systems evolved and perhaps to where social systems may be evolving. This course is intended for students who are interested in having their perspective shifted through provocative frameworks (colloquially referred to as “blowing your mind”). Additional time will be devoted to professional self-examination and prioritization (colloquially referred to as “what the heck am I doing with my life?”).

TNDY 430 – Transdisciplinary Changemakers. Justice-Centered Frameworks for Education

Instructor: Tamar Salibian, Adjunct Instructor
Section: 1
Units: 4
Session: Full-Term
Instruction Mode: Online
Schedule: Monday, 4:00 – 6:50PM

What does change mean in education? Why is change-making a critical leadership role for every teacher in every classroom? How do we lead transformations in formal and informal learning spaces? Audre Lorde famously wrote, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” Genuine changemaking as transdisciplinary action involves transgression, transcendence, and transformation. It is motivated by justice and positive futures grounded in boundary crossing that involves radical listening, curiosity, and generosity. In this course, we examine education as a wicked problem, a centuries old system designed to self-replicate and perpetuate oppression and inequities for a diversity of learners, and woefully misaligned with learning science and current and emerging education contexts. Working in teams, you will develop a transdisciplinary pedagogy of transformation using systems, design, complexity, and reflexivity lenses to create equity-minded processes for authentic, meaningful, and deep learning experiences that prepare all learners to flourish in an emerging and unpredictable world. We will synthesize learning sciences, pedagogical frameworks like Universal Design for Learning, multiliteracies, active learning, authentic assessment, outcomes-guided design, community and relationality. We will also integrate the artistic voice as we explore. To this journey, we invite you to bring your disciplinary perspectives, questions, identities, and lived experiences that connect the outer life of scholarship and teaching with your inner life of values, beliefs, and purpose. Through this process, you will create an explicit and living philosophy and methods that will evolve with your practice. Learning about education as a transformative process for justice, you have an opportunity to be transformed in turn as educator and leader.

TNDY 440 – Professional Practice for Inclusive Excellence

Instructor: M. Gloria González Morales, Associate Professor of Psychology
Section: 1
Units: 4
Session: Full-Term
Instruction Mode: Online
Schedule: Thursday, 4:00 – 6:50PM

This course focuses on integrating transdisciplinary, personal, and professional lenses in developing principles and tools for becoming a changemaker in professional practice for Inclusive Excellence. In this course, we address the complex problem of organizations and institutions grounded in societal kyriarchal systems designed to perpetuate oppression and inequities for a diverse body of organizational and institutional stakeholders (e.g., customers, service recipients, organizational and team members, workers, volunteers, employees). We will discuss and develop strategies for inclusive and equity-minded professional practice–in formal organizations and institutions, and in informal spaces–that balances meaningful authentic experiences with productive professional work. We will integrate transdisciplinary lenses for systems, complexity, reflexivity, design thinking, and the methodologies of appreciative inquiry, human-centered design and job and career crafting. We will leverage scholarly frameworks from intergroup dialog, diversity management, organizational behavior, positive organizational scholarship, leadership and emotional and relational theory. Individual transformative work for the practice of allyship, as part of professional practice, will require transdisciplinary team work to develop team-collaboration, team functioning and inclusion engagement capacities. This way, scholars will connect values and beliefs with their discipline-specific professional strategies and tools to develop a living vision and mission for professional practice that is justice-centered and equity-minded. In sum, this course will support scholars in their development as changemakers in professional, institutional, organizational and community spaces.

TNDY 446 – Leveraging Data in Your Context

Instructor: Gwen Garrison, Clinical Professor of Education, Director of Educational Evaluation and Data Analysis
Section: 1
Units: 4
Session: Full-Term
Instruction Mode: Online
Schedule: Thursday, 4:00 – 6:50PM

Students should contact the Transdisciplinary Studies Program for assistance in enrolling in TNDY 446.

K-12 and higher education settings have many data systems including student information, learning management, curriculum tracking and survey platforms. How all this day can fit together and be used to answer key assessment and policy questions for educational leaders is a critical skill for educational data analysis. The key connection is to organizational mission and performance metrics. This course will explore what is available, how to evaluate the data strength, and transform data into better visual and dynamic reporting. This course is offered as a hybrid with both CGU and online meetings. This class is being designed to be hybrid with some sessions being at CGU and some sessions being held with virtual tools. It has not yet been determined what the ratio will be between traditional and online sessions. Given the online sessions, it is imperative that students have access to a working computer that has a microphone and camera and that the student has access to reliable internet service Students can always utilize the CGU computer labs if needed. Instructor is planning to introduce students to Tableau and Microsoft Power BI.

TNDY 310 – Communication & Collaboration in Transdisciplinary Work

Instructor(s): Andrew Vosko, Associate Provost and Director of Transdisciplinary Studies, and Rebecca Holman Williams, Adjunct Professor, Transdisciplinary Studies Program
Units: 2
Instruction Mode: Hybrid, Intensive
Section: 1
Session: Module 1
Schedule: (see table below)

This course examines key principles and approaches for effective transdisciplinary teamwork and professional practice. Students will engage in experiential team-based learning to explore challenges and strategies for collaboration and communication in working across disciplines and with diverse stakeholders.

Key Concepts: Communication; Collaboration; Team Science Principles; Boundary Crossing

TNDY 407X – Leading Change

Instructor(s): Jessica Diaz, Director, Human Resource Management, Assistant Professor
Units: 2
Instruction Mode: Hybrid, Intensive
Section: 1
Session: Module 1
Schedule: (see table below)

This course examines key principles and approaches for effective transdisciplinary teamwork and professional practice. Students will engage in experiential team-based learning to explore challenges and strategies for collaboration and communication in working across disciplines and with diverse stakeholders.

Key Concepts: Leadership; Communication; Boundary Crossing

TNDY 408Z – Cybersecurity: Creating a Safe and Secure Global Village

Instructor: Chinazunwa Uwaoma, Research Assistant Professor of Information Systems & Technology
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: Hybrid (see session schedule below)
Session: Full Term
Section: 1
Schedule: Wednesday, 5:00 – 6:50PM (1-hours asynchronous component per week)

The purpose of this course is to actively engage students in the campaign against cybercrimes. It is aimed at equipping the students with the necessary knowledge and skills to protect their information assets. The course is designed to interactively apply systems thinking to help students understand and analyze the whole gamut of information security threats they face ranging from identity theft and credit card fraud to physical safety both in the workplace and at home. The course also examines the impact of information security threats on society and different populations. The skills and knowledge acquired during the course of this program will not only help the students to identify these threats but also to mitigate them effectively. The course will include demo videos and scenario-based discussion questions to allow the student to gain actual skills.

TNDY 408X – The Power of Love: A Scientific and Embodied Exploration

Instructor: Cindi Gilliland, Professor of Practice in Organizational Psychology
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: In-Person
Section: 1
Session: Full Term
Schedule: Wednesday, 1:00 – 3:50PM

Love in all its forms is a fundamental human experience that is often disregarded as an academic topic or as an experience that requires active, conscious practice. Positive, high-quality relationships have been shown to be the greatest moderator of experienced stress and one of the strongest predictors of longevity and of life satisfaction. However, our current era of 24-7 technological hyper-connectivity is paradoxically accompanied by fragmentation and separation, what Surgeon General Vivek Murphy calls an epidemic of loneliness. This course addresses the issue of love’s complex role in positive human development at individual, social, and global dimensions. Students will work in teams to explore the meanings, practices, and benefits of love from multiple levels of analyses and from scientific, cultural, philosophical, and artistic lenses. We will create personal, embodied practices for growing our own capacities to love ourselves and others, because doing so will not only enhance our own life experiences but can contribute to the growth of thriving communities, world peace, and the development of practices that will sustain human and non-human life.

TNDY 408W – Art of Carl Bray: Painting and Community in the Coachella Valley

Instructor: Tammi Schneider, Danforth Professor of Religion
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: In-Person
Section: 1
Session: Full Term
Schedule: Tuesday, 1:00 – 3:50PM

In this course, students will study, with an eye towards putting together a gallery show and publishing a catalogue, of original art by the smoke paint artist Carl Bray. We will examine issues around art such as what is it, what is landscape painting, what is this particular form of art, as well as why and how art is collected, managed, and displayed. Issues of gender and sexuality will be explored as well, through both the lens of history, place, and field. All of this will culminate in a gallery show with an associated catalogue put on and written by the students in the class.

TNDY 408V – Campaigning and Community Organizing for Change

Instructor: Bree Hemingway, Assistant Clinical Professor of Community and Global Health
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: Online (synchronous, with 1-hour asynchronous component per week)
Section: 1
Session: Full Term
Schedule: Tuesday, 5:00 – 6:50PM

The world is facing a number of complex, wicked problems that affect the health and well-being of communities around the world. Addressing the injustices of health disparities alone can seem overwhelming. Collaborating with partners and the communities that one serves can help generate effective and innovative solutions to these issues. This course introduces students to methods for community organizing— drawing from several disciplines including public policy, history, cultural studies, communication, health promotion and psychology. The service-learning requirement is a unique component of the course that allows students to build, apply, and reflect on their skillset for effective community organizing. Small, inter-disciplinary teams of students will partner with a local community organization to complete ten hours of service learning in-person or virtually. In addition to the service hours, reflection assignments give students the opportunity to explore what they have gained from their experience and how the skills they have gained cross-cut multiple disciplines. Through this course students will be exposed to a mindset for collaborative policy change that can be applied in multiple fields and have the opportunity to refine and reflect on their capacity to support advocacy and community collaboration. The tools students will learn in this course can be used in several settings to address a broad range of societal issues.

Note: Class meets once a week for two hours with one hour of additional asynchronous instruction. The service-learning requirement is a unique component of the course. While working with the site in person or virtually students should maintain proper conduct and respect the code of conduct for the site. All completed hours must be verified by the site. By week four, students will need to submit their proposed plan for completing the service-learning hours. The student’s schedule will be determined by the site and the student.

TNDY 430 – Transdisciplinary Changemakers. Justice-Centered Frameworks for Education

Instructor: Shamini Dias, Director of Transdisciplinary Curriculum and Special Projects
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: Online
Section: 1
Session: Full Term
Schedule: Thursday, 4:00 – 6:50PM

What does change mean in education? Why is change-making a critical leadership role for every teacher in every classroom? How do we lead transformations in formal and informal learning spaces? Audre Lorde famously wrote, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” Genuine changemaking as transdisciplinary action involves transgression, transcendence, and transformation. It is motivated by justice and positive futures grounded in boundary crossing that involves radical listening, curiosity, and generosity. In this course, we examine education as a wicked problem, a centuries old system designed to self-replicate and perpetuate oppression and inequities for a diversity of learners, and woefully misaligned with learning science and current and emerging education contexts. Working in teams, you will develop a transdisciplinary pedagogy of transformation using systems, design, complexity, and reflexivity lenses to create equity-minded processes for authentic, meaningful, and deep learning experiences that prepare all learners to flourish in an emerging and unpredictable world. We will synthesize learning sciences, pedagogical frameworks like Universal Design for Learning, multiliteracies, active learning, authentic assessment, outcomes-guided design, community and relationality. We will also integrate the artistic voice as we explore. To this journey, we invite you to bring your disciplinary perspectives, questions, identities, and lived experiences that connect the outer life of scholarship and teaching with your inner life of values, beliefs, and purpose. Through this process, you will create an explicit and living philosophy and methods that will evolve with your practice. Learning about education as a transformative process for justice, you have an opportunity to be transformed in turn as educator and leader.

TNDY 430 – Transdisciplinary Changemakers. Justice-Centered Frameworks for Education

Instructor: Tamar Salibian, Adjunct Instructor
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: Online
Section: 2
Session: Full Term
Schedule: Monday, 4:00 – 6:50PM

What does change mean in education? Why is change-making a critical leadership role for every teacher in every classroom? How do we lead transformations in formal and informal learning spaces? Audre Lorde famously wrote, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” Genuine changemaking as transdisciplinary action involves transgression, transcendence, and transformation. It is motivated by justice and positive futures grounded in boundary crossing that involves radical listening, curiosity, and generosity. In this course, we examine education as a wicked problem, a centuries old system designed to self-replicate and perpetuate oppression and inequities for a diversity of learners, and woefully misaligned with learning science and current and emerging education contexts. Working in teams, you will develop a transdisciplinary pedagogy of transformation using systems, design, complexity, and reflexivity lenses to create equity-minded processes for authentic, meaningful, and deep learning experiences that prepare all learners to flourish in an emerging and unpredictable world. We will synthesize learning sciences, pedagogical frameworks like Universal Design for Learning, multiliteracies, active learning, authentic assessment, outcomes-guided design, community and relationality. We will also integrate the artistic voice as we explore. To this journey, we invite you to bring your disciplinary perspectives, questions, identities, and lived experiences that connect the outer life of scholarship and teaching with your inner life of values, beliefs, and purpose. Through this process, you will create an explicit and living philosophy and methods that will evolve with your practice. Learning about education as a transformative process for justice, you have an opportunity to be transformed in turn as educator and leader.

TNDY 403E – Working Across Cultures

Instructor: Robert Klitgaard, University Professor
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: Online
Section: 1
Session: Full Term
Schedule: Tuesday, 7:00 – 9:50PM

People in business, government, nonprofits, education, public health, and religious institutions increasingly find themselves working across cultures. This course addresses three broad questions.

1. How can you prepare for the challenges of working or studying in a different cultural setting?
2. Within your own institution in your own country, how can you take advantage of various kinds of cultural diversity?
3. How can you tailor policies, negotiations, and management practices to take account of different cultural settings?

Cultural competence arises at several levels: the individual, the institution, and the design and implementation of policies and programs. At each level, there are challenges of the head, the hand, and the heart. Fortunately, abundant research and practical experience can teach us how to do better. The course draws from many disciplines and uses examples from the United States and around the world.

This course should provide valuable knowledge and skills for both future professionals (in public health, business, education, public policy, evaluation, international relations, and more) and future professors.

This course teaches how to:

1. Address culture misunderstandings in ourselves and in our institutions.
2. Evaluate and manage the benefits and costs of various kinds of cultural diversity.
3. Apply lessons from what works in one cultural setting to a different cultural setting.
4. Improve negotiations across cultures.
5. Reframe our individual identities as multicultural.

TNDY 311 – Systems, Complexity, and Futures Thinking

Instructor: Andrew Vosko, Associate Provost and Director of Transdisciplinary Studies
Units: 1
Instruction Mode: Hybrid, Intensive
Section: 1
Session: Module 1
Schedule: COURSE CANCELLED

This course introduces critical mindsets and ways of thinking for transdisciplinary analysis – systems, complexity, and futures thinking. Students will apply these thinking frameworks to analyze the inter-connectedness, non-linearity, dynamic relationships, and future implications of complex issues.

Key Concepts: Complexity Orientation – uncertainty and emergence; Systems Thinking – plurality, interconnectivity, feedback loops; Future Thinking – sustainability, positive futures; Metaphysics of Dilemma – stakeholder problem solving, transdisciplinary research.

TNDY 312 – Tackling Wicked Problems

Instructor: Andrew Vosko, Associate Provost and Director of Transdisciplinary Studies
Units: 1
Instruction Mode: Hybrid, Intensive
Section: 1
Session: Mid Term
Schedule: COURSE CANCELLED

This course focuses on the nature of complex dilemmas or wicked problems and issues of justice in how we approach them. Students will explore frameworks of social justice and the multiple stakeholders who create, are affected by, and can be part of the process in addressing wicked problems.

Key Concepts: Complex Dilemmas; Social Justice and Sustainability; Ontology, Epistemology, and Axiology of Complex Problem Solving; Reflexivity – double loop learning; Boundary Crossing, Transdisciplinary Disruption and Integration.

TNDY 340 – Leading Through Data

Instructor: Munirpallam Appadorai Venkataramanan, University Professor
Units: 2
Instruction Mode: Hybrid
Schedule: see Class Session Schedule table

Reliable, well-managed data is critical to organizational success. In this course, we explore how to pragmatically understand the importance of effective data management for leading the success of the organization. We will examine: the importance of data strategies, data governance and data quality, challenges associated with data protection, privacy and security, and modern data architecture and platforms to streamline data operations within an organization. We will also introduce the emergent issues around data ethics and how to mitigate information risks.

Note: each online session will also contain 1 hour of asynchronous lecture and activity.

TNDY 360 – Effective Leader Storytelling

Instructor: TBD, Adjunct Professor
Units: 2
Instruction Mode: Hybrid
Schedule: see Class Session Schedule table

“Through narrative,” Steve Denning (The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling, 2011) writes, “we can let go the urge to control, and the fear that goes with it, learning that the world has the capacity to organize itself, recognizing that managing includes catalyzing this capacity, as well as sparking, creating, energizing, unifying, generating emergent truths, celebrating the complexity, the fuzziness and the messiness of living.” In short, there is both an art and craft to the very human work of storytelling, and this 2 unit course will introduce you to a number of humanistic approaches to mastering both. Students will develop and deliver their own stories of — and in — leadership, as well as learn approaches and techniques drawn from the fields of History, Literature, Archeological and Archival Studies.

Note: each online session will also contain 1 hour of asynchronous lecture and activity.

TNDY 365 – Global Leadership

Instructor: Kristine Kawamura, Clinical Professor of Management
Units: 2
Instruction Mode: In-Person Intensive (Requires International Travel)
Schedule: Module 2 (July 05 to August 19), see Class Meetings and Site Visits for more information

Information Session

View the Information Session Recording

Costs:

• CGU Tuition + Fees (Fellowship(s) Apply)
• Travel to Costa Rica (Students are required to make their own travel arrangements.)
• Course Fee: between $2,800 – $3,600 (covers cost of accommodations + site visits + other incidentals)

Questions?

If you have further questions regarding the course, please contact Mary Jo Carzoo, Drucker School of Management.

This is an experiential class that includes global travel, experiential learning, and leadership transformation. Global travel is life-changing. As we uproot ourselves from the familiar, we are able to see not only ourselves but also others “whole against the sky” (Rumi). Experiential learning provides internalized growth through deep-seated reflection and active engagement with environments and people. Leadership transformation gives us a greater capacity to impact people and effect change as we team with people from different cultures and walks of life. To achieve success, leaders need to ask themselves the following questions:

• How do we effectively lead others who are culturally different than ourselves?
• How much do we really know about the world, its vast cornucopia of cultures and systems, and its shared human values and experiences?
• How we can develop the cultural intelligence and cultural competence to serve as transformative leaders, community members, creatives, and change makers?

The purpose of this class is three-fold: 1) to help students experience the world (in all its richness, complexity, beauty, and challenge) through global travel and experiential learning; 2) to build awareness of, and skills in, cultural awareness, cultural intelligence, and global leadership; and, 3) to actively develop as global leaders by studying, reflecting on, talking with, and building relationships with leaders and community members in different parts of the world.

TNDY 405A – Heritage, Culture and Managing the Past in the Old World and the New

Instructor: Joshua Goode, Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and History
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: In-Person Intensive (Requires International Travel^*)
Schedule: Module 1 (May 15 to July 09), see Class Meetings and Site Visits for more information

This course is a jointly taught, dual campus class that examines heritage management of historical sites and museums in both Los Angeles and the Bath region. While in Los Angeles, students from Bath and from CGU will explore important cultural heritage sites, including the Getty Villa, the San Gabriel Mission, Old Pasadena, Watts Towers, La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, El Pueblo de los Angeles Historic Monument, among other sites. In Bath, the students will use the university as home base to explore the city, named a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1987, and its many museums and historical sites, including its complete Roman baths, One Royal Crescent House Museum, and the Jane Austen Center. Outside Bath, we will explore Oxford and London to talk with museum leaders and heritage management experts. Stonehenge and the Victoria and Albert Museum are already planned as part of the itinerary outside of Bath.

The differences between the two locations, Los Angeles and Bath, will pose in very clear relief the different kinds of issues that face heritage management experts in both contexts. How do we protect and manage historical sites and collections? Where do we find funding for the arts and cultural patrimony in a complicated setting of public and increasingly private fund-raising? How do we convey and maintain the cultural significance of these sites to contemporary and future audiences? Particular focus will be placed on the structural and economic differences between the regions that define how the arts and heritage efforts are funded, and how broader, more globalized forces will define civic and national commemoration and historical education efforts in the future.

Costs:

• CGU Tuition + Fees (Fellowship(s) Apply)
• Accommodations and Travel to England (Students are required to make their own travel arrangements.)
• Course Fee: Usually Between $700 – $1000

View the Fall 2021 Recorded Session

TNDY 304 – Traversing the Transdisciplinary Imagination: Communication & Collaboration

Instructor: Marcus Weakley, Director of the Center for Writing and Rhetoric
Units: 2
Instruction Mode: Intensive, Hybrid
Schedule: see table below

What does it look like to communicate and collaborate across boundaries? How does transdisciplinary research (TR) differ from other forms, and why are these differences important? How can a transdisciplinary approach be applied in various contexts? This class will look at these questions by covering the foundations of TR as well as some representative examples. Students will develop an understanding of how their scholarly interests might be approached in more holistic or complex ways through written assignments and collaborative projects with classmates.

TNDY 408Y – Politics and Policy of Health Disparities

Instructor: Javier M. Rodríguez, Associate Professor Division of Politics & Economics
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: Online (synchronous, with 1-hour asynchronous component per week)
Schedule: Module 1 (May 15 to July 09), Tuesday/Friday, 5:00 – 6:50PM

Illness, disability, and mortality are to an important extent—both at the public and individual levels—extended biological expressions of social contexts. This is what this course is about: to develop a transdisciplinary understanding of how social phenomena gets under our skin. Importantly, the study of epidemiological outcomes is intensely transdisciplinary. This is because the functioning and dysregulation of our body systems are patterned by environmental stimuli—and political, economic, social, cultural, and psychological processes are the structural components of the environments in which we are born, live, age, work, and play.

This course focuses on how our political system—i.e., the underlying historical institutional arrangement that emanates from the elected and non-elected state personnel that write, interpret, execute and enforce rules, regulations, legislation, and public and private programs—frame the social determinants of health. Our approach will be transdisciplinary because the forces that shape the social determinants of health happen in and are exclusive to the government—e.g., from regulating pollution and housing to work legislation, from tax cuts and taxing sugar-sweetened beverages and tobacco to schools and education, and from mass incarceration and the criminal justice system to Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. The proposed course emphasizes health disparities because the resulting distribution of public goods and services that stems from the political system is at the core of both triumphant and embarrassing transdisciplinary research. Still, only through transdisciplinary lenses we can develop an understanding of the power that relies in government to construct identities, belief systems, the norms that dictate human behavior, the demographic groups (e.g., age, race/ethnicity, gender) that define us as social beings and, in sum, the frameworks where our social life unfolds affecting our mental, behavioral and emotional wellbeing and health.

TNDY 407K – Transdisciplinary Approaches to Inequality

Instructor: Javier M. Rodríguez, Associate Professor Division of Politics & Economics
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: Online (synchronous, with 1-hour asynchronous component per week)
Schedule: Module 1 (May 15 to July 09), Monday/Thursday, 5:00 – 7:20PM

This course focuses on two objectives: (1) to understand the nature, the opportunities, and the challenges that arise in transdisciplinary research projects, and (2) to explore discipline-specific (e.g., economics, epidemiology, political science) and transdisciplinary approaches to understand and solve social inequality. In working toward these objectives, this course includes a strong evidence-based theoretical component. Inequality is transdisciplinary by definition; it is a problem important to society in its own right and it is at the center of complexity—both theoretical and methodological—relevant to many other problems. Social inequality—in its many expressions—requires both problem- and solution-oriented lenses—and none of them belongs to any specific discipline. Research in social, economic, health, political, and life outcomes inequality, therefore, requires the conception of research questions and the development of research designs that transcend specific knowledge bases above and beyond the scope of influence of individual disciplines.

This course offers students a unique opportunity to integrate a diversity of theoretical frameworks, methodological traditions, and worldviews via transdisciplinary lenses. By the end of this course, students will understand how the scientific method has been effectively (and sometimes ineffectively) implemented to answer research questions. Students will locate when and where theories and methods from disparate traditions collide. And, equally important, students will understand the advantages and disadvantages of the scientific enterprise, that science works, and that there is not a single-discipline scientific dictatorship to deploy progress and social justice in the world.

TNDY 430 – Transdisciplinary Changemakers. Justice-Centered Frameworks for Education

Instructor: M. Gloria González-Morales, Associate Professor of Psychology
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: Hybrid (Intensive)
Schedule: Module 1
Weekly, Online, Tuesdays, 12:00 – 1:00PM
Intensive, In-Person, June 05 – 09, 10:00AM to 5:00PM

What does change mean in education? Why is change-making a critical leadership role for every teacher in every classroom? How do we lead transformations in formal and informal learning spaces? Audre Lorde famously wrote, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” Genuine changemaking as transdisciplinary action involves transgression, transcendence, and transformation. It is motivated by justice and positive futures grounded in boundary crossing that involves radical listening, curiosity, and generosity. In this course, we examine education as a wicked problem, a centuries old system designed to self-replicate and perpetuate oppression and inequities for a diversity of learners, and woefully misaligned with learning science and current and emerging education contexts. Working in teams, you will develop a transdisciplinary pedagogy of transformation using systems, design, complexity, and reflexivity lenses to create equity-minded processes for authentic, meaningful, and deep learning experiences that prepare all learners to flourish in an emerging and unpredictable world. We will synthesize learning sciences, pedagogical frameworks like Universal Design for Learning, multiliteracies, active learning, authentic assessment, outcomes-guided design, community and relationality. We will also integrate the artistic voice as we explore. To this journey, we invite you to bring your disciplinary perspectives, questions, identities, and lived experiences that connect the outer life of scholarship and teaching with your inner life of values, beliefs, and purpose. Through this process, you will create an explicit and living philosophy and methods that will evolve with your practice. Learning about education as a transformative process for justice, you have an opportunity to be transformed in turn as educator and leader.

TNDY 408U – Data Privacy Through a Global Legal Lens

Instructor: Adriana Sanford, Senior Research Fellow, Drucker School of Management
Term: Full
Section: 1
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: Online
Schedule: Tuesday/Thursday, 6:00 – 7:30PM

The practice of cybersecurity and data privacy laws continues to develop and mature as executive-level managers, corporate counsel, and corporate boards struggle to become familiar with the subject matter. Gain a broad understanding of the breadth and importance of the privacy field and its impact on U.S. businesses.

This course focuses on the evolution of privacy (i.e., encryption explosion, bulk data retention, electronic gag orders), as well as the privacy issues related to government surveillance and national security issues. This course also summarizes the essential provisions (and new developments) of key US state privacy laws, and several major foreign privacy laws such as the EU’s GDPR, China’s PIPL, Brazil’s LGPD, and more.

Course Prerequisites: No prior expertise is required or expected for the course.

Course Materials: Solove, Daniel J. and Paul M. Schwartz. Privacy, Law Enforcement, and National Security 3^rd ed. New York: Wolters Kluwer, 2021. (Aspen Casebook Series) Paperback.

TNDY 407V – Urban Studies

Instructor: Heather E. Campbell, Professor, Department of Politics & Government
Term: Full
Section: 1
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: In-Person
Schedule: Thursday, 4:00 – 6:50PM

Cities represent about 2% of the world’s area, 50% of the world’s population, 75% of the world’s energy consumption, 80% of the worlds carbon emissions. This class will ground students in an understanding of: the development of cities, aspects of the contemporary city, basic understanding of systems thinking and the urban system, how cities are believed to grow (or not), and how we might measure the complex known as “cities.” Once we have those foundations, we will turn to a variety of topical urban policy issues, including environmental justice, public safety, public health, housing, etc., and how recent research addresses such urban policy issues. Studying cities is inherently transdisciplinary since the city is a complex system of systems—the economic system, the governmental system, the transportation system, the environmental system, the social system, the public health system.

By the end of this class, successful students will:

1. Know major issues in urban studies, including social justice issues.
2. Know of several elements of importance to livable cities.
3. Understand something of systems thinking and why it is important to conceptualize cities as systems of systems.
4. Know of a number of different methods used in studying urban issues including historical analysis, qualitative observational analysis, multivariate regression, GIS, and ABM.
5. Develop and present a transdisciplinary, urban-issue “policy brief.”

TNDY 336 – Analysis of Social Networks

Instructor: Wallace Chipidza, Assistant Professor of Information Systems & Technology
Term: Full
Section: 1
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: In-Person
Schedule: Tuesday, 4:00 – 6:50PM

Description: This course explores the defining characteristics of social networks, how they form and evolve over time, and ultimately how they influence various outcomes of interest. We utilize a variety of quantitative techniques (e.g. social network analysis and exponential random graph modeling) to understand the structure, formation, and evolution of social networks. Students learn how to effectively visualize social networks of varying size, from small to very large. Students also learn statistical and machine learning techniques to understand how individuals influence each other’s behaviors and attitudes in these networks.

Rationale: Social networks – sets of people with shared relationships – are all around us. We participate in them when we choose friends, seek advice from workmates, lend and/or borrow money from financial institutions, donate to politicians, and so on. The positions we occupy in these networks, whether we know it or not, exert powerful influences on various important outcomes: happiness, job and career satisfaction, and substance abuse among others. Only by uncovering the full structure of these networks may we begin to understand some complex phenomena that require collaboration among disciplines: business, economics, politics, sociology, psychology, information systems, among others. Students taking this class will collaborate to investigate complex phenomena at the intersection of various disciplines, e.g. students from public health, psychology and economics might collaborate to investigate patterns of adoption of new illicit drugs, and students from information systems and politics may work together to understand the spread of political misinformation on social media.

TNDY 404O – Collaboration Across the Public-Private Divide

Instructor: Robert Klitgaard, University Professor
Term: Full
Section: 1
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: Online
Schedule: Thursday, 7:00 – 9:50PM

Description: This course explores how to design, lead, and manage public-private partnerships. We examine theoretical approaches from many disciplines, as well as experience from around the world, to analyze various forms of collaboration among governments, businesses, and citizens. We consider the practical challenges of making such partnerships work, using outstanding case studies. Along the way, we reconsider the meaning and practice of public policy and management. Examples are drawn from public health, education, international development, urban renewal, infrastructure, minimum-wage reforms, anti-corruption initiatives, and more.

Rationale: The most challenging problems facing our region and our world cannot be tackled by government alone. From health care to education, from poverty to social justice, from urban renewal to international development, progress requires collaboration across the public-private-nonprofit divide. Students will learn to: 1. Appraise the distinctive contributions of different kinds of organizations to address public policy issues. 2. Apply tools of leadership and management to public-private partnerships, including citizen empowerment. 3. Evaluate collaboration in terms of each partner, the partnership as an entity, and the attainment of public purposes. Along the way, students have the chance to reconsider deeper questions about entrepreneurship, leadership, and service.

TNDY 408T – Religion, Music and Culture in the Americas

Instructor: Daniel Ramírez, Associate Professor of Religion
Term: Full
Section: 1
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: In-Person
Schedule: Monday, 4:00 – 6:50PM

These introductory remarks to Bernardino Sahagún’s magnum opus, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (1579-1580), illumine the motives behind his creation of an orthodox Nahuatl-language liturgy in 1583, Psalmodía Cristiana, and the imprimatur of his project by the Third Provincial Council (1585) of the bishops of New Spain. The Franciscan friar’s concern over heterodox subterfuge in the musical and cultural spheres speaks to the centrality of these in religious history and experience and their potential to undermine, extend, preserve and change these. This course will assay a transdisciplinary exploration of the imbricated spheres of religion, music, and culture. Our principal approach will borrow from the transdiscipline of ethnomusicology to query the role of music in the social religious settings. After a theoretical grounding in cultural practice, we will study ethnomusicological case studies from the south Pacific, South Africa, and the Tejano borderlands. These will provide helpful comparative frames for our exploration of the question of musical and sonic spheres in: Mesoamerican Catholic contexts of evangelization and hybridity; transatlantic (including Caribbean) networks of Anglo-American Protestantism and African American Gospel; ethnic immigrant religious networks (Dutch Reform/German Lutheran and Methodist); heterodox traditions (Latter-Day Saints and Seventh-Day Adventists); old and new borderlands musics (from Penitentes to Pentecostals), and contemporary global Christian musics. We will also avail ourselves of musical and sonic archives from the Smithsonian Institution, Library of Congress, and several university-based collections, as we propose to approach (regional) religious communities/congregations in the capture, archiving, and interpretation of their religious cultural musical practice.

This course will help students achieve the following learning outcomes:

1. Familiarity with major debates and research projects at the intersection of ethnomusicology and religious studies (both represent interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary fields);
2. Critical reflection on the limits of traditional text-centric uni-disciplinary approaches and the opportunities presented by extra-textual transdisciplinary approaches;
3. Engagement with and competency in the fields of ethnomusicology and religious studies through written work, oral presentation, and in-class presentation;
4. Assay initial explorations into musical and sonic archival research and community engagement over these (keeping in mind ethical insights derived from 1), 2) and 3);
5. Preparation for dissertation proposal projects (if so inclined)
6. Sharpening of skills in critical reading, writing, thinking, and speaking.

TNDY 408E – Mechanisms That Rule Our Social Universe

Instructor: Joshua Tasoff, Associate Professor of Economic Sciences
Term: Full
Section: 1
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: In-Person
Schedule: Tuesday/Thursday 1:15 – 2:30PM

Billions of years ago, chemicals formed on planet Earth that could replicate themselves. These were the progenitors of life. Over eons of evolution, autonomous living agents predated, cooperated, and competed with each other to eventually create the modern world of today. Across that history, there have been several recurring themes on how agents interact. In the course we will study fundamental forces that drive sociality at multiple levels, from viruses to markets. We will uncover some of the hidden mechanisms that rule our social universe. For example, we will discover why genes form chromosomes, why people form nations, and why the reasons for the two are similar. The emphasis will be on a few key ideas that have broad and profound application. In our journey, we will learn from where social systems evolved and perhaps to where social systems may be evolving. This course is intended for students who are interested in having their perspective shifted through provocative frameworks (colloquially referred to as “blowing your mind”). Additional time will be devoted to professional self-examination and prioritization (colloquially referred to as “what the heck am I doing with my life?”).

TNDY 408R – Religion and the Post-Colonial Imagination

Instructor: Kevin Wolfe, Assistant Professor of Religion (Bio)
Term: Full
Section: 1
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: In-Person
Schedule: Thursday, 1:00 – 3:50PM

What is religion? And, what does the “post-colonial” signify? These questions will guide our engagement of the literary and theoretical production of a variety of formerly colonized peoples as seeking if there is something we can identify as the post-colonial imagination. We will use our guiding questions as a way of exploring various problems both raised by and manifested in these works, such as: the nature of identity; the question of nationalism; the writing of history; and questions of class, gender, and race. For our purposes, the emphasis will be on close readings of these works which emerge from the crucible of the “Third World’s” “encounter” with European and American colonialism, reflecting on our own methodological formations as we bring those methods to bear on the issues/texts/concerns we encounter.

TNDY 408P What is Time?

Instructor: C. Mónica Capra, Professor of Economic Sciences (Bio)
Term: Full
Section: 1
Units: 4
Mode: Concurrent Blended
Schedule: Wednesday, 7:00 – 9:50PM

The objective of this course is to learn about how different disciplines understand, measure, and relate to time. The readings, lectures, and discussions are designed to awaken our curiosity about time and broaden our understanding of how our concept of time and the way we measure it has shaped our beliefs, plans, and actions. Topics span from physics to art. We will read about space-time, biological time, time in language, across epochs, across cultures, and in music.

TNDY 407V – Urban Studies

Instructor: Heather E. Campbell, Professor, Department of Politics & Government, Chair, Division of Politics & Economics, Field Chair, Public Policy (Bio)
Term: Full
Section: 1
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: In-Person
Schedule: Thursday 4:00 – 6:50PM

Cities represent about 2% of the world’s area, 50% of the world’s population, 75% of the world’s energy consumption, 80% of the worlds carbon emissions. This class will first ground us in an understanding of, the development of cities, basic understanding of the urban system, how cities are believed to grow (or not), and how we might measure the complex known as “cities.” Once we have those foundations, we will turn to a variety of topical urban policy issues, including environmental justice, public safety, public health, housing, etc., and how recent research addresses such urban policy issues. Studying cities is inherently transdisciplinary since the city is a complex system of systems—the economic system, the governmental system, the transportation system, the environmental system, the social system, the public health system.

TNDY 402X – Introduction to Persuasive Technology

Instructor: Samir Chatterjee, Fletcher Jones Chair of Technology Design & Management (Bio)
Term: Full
Section: 1
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: Hybrid
Schedule: Wednesday, 4:00 – 6:50

Can computers change what you think and do? Can they motivate you to stop smoking, persuade you to buy insurance, or convince you to conserve water when you shower? The answer is a resounding “yes”. Until recently, most software applications and technologies were developed without much thought to how they influenced their users. This perspective is changing. Today, industry experts and academics are embracing a purposeful approach to persuasive design. In an industry context, designing for persuasion is becoming essential for success. In academic settings, the study of persuasive technology illuminates the principles that influence and motivate people in different aspects of their lives. This course will bring together the latest research happening in multiple distinct disciplines: information and communication technology, design thinking, psychology and health sciences. Persuasive technology may be defined as any interactive computing system designed to change people’s attitudes or behaviors. The emergence of the Internet has led to a proliferation of web sites designed to persuade or motivate people to change their attitudes and behavior. Daily we encounter e-commerce sites with enough credibility that persuades their users to make financial transactions and to divulge personal information. Within the domain of mobile health, systems such as mobile applications for managing obesity and digital interventions to overcome addictive behaviors have demonstrated the huge potential of persuasive technologies for behavioral changes. Even Amazon Alexa can be called a persuasive device.

There is a vibrant community of trans-disciplinary researchers worldwide that have been actively advancing the field of persuasive technology. The annual conference Persuasive Technology for 2021 was held in UK and 2022 conference will be held in Doha, Qatar on March 2022. Dr. Chatterjee is a prominent member of this community and was the host/organizer of the 4th International Conference on Persuasive technology that was held at Claremont in 2009. This course will cover the necessary content through presentations, discussions, case studies and projects. Students will explore latest research results, best practices and guidelines for the use of persuasive applications. Student teams will work on actual real world projects in which they will design and implement persuasive technology applications. In addition, the course will host several expert guest speakers (practitioners, researchers, etc.) from CGU and other outside institutions who will share their latest findings.

TNDY 408Q – Grant Writing Across the Disciplines

Instructor: Marcus Weakley, Director, Center for Writing & Rhetoric (Bio)
Term: Full
Section: 1
Units: 2
Mode: Online Sync
Schedule: Alternate Wednesdays, 1:00 – 3:50PM

This course is a writing workshop, designed to utilize peer feedback and iterative drafts to assist students in completing a grant application. Students are expected to come with a grant that they will complete the application for by the end of the semester. The course will also cover some key elements of most grant applications and have faculty guests from across the university visit to discuss grant writing in their fields.

TNDY 408S – Angels and Demons

Instructor: Instructor: Nicola Denzey Lewis, Professor of Religion, Margo L. Goldsmith Chair in Women’s Studies in Religion (Bio)
Term: Full
Section: 1
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: Online Sync
Schedule: Monday, 4:00 – 6:50PM

Why have these celestial beings held imaginations in thrall – not just in the West, but globally? In this TNDY course, we’ll consider various perspectives and iterations of angels and demons – from ancient medicine to contemporary movies. Our purview is broad and transcultural, covering Akkadian, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, and neo-pagan texts, and phenomena such as angelic visions and demonic exorcisms.

TNDY 408O – Critical Evaluation of the American Criminal Justice System

Instructor: Gregory DeAngelo, Associate Professor of Economic Sciences, Director, Computational Justice Lab (Bio)
Term: Full
Section: 1
Units: 4
Mode: Online Sync
Schedule: Tuesday, 4:00 – 6:50PM

The American criminal justice system has faced unprecedented pressure over the past few years. There have been repeated calls for reform in the criminal justice system from numerous political angles. Such calls have ranged from decriminalizing specific behavior to altogether disbanding and de-funding law enforcement agencies. All the while, community safety remains a clear goal to ensure the well-being of communities. A complicated tension between ensuring community safety and ensuring equal treatment by the criminal justice system exists, requiring careful consideration and nuanced thought. This course will dive deep into these issues with the aim of understanding critical issues presented by as many sides of these arguments as possible.

Competency Domains: Systems Thinking; Problem-Based Learning; Information Literacy; Cultural Literacy; Ethical Literacy; Negotiation; Team Building and Teamwork; Integration of Methods and Perspectives; Applied/Community-Based Research; Quantitative/Analytical Skills; Qualitative Skills; Complexity Theory

TNDY 430 – Transdisciplinary Pedagogy for Ethical Education (Section 1)

Instructor: Shamini Dias, Director of Preparing Future Faculty (Bio)
Term: Full
Section: 1
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: Online Sync
Schedule: Tuesday 4:00 – 6:50PM

This course invites you on a transformative journey to develop the mindsets to become an ethical, agile leader of learning. We present teaching as a transdisciplinary and inclusive future-focused endeavor for positive learning and development in diverse settings, within and beyond the classroom. In doing so, we engage with the question of how we can effectively and ethically respond to increasingly complex global and institutional contexts in preparing learners holistically for their futures. Working collaboratively in multidisciplinary teams, we will use systems, complexity, and design thinking frameworks to explore student identities and diversity in our classrooms, the changing global paradigms that shift our teaching missions and methods, and what learning sciences and the ethics of education tell us about engagement and motivation. We will also draw from other key frameworks such as Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Active Learning, and Good Work in this exploration. We will work reflexively by integrating a Portfolio-based approach individually and in teams to explore and document our own assumptions, values, and beliefs about education and how these transform in the light of our discoveries about ethical, agile teaching. Our goal will be to co-create pedagogical principles that transcend disciplinary teaching and learning cultures toward agile, ethical leadership of learning in our diverse educational and work contexts.

To earn the College Teaching Certificate, you also must complete the PFF 531 course, Pedagogy Practicum and Portfolio.

TNDY 488 Transdisciplinary Public Policy Capstone

Instructor: Robert Klitgaard, University Professor (Bio)
Term: Full
Section: 1
Units: 4
Instruction Mode: In-Person
Schedule: Thursday, 7:00 – 9:50PM

There are many exciting projects in applied policy research that cross disciplinary boundaries, where research teams include policy analysts, evaluators, psychologists, economists, technologists and others. This course will serve as both a capstone project course for MPP students as well as a chance for non-policy students to work in transdisciplinary teams and collaborate around real-world problem-solving through applied research. Guided projects will work across the different stages of problem-based research, policy implementation and project evaluation.

TNDY 304 – Traversing the Transdisciplinary Imagination: Communication & Collaboration

Instructor: Marcus Weakley, Director of the Center for Writing and Rhetoric, (bio)
Term: Module 2
Section: 1
Units: 2
Instruction Mode: Intensive, In-Person

What does it look like to communicate and collaborate across boundaries? How does transdisciplinary research (TR) differ from other forms, and why are these differences important? How can a transdisciplinary approach be applied in various contexts? This class will look at these questions by covering the foundations of TR as well as some representative examples. Students will develop an understanding of how their scholarly interests might be approached in more holistic or complex ways through written assignments and collaborative projects with classmates.

TNDY 405A – Heritage, Culture and Managing the Past in the Old World and the New

Instructor: Joshua Goode, Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and History; Chair, History Department (bio)
Instruction Mode: In-Person Intensive (Requires International Travel^*)
Schedule: Module 1, May 16 to July 02, see Class Meetings and Site Visits for more information
Units: 4

This course is a jointly taught, dual campus class that examines heritage management of historical sites and museums in both Los Angeles and the Bath region. While in Los Angeles, students from Bath and from CGU will explore important cultural heritage sites, including the Getty Villa, the San Gabriel Mission, Old Pasadena, Watts Towers, La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, El Pueblo de los Angeles Historic Monument, among other sites. In Bath, the students will use the university as home base to explore the city, named a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1987, and its many museums and historical sites, including its complete Roman baths, One Royal Crescent House Museum, and the Jane Austen Center. Outside Bath, we will explore Oxford and London to talk with museum leaders and heritage management experts. Stonehenge and the Victoria and Albert Museum are already planned as part of the itinerary outside of Bath.

The differences between the two locations, Los Angeles and Bath, will pose in very clear relief the different kinds of issues that face heritage management experts in both contexts. How do we protect and manage historical sites and collections? Where do we find funding for the arts and cultural patrimony in a complicated setting of public and increasingly private fund-raising? How do we convey and maintain the cultural significance of these sites to contemporary and future audiences? Particular focus will be placed on the structural and economic differences between the regions that define how the arts and heritage efforts are funded, and how broader, more globalized forces will define civic and national commemoration and historical education efforts in the future.

^*Costs:

• CGU Tuition + Fees (Fellowship Applies)
• Accommodations and Travel to England (Students are required to make their own travel arrangements.)
• Course Fee: Usually Between $700 – $1000

Brown Bag Information Session:
Date: Thursday, March 31, 2022
Time: 12:00PM – 1:00PM (Pacific)
Location: Hybrid

• In-person Location: Burkle 26
• Virtual: Zoom

Please register to reserve a seat to attend in-person or to receive the zoom link.

Register Today for the Spring Info Session!

View the Fall 2021 Recorded Session

TNDY 407K – Transdisciplinary Research in Inequality

Instructor: Javier M. Rodríguez, Associate Professor (bio)
Instruction Mode: Online Synchronous
Schedule: Module 1, Monday/Tuesday, 4:00 – 7:20PM
Units: 4

The objective of this course is to understand the nature, the opportunities, and the challenges that arise in transdisciplinary research projects. The overarching area of study will be Inequality, which is transdisciplinary by definition. Inequality is a problem important to society in its own right and it is at the center of complexity—both theoretical and methodological—relevant to many other problems. For example, wealth inequality relates to health inequalities, which in turn relates to political inequality, which consequently affects the distribution of the public goods and services that determine access to life resources and opportunities. Research in social, economic, health, political, and life outcomes inequality, therefore, requires the conception of research questions and the development of research designs that transcend specific knowledge bases above and beyond the scope of influence of individual disciplines.

Many times, different social problems lead to similar detrimental outcomes; many times, similar social problems are part of the causal mechanism generating different detrimental outcomes. By the same token, different social advantages and developments lead to progress in disparate areas of the social fabric; problems of the past reemerge after implementing solutions to problems of the present. Such heterogeneity in the causes and consequences of social complexity have been addressed by a great variety of sciences from their own theoretical, methodological, and cultural idiosyncrasies. Research on birth control pharmacology is mostly conducted in non-white, non-American women; anthropologists heavily rely on ethnographic fieldwork deployed in poor nations among non-urban, indigenous communities; and social workers use focus groups and in-depth interviews to unearth patient dissatisfaction, family abuse, and guilt in self-confessed drug addicts. What is observable, however, is that across history different cultures, economic systems, and civilizations; nations, societies, and communities within such societies, have co-evolved in multi-dependent levels. Systematic progress, as the result of the scientific method and its applications, is part of human nature, too.

The main objective of the present course is to integrate such diversity of theoretical frameworks, methodological traditions, and worldviews via transdisciplinary lenses. It proposes a two-way street of analysis: a problem-oriented approach (the what) and a solution-oriented one (the how). By the end of the course, students will understand how the scientific method can be effectively implemented to answer research questions, even when theories and methods from disparate traditions collide. And, equally important, students will understand the advantages and disadvantages of the scientific enterprise, that science works, and that there is not a single-discipline scientific dictatorship to deploy progress and social justice in the world.

TNDY 408G – Cultural Competence

Instructor: Robert Klitgaard, University Professor (bio)
Instruction Mode: Online Synchronous
Day/Time: Module 2, Tuesday/Thursday, 4:00 – 6:50PM
Units: 4

An abiding challenge of our multicultural reality is to develop cultural competence. Each of us as individuals must learn to live and work in multicultural settings. Our institutions—public, private, and nonprofit—need to learn how to deal with cultural diversity. And as individuals and institutions learn and innovate, we must assess what seems to work in one culture for its relevance to our own cultural setting. Fortunately, abundant research and practical experience can teach us how to do better. This course teaches how to: 1. Address culture misunderstandings in ourselves and in our institutions. 2. Evaluate and manage the benefits and costs of various kinds of cultural diversity. 3. Apply lessons from what works in one cultural setting to a different cultural setting. 4. Improve negotiations across cultures. 5. Understand the linkages between disadvantage and stigma—and what we’ve learned about dealing with stigma. 6. Reframe our individual identities as multicultural. This course should provide core skills for future professionals (public health, business, education, public policy, evaluation, international relations) as well as future professors.

TNDY 365 – Global Leadership

Instructor: Kristine Kawamura, Clinical Professor of Management (bio)
Instruction Mode: Hybrid Blended Intensive
Schedule: Module 2, see Session Schedule below for more information
Units: 2

This is an experiential class that includes global travel, experiential learning, and leadership transformation. Global travel is life-changing. As we uproot ourselves from the familiar, we are able to see not only ourselves but also others “whole against the sky” (Rumi). Experiential learning provides internalized growth through deep-seated reflection and active engagement with environments and people. Leadership transformation gives us a greater capacity to impact people and effect change as we team with people from different cultures and walks of life. To achieve success, leaders need to ask themselves the following questions:

• How do we effectively lead others who are culturally different than ourselves?
• How much do we really know about the world, its vast cornucopia of cultures and systems, and its shared human values and experiences?
• How we can develop the cultural intelligence and cultural competence to serve as transformative leaders, community members, creatives, and change makers?

The purpose of this class is three-fold: 1) to help students experience the world (in all its richness, complexity, beauty, and challenge) through global travel and experiential learning; 2) to build awareness of, and skills in, cultural awareness, cultural intelligence, and global leadership; and, 3) to actively develop as global leaders by studying, reflecting on, talking with, and building relationships with leaders and community members in different parts of the world.

TNDY 402Z – Akko: Public Archaeology, Conservation & Heritage

Instructor: Tammi Schneider, Danforth Professor of Religion; Chair, Religion Department (bio)
Instruction Mode: In-Person Intensive (Requires International Travel^*)
Schedule: Module 2, July 03 – August 01, see the Preliminary Lecture Schedule below for more information
Units: 4

The goal of this class is to better understand Heritage management by examining the city of Akko, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The course is also designed to fit into the educational program for the Tel Akko Archaeological program. The course is structured around excavation, field trips, and daily lectures. Attendance at lectures and field trips is mandatory for everyone: students and staff alike. Heritage Management is core to the mission of the excavation. If excavation is destruction of the site to better understand it and present it to the public, then examining the context of the site through numerous perspectives is fundamental.

The course presents the material through a series of lectures and tours. The lectures are offered by staff and faculty affiliated with the excavation as well as specialists from throughout the country of Israel and visiting specialists from around the world. The lectures are focused on examining the city of Akko from numerous perspectives including: history, archaeology, religion, culture, tourism, conservation, and city government. Another important pedagogical aspect are tours of the Tel, the city of Akko, and other parts of the country. Below is a theoretical schedule of lectures. Lectures on the history of the site and its archaeology are covered by the staff. Scheduling external lectures (members of the IAA, locals, foreign visitors etc.) is underway at present. Therefore, this syllabus includes the general idea of what will happen, though the timing of all of the lectures is fluid.

The method of assessment each summer changes depending on how many students take the class. Since someone is paid to teach the class only if there are five students taking the class for credit, which is seldom the case, all work from faculty is voluntary. When there are more than three students taking the class, a group project is assigned for credit: in the past this has included such things as 1. Planning an exhibit about Akko in Claremont; 2. Helping plan an event where Akko residents view the excavation’s finds of the summer. When only one or two students register, the student works with someone from the excavation on an aspect of the project that aligns with their interests such as conservation, or the academic study of archaeology.

^*Students are required to make their own travel arrangements and must participate in the dig to enroll and pass this course.

TNDY 305A – Cross-Sector Work in the Arts

Instructor: Laura Zucker, Director, Center for Business & Management of the Arts (bio)
Section: 1
Mode: On-Ground^*
Schedule: Module 2, Tuesday 10:00 – 11:50AM
Units: 2

^*Course Requires Travel In and Around the Greater Los Angeles Region. Students are required to make their own transportation arrangements.

Arts organizations often find themselves addressing intractable social sector issues, such as juvenile justice, homelessness, and graffiti abatement; health issues, such as music therapy for Alzheimer patients; environmental issues, such as water conservation or waste management, and myriad other cross-sector work, including the intersection of the arts and science. Through exploration of arts organizations deeply engaged in this work, this course will explore the ramifications for arts
managers of authentic cross-sector work. Classes will be held at a different arts organization engaged in this work each week.

TNDY 549 – Creating the Future

Instructor: Hideki Yamawaki, Ito Chair of International Business and Professor of Management (bio)
Section: 1
Mode: Hybrid Sync
Schedule: Module 1, Monday, 1:00 – 3:50PM

Units: 2

Drucker/MBA/Management students seeking registration in TNDY 549, please contact the Transdisciplinary Studies Office to obtain a permission code to register for the course.

We are living in unprecedented times. The world we used to live in has changed dramatically since March 2020. We should move forward and use this as an opportunity. In this session, we will brainstorm and create new ideas to live with Corona and after Corona. As individuals and organizations operate in an increasingly complex and dynamic environment, exploiting existing opportunities is no longer enough to compete and survive. Many creative organizations are taking a new approach, looking to create new options that may not yet exist in the current landscape. As Peter F, Drucker once taught us, finding the future that has already happened is the most important task for managers.

This course exposes students to the following frameworks and ideas to help them find new opportunities:

• Drucker’s 7 drivers of innovation
• Finding new opportunities by looking forward: draw insights from future scenarios
• Meaning and innovation
• Finding new opportunities by looking back: draw insights from past innovations
• Drucker and “purpose-driven startups”
• Red Ocean, Blue Ocean and Purple Ocean

Using these frameworks together, they provide a unique and powerful toolset for managers in search of new ideas.

In this 2-unit course, students are expected to apply the frameworks to a field project and learn new ways in which to combine creativity, managerial skills, and an entrepreneurial spirit in holistic ways. The students are assigned to work on a project in teams and expected to make presentations on the final day of class.

In completing this course, the student will be able to:

• Identify essential elements in the design of a new innovative project that enhance competitive advantage
• Experience a multidisciplinary environment through the design project
• Understand the five conceptual frameworks to find new opportunities and their limits.

TNDY 408N – Women & Gender in Islam

Instructor: Ruqayya Yasmine Khan, Professor of Religion, Malas Chair of Islamic Studies (bio)
Mode: Concurrent Sync Online Sync
Section: 1
Schedule: Thursday 1:00 – 3:50PM
Units: 4

This course will introduce you to a multi-faceted understanding of women and gender issues in Islam. We will explore diverse topics such as constructions of gender and gender expectations in early and modern Muslim sources, critiques and interpretations by contemporary Muslim feminists, literary and artistic works by Muslim women and identity issues confronting Muslim women in Europe and the United States. Discussion is central to the course. Lectures will be brief and designed to facilitate student discussions. Guest appearances also will enhance approaches to the course material and student learning experiences. Reflecting the course’s interdisciplinary approaches to the study of women and gender issues in Islam, a range of different kinds of sources and media are used in the course.

TNDY 366 – Migration, Religion and Globalization in America: E Pluribus Unum?

Instructor: Daniel Ramírez, Associate Professor of Religion (bio)
Section: 1
Mode: On-Ground
Schedule: Wednesday, 7:00 – 9:50PM
Units: 4

Samuel P. Huntington’s premonition about the “clash of civilizations” (between Islam and the West) earned him plaudits as a prescient herald, especially after the events of 9/11. Less known is his concern over the precarious condition of the Anglo Protestant “core” of U.S. culture, a lodestar clouded by the demographic assault of non-Protestant immigration—chiefly Mexican and Catholic. The cool jeremiads, issued from the ivy citadel founded by Puritans, echoed the warning preached by Massachusetts Bay Colony governor John Winthrop aboard the ship Arabella in 1630. The image of a “City upon a Hill” continues to represent, for some, a chartering covenant from which we stray at our peril; hence, the need to always forge a unum (one) out of the pluribus (many). Although that unum was stretched by Will Herberg at mid-twentieth century (to include “Protestant, Catholic, Jew”), our politics continue to reflect a perennial disagreement over American religious, cultural, and political identity. The stakes remain high, especially against the backdrop of intensified non-European immigration in the late twentieth century. This is not a strictly American problem. Europe, the other metropole of late modernity, is also wrestling with the challenge of seemingly unassimilable religious and ethnic minorities in ostensibly secular polities borne of the Enlightenment. The chickens of globalization have come home to roost precariously in the global North. Yet, other scholars argue that religion and human movement strengthen and bind as much as they weaken and fragment society; Bible scholars and theologians have illumined the bright thread of migration throughout Jewish and Christian scriptures. In other words, religion and migration impact each other today as much as they have in prior human epochs. That intersection and imbrication presents researchers, policy makers, communities, families, and individuals with a complex set of problems and opportunities.

Whether viewed as “religious networks,” “gatherings in diaspora,” or “sacred assemblies”, the institutional, popular and lived dimensions of religion in sites connected by migratory circuits have attracted the attention of social scientists (Steven Vertovec, Steve Warner, Peggy Levitt and Helen Ebaugh) and religion theorists (Tom Tweed). Yet, much synthesizing work remains to be done, especially across disciplines and national guilds, and especially in the area of migration and transnational studies that widen the unit of analysis beyond the site of settlement to sites of origin. The social scientific study of contemporary human movement also stands in need of a conversation with historical and religious studies, and vice versa. Similarly, literary, cultural (e.g., cinema) and humanistic inquiry into migration and transnationalism awaits deeper engagement with questions of religion. Again, those conversations are best held in both and multiple directions.

This course assays such an transdisciplinary approach, as well as comparisons between different groups, using religion, migration, and transnationalism as the connecting thread(s) and knot (problem). We will anchor our extended query principally in the United States, but also consider the question in different world regions. Two course modules will seek to apply our theoretical insights to selected sites of religious congregations in the southern California region, local but transnationally tied stakeholders in the resolution or clarification of the complex problem of migration and religion. Innovative projects will be welcome.

This course will welcome students from many disciplines (e.g., history, cultural studies, art, music, religion, women’s studies, education, etc.) and help students achieve the following learning outcomes:

1. Familiarity with major debates and research projects at the intersection of the fields of migration and religious studies;
2. Critical reflection on the limits and opportunities of uni-disciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches;
3. Engagement with and competency in the fields of migration and religious studies through written work, oral presentation, and in-class presentation;
4. Assay initial explorations into community and field research;
5. Preparation for dissertation proposal projects (if so inclined)
6. Sharpening of skills in critical reading, writing, thinking, and speaking.

TNDY 408M – Readings from Left to Right: Understanding Today’s Culture

COURSE CANCELLED, EFFECTIVE 01/20/22

Instructor: Mary Poplin, Professor of Education (bio)
Section: 1
Mode: Intensive, In-Person
Schedule: Alternate Saturdays, 9:00 – 2:50PM

Units: 4

Other hours will be arranged by each transdisciplinary group in order to work together on a transdisciplinary class project. Your group may meet after class or set other days, times and modes of meeting.

In the last several decades the Western academy has struggled to maintain a balance of courses that offer a wide range of intellectual perspectives on a number of important topics. Clearly, there are prominent intellectuals in every field who study and research these topics from diverse perspectives (left to right). However, there has been some concern regarding the lack of opportunities for scholars in various disciplines to study their academic fields across the full range of intellectual theory and research. One university or field of study may prioritize interpretations from the left and another from the right. The original uni-versity sought to be one-place that would deliver an education that offered a wide range of diverse opinions, research, and philosophic foundations in each field. Unfortunately, in recent years even current faculty have often been educated in either left or right perspectives without being fully educated across the full range of intellectual and social perspectives. Thus, a good number of students studying in graduate programs may have been educated in either left or right perspectives but not the whole range. This course is designed for those who want to understand the broader intellectual, social, and practical principles and the diverse implications of the research and theory in their own and other disciplines. The nature of transdisciplinarity offers a unique opportunity to explore the range of theory and research available in particular academic fields/issues and across the disciplines. We will explore a number of current topics from left to right.

TNDY 430 – Transdisciplinary Pedagogy for Ethical Education

TNDY 430 – Section 1

Instructor: Shamini Dias, Director of Preparing Future Faculty (bio) and Shelby Lamar, Assistant Director of Preparing Future Faculty (bio)
Section: 1
Mode: Concurrent Sync
Schedule: Tuesday 4:00 – 6:50PM
Units: 4

TNDY 430 – Section 2

Instructor: Tamar Salibian, Adjunct Instructor (bio – forthcoming)
Section: 2
Mode: Online Sync
Schedule: Thursday 4:00 – 6:50PM
Units: 4

To earn the transdisciplinary course requirement as a doctoral student, you must enroll in TNDY 430, not PFF 530.
To earn the College Teaching Certificate, you also must complete the PFF 531 course, Pedagogy Practicum and Portfolio.

This course invites you on a transformative journey to develop the mindsets to become an ethical, agile leader of learning. We present teaching as a transdisciplinary and inclusive future-focused endeavor for positive learning and development in diverse settings, within and beyond the classroom. In doing so, we engage with the question of how we can effectively and ethically respond to increasingly complex global and institutional contexts in preparing learners holistically for their futures. Working collaboratively in multidisciplinary teams, we will use systems, complexity, and design thinking frameworks to explore student identities and diversity in our classrooms, the changing global paradigms that shift our teaching missions and methods, and what learning sciences and the ethics of education tell us about engagement and motivation. We will also draw from other key frameworks such as Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Active Learning, and Good Work in this exploration. We will work reflexively by integrating a Portfolio-based approach individually and in teams to explore and document our own assumptions, values, and beliefs about education and how these transform in the light of our discoveries about ethical, agile teaching. Our goal will be to co-create pedagogical principles that transcend disciplinary teaching and learning cultures toward agile, ethical leadership of learning in our diverse educational and work contexts.

TNDY 408K – Over the Rainbow in Practice: Sexual and Gender Belonging

Instructor: M. Gloria González-Morales, Associate Professor of Psychology (bio)
Instruction Mode: Hybrid (Location)
Schedule: Alternate Thursdays, 1:10 – 3:00PM

Units: 2

“Somewhere over the rainbow … dreams really come true…” In this course we will embark on a transdisciplinary journey through the rainbow to dream of and work on the practice of gender and sexual belonging. We will use Problem-based learning (PBL) as a pedagogical tool and we will work in groups to leverage our resources (diverse identities and perspectives of participants, guest speakers from different disciplines, …) to appreciate the complexity and embrace the relativity of open-ended situations, dilemmas, and experiences related to not only gender and sexual diversity, but the practice of belonging within our communities and societies. We will practice belonging within the course by embracing ways to communicate and collaborate that can lead to more empathetic, relational and positive ways of sharing and co-creating our educational space. The topics that we will encounter during our PBL may include diverse perspectives from biology, sexuality, education, social justice, gender studies, psychology, management, history, sociology, art and cultural studies, among others.

Note: Class meetings will be audio recorded, students may participate remotely for in-person sessions. On-Ground (In-Person) session 1, 2, 6 and 7 are subject to change.

TNDY 407J – Leader Development

Instructor: Becky Reichard, Associate Professor, Division of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences (bio)
Instruction Mode: On-Ground (In-Person)
Schedule: Wednesday, 12:20-3:10PM
Units: 4

This course involves instruction in the design and practice of leader development from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Case studies of effective leaders and organizations will be examined, and a variety of assessment and development activities will be completed as part of the course. Students will learn how to develop others while experiencing the development techniques first hand.

Learning Objectives

• Develop knowledge of the contemporary theories and constructs being examined in the field of leader development across disciplines
• Develop knowledge and critical analysis of research and practice related to leadership development and communicate that knowledge to an educated person both in writing and orally
• Accumulate first-hand knowledge and experience in the practice of leader development and, thus, gain self-insight into one’s own leader development journey

TNDY 404L – Judeo-Christian Thought Across the Disciplines

Instructor: Mary Poplin, Professor of Education (bio)
Instruction Mode: Intensive On-Ground (In-Person)
Schedule: Alternate Saturdays, 9:00 – 2:50PM

Units: 4
TA: Trevor Anthony

In the last several decades, prominent intellectuals have begun to challenge the secularization of the West and the Western academy. Scholars across the disciplines (both religious and secular) suggest that there is unique knowledge inherent in the Judeo-Christian worldview that is foundational to various spheres of public and academic life and across the various academic disciplines. This Transdisciplinary seminar will examine 1) the assumptions and principles of prominent secular and religious scholars, 2) the contemporary challenges both to Judeo-Christian thought and to the dominance of secularism across the disciplines, 3) the intellectual principles of Judeo-Christian thought and their implications in the sciences, social sciences, and arts/humanities, and 4) examples from various related scholars’ work across the disciplines. Throughout the course each participant will work with a team of other classmates from diverse disciplines to address a related issue(s) of their choice and design – defining and investigating the particular topic/issue using their multiple disciplines, and ultimately developing and presenting their final project with outcomes and recommendations to the class.

TNDY 408L – Storytelling, Science, and the Human Condition

Instructor: Paul Zak, Professor of Economic Sciences, Psychology & Management (bio)
Instruction Mode: On-Ground (In-Person)
Schedule: Monday, 12:20 – 3:10PM
Units: 4

How do we understand the human condition and communicate this to others? Storytelling is the most effective way to get people to care about information and there is a science to storytelling. Conversely, the scientific method is the most effective way to understand people. This course combines these two technologies, teaching students how to tell effective stories and how to use the scientific method to understand the human condition. After completing the course, students will be better able to give oral and written presentations that systematical describe human behavior.

TNDY 401M – Death and Dying in the Ancient World

PLEASE NOTE: Course Instruction Mode Changed from Hybrid-Location to fully Online

Instructor: Nicola Denzey Lewis, Professor of Religion (bio)
Instruction Mode: Online, 2+1 — Note: All Class Sessions will meet online, synchronously.
Schedule: Tuesday, 5:50 – 7:40PM

Units: 4

This course will focus on the evolution of beliefs and rituals related to death in and around the Roman Empire, including Egyptian, Greek, and Roman cultures. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we will combine methodologies from Anthropology, Classics, Sociology, and Religious Studies. Topics to be covered include myths of the afterlife, books of the dead, magic and death rituals, divinization, and the impact of Christianization on Roman understandings of death. The course also features a section on mourning and bereavement, and a study of disease and epidemic and its impact on the human population.

TNDY 407X – Leading Change

PLEASE NOTE: Course Cancelled as of 07/12/2021

Instructor: Len Jessup, University President (bio) and Jennifer Villalobos, Evaluation and Positive Organizational Psychology (bio)
Instruction Mode: On-Ground (In-Person)
Schedule: Module 2, Wednesday, 12:20 – 3:10PM
Units: 2

The world is changing at an exponential rate. As it does, your ability to adapt and manage change not only sustains your employability but allows you to have a positive impact on your work and your life. Through structured learning activities (video lectures, live presentations and discussions, reflective assessments, and experiential activities) this course will provide tools on how to effectively influence change by understanding change from an interdisciplinary lens, developing a ‘change mindset’, and leading yourself and others on the change journey. You will learn how to reframe the cognitive dissonance that often comes with change by redefining the change problem and developing a balanced and reflective change mindset. Change is inevitable but you can influence how it affects your organization.

Jennifer Villalobos is an advanced doctoral student in Evaluation and Positive Organizational Psychology at Claremont Graduate University (CGU). She has a master’s degree in Positive Organizational Psychology and Evaluation from CGU, and bachelor’s degrees in Psychology and History from USC. Jennifer has over 16 years of experience working in research, evaluation, and organizational consulting, and has worked with major brands, such as The Aspen Institute, Better Up, Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation, Camber Outdoors, San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, The Wonderful Company, UCLA, and Kaiser Permanente. Jennifer’s primary research interests are exploring organizational and individual level outcomes associated with evaluation capacity building, positive organizational interventions, and change management initiatives that aim to increase organizational improvement and member well-being.

TNDY 408J – Museums, Provenance and the Return of Lost Objects

Instructors: Joshua Goode, Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and History (bio) and Charles Cronin, Adjunct Professor, Keck Graduate Institute (bio)
Instruction Mode: On-Ground (In-Person)
Schedule: Monday, 3:40 – 6:30PM
Units: 4

We will explore the fraught history of cultural patrimony and the return of lost, plundered, stolen or disputed objects of art and culture. Our sites of contestation will include museums, individuals, national collections and private ones. We will trace multiple disciplinary interventions into this topic including the shifting definition of legal ownership and title, but also issues of ethics, imperialism, nationalism, politics, and national security and diplomacy, that increasingly affect the assertion and disposition of cultural property repatriation claims. Lectures, discussions, readings, and visiting speakers will provide diverse and opposing opinions on the complex and contentious topics relating to the movement and ownership of cultural property. There will also be a design and archival component of the course focused on expanding the Cultural Property Dispute Resource (https://research.cgu.edu/cultural-property-disputes-resource/) which recently migrated from Yale’s Institute for Protection of Cultural Heritage to CGU’s Research Center. The CPDR will offer universal access without charge to a continually expanding corpus of metadata culled from past and ongoing disputes. As this corpus grows so will its utility, as well as the authority of insights and observations obtained by analyzing the information it offers. Satisfies Museum Studies Concentration and Cultural Studies Elective Course.

TNDY 301 – Transdisciplinarity and the CGU Experience

Instructor: Andrew Vosko, Associate Provost and Director of Transdisciplinary Studies (bio)
Instruction Mode: Intensive^* (In-person & On-line^**)
Schedule: Module 2, Monday – Friday, (see session schedule table below for more information)

Units: 0 – 2^***

In this intensive, variable-unit^*** course, comprised of ten 2 to 2.5 hour sessions held in the final two weeks of the term, led by a guest speaker from CGU’s leadership, including faculty and administrators, offered online and on-ground at CGU’s campus, students will explore themes drawn from the University’s Transdisciplinary Studies program on Transdisciplinary History, Theory and Practice, Applied Research “that matters,” and the different imprints CGU has left in the world outside of its academic halls.

What does it look like to communicate and collaborate across boundaries? How does transdisciplinary research—or transdisciplinary problem-solving—differ from other forms? Why are these differences important and how can they be applied in various settings, such as academic research, business, and community programs? This class will look at these questions using the work of leading transdisciplinary scholars, amongst others. Students will develop an understanding of the range of scholarly approaches offered at CGU as well as how to collaborate across them through invited speakers from different programs, written assignments, and hands-on projects with classmates.

^* Class meets in person less frequently but for a longer period of time than a Hybrid-Regular class and is supplemented with equivalent instructional activities between class meetings. Equivalent instructional activities may be synchronous or asynchronous, or a blend of the two.

^** Students who do not need to attend an on-ground class session to meet visa requirements will be able to attend the course online, synchronously via Zoom.

^*** International students who are required to attend this on-ground course to meet visa requirements, may take this course for zero-units.

TNDY 430 – Transdisciplinary Pedagogy for Ethical Education

Instructor: Shamini Dias, Director of Preparing Future Faculty (bio) and Shelby Lamar, Assistant Director of Preparing Future Faculty (bio)
Instruction Mode: Online (Synchronous)
Schedule: Monday, 3:40 – 6:30PM
Units: 4

This course invites you on a transformative journey to develop the mindsets to become an ethical, agile leader of learning. We present teaching as a transdisciplinary and inclusive future-focused endeavor for positive learning and development in diverse settings, within and beyond the classroom. In doing so, we engage with the question of how we can effectively and ethically respond to increasingly complex global and institutional contexts in preparing learners holistically for their futures. Working collaboratively in multidisciplinary teams, we will use systems, complexity, and design thinking frameworks to explore student identities and diversity in our classrooms, the changing global paradigms that shift our teaching missions and methods, and what learning sciences and the ethics of education tell us about engagement and motivation. We will also draw from other key frameworks such as Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Active Learning, and Good Work in this exploration. We will work reflexively by integrating a Portfolio-based approach individually and in teams to explore and document our own assumptions, values, and beliefs about education and how these transform in the light of our discoveries about ethical, agile teaching. Our goal will be to co-create pedagogical principles that transcend disciplinary teaching and learning cultures toward agile, ethical leadership of learning in our diverse educational and work contexts.

To earn the College Teaching Certificate, you also must complete the PFF 531 course, Pedagogy Practicum and Portfolio.

TNDY 407K – Transdisciplinary Research in Inequality

Instructor: Javier M. Rodríguez, Associate Professor (bio)
Instruction Mode: Online (Synchronous)
Schedule: Module 1, Thursday, 1:10 – 4:00PM and Friday, 12:20 – 3:10PM
Units: 4

The objective of this course is to understand the nature, the opportunities, and the challenges that arise in transdisciplinary research projects. The overarching area of study will be Inequality, which is transdisciplinary by definition. Inequality is a problem important to society in its own right and it is at the center of complexity—both theoretical and methodological—relevant to many other problems. For example, wealth inequality relates to health inequalities, which in turn relates to political inequality, which consequently affects the distribution of the public goods and services that determine access to life resources and opportunities. Research in social, economic, health, political, and life outcomes inequality, therefore, requires the conception of research questions and the development of research designs that transcend specific knowledge bases above and beyond the scope of influence of individual disciplines.

Many times, different social problems lead to similar detrimental outcomes; many times, similar social problems are part of the causal mechanism generating different detrimental outcomes. By the same token, different social advantages and developments lead to progress in disparate areas of the social fabric; problems of the past reemerge after implementing solutions to problems of the present. Such heterogeneity in the causes and consequences of social complexity have been addressed by a great variety of sciences from their own theoretical, methodological, and cultural idiosyncrasies. Research on birth control pharmacology is mostly conducted in non-white, non-American women; anthropologists heavily rely on ethnographic fieldwork deployed in poor nations among non-urban, indigenous communities; and social workers use focus groups and in-depth interviews to unearth patient dissatisfaction, family abuse, and guilt in self-confessed drug addicts. What is observable, however, is that across history different cultures, economic systems, and civilizations; nations, societies, and communities within such societies, have co-evolved in multi-dependent levels. Systematic progress, as the result of the scientific method and its applications, is part of human nature, too.

The main objective of the present course is to integrate such diversity of theoretical frameworks, methodological traditions, and worldviews via transdisciplinary lenses. It proposes a two-way street of analysis: a problem-oriented approach (the what) and a solution-oriented one (the how). By the end of the course, students will understand how the scientific method can be effectively implemented to answer research questions, even when theories and methods from disparate traditions collide. And, equally important, students will understand the advantages and disadvantages of the scientific enterprise, that science works, and that there is not a single-discipline scientific dictatorship to deploy progress and social justice in the world.

TNDY 408G – Cultural Competence

Instructor: Robert Klitgaard, University Professor (bio)
Instruction Mode: Online (Synchronous)
Schedule: Module 1, Monday and Wednesday, 12:20 – 3:10PM
Units: 4

An abiding challenge of our multicultural reality is to develop cultural competence. Each of us as individuals must learn to live and work in multicultural settings. Our institutions—public, private, and nonprofit—need to learn how to deal with cultural diversity. And as individuals and institutions learn and innovate, we must assess what seems to work in one culture for its relevance to our own cultural setting. Fortunately, abundant research and practical experience can teach us how to do better. This course teaches how to: 1. Address culture misunderstandings in ourselves and in our institutions. 2. Evaluate and manage the benefits and costs of various kinds of cultural diversity. 3. Apply lessons from what works in one cultural setting to a different cultural setting. 4. Improve negotiations across cultures. 5. Understand the linkages between disadvantage and stigma—and what we’ve learned about dealing with stigma. 6. Reframe our individual identities as multicultural. This course should provide core skills for future professionals (public health, business, education, public policy, evaluation, international relations) as well as future professors.

TNDY 407G – Integrating Arts and Sciences

Instructor: Andrew Vosko, Associate Provost and Director of Transdisciplinary Studies (bio)
Instruction Mode: Online (Synchronous)
Schedule: Module 2, Tuesday/Thursday, 3:30 – 6:20PM
Unit: 4
TA: Rebecca Williams

This course is for students from all backgrounds who want to explore the historical, theoretical, and evolutionary connections between scientific and artistic practices through complex systems, design, and transdisciplinary thinking. Both art and science are treated as ‘ways of knowing’ beyond value-neutral constructs or products of creative expression. The class will further examine artistic and scientific practices as social products derived from networked processes with diverse elements, functions, and connections. Through participating in cross-disciplinary lectures and discussions, applying creative tools, and reflecting upon disciplinary frameworks, students will delve into the application of arts and sciences to complex problem (re-)solving.

Throughout the course, perspectives from the neurosciences, education, psychology, and the fine and performing arts will be integrated through transdisciplinary methodologies. Students will participate with active discussion, reflections, in-class exercises, group-based problem-solving and a collaborative capstone project. By the end of the course, students will be able to apply artistic and scientific practices to both transdisciplinary, ‘wicked’ problems as well as issues and ideas housed in their respective home disciplines.

TNDY 430 – Transdisciplinary Pedagogy for Ethical Education

Instructor: Shamini Dias, Director of Preparing Future Faculty (bio) and Shelby Lamar, Assistant Director of Preparing Future Faculty (bio)
Instruction Mode: Online (Synchronous)
Schedule: Monday, 12:20-3:10PM
Units: 4

This course invites you on a transformative journey to develop the mindsets to become an ethical, agile leader of learning. We present teaching as a transdisciplinary and inclusive future-focused endeavor for positive learning and development in diverse settings, within and beyond the classroom. In doing so, we engage with the question of how we can effectively and ethically respond to increasingly complex global and institutional contexts in preparing learners holistically for their futures. Working collaboratively in multidisciplinary teams, we will use systems, complexity, and design thinking frameworks to explore student identities and diversity in our classrooms, the changing global paradigms that shift our teaching missions and methods, and what learning sciences and the ethics of education tell us about engagement and motivation. We will also draw from other key frameworks such as Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Active Learning, and Good Work in this exploration. We will work reflexively by integrating a Portfolio-based approach individually and in teams to explore and document our own assumptions, values, and beliefs about education and how these transform in the light of our discoveries about ethical, agile teaching. Our goal will be to co-create pedagogical principles that transcend disciplinary teaching and learning cultures toward agile, ethical leadership of learning in our diverse educational and work contexts.

To earn the College Teaching Certificate, you also must complete the PFF 531 course, Pedagogy Practicum and Portfolio.

TNDY 301 – Transdisciplinarity and the CGU Experience

Instructor: Andrew Vosko, Associate Provost and Director of Transdisciplinary Studies (bio)
Instruction Mode: Intensive^* (In-person & On-line^**)
Schedule: Module 2, Monday – Friday, (See table below for more information)

Units: 0 – 2***

In this intensive, variable-unit^*** course, comprised of ten 2 to 2.5 hour sessions held in the final two weeks of the term, led by a guest speaker from CGU’s leadership, including faculty and administrators, offered online and on-ground at CGU’s campus, students will explore themes drawn from the University’s Transdisciplinary Studies program on Transdisciplinary History, Theory and Practice, Applied Research “that matters,” and the different imprints CGU has left in the world outside of its academic halls.

What does it look like to communicate and collaborate across boundaries? How does transdisciplinary research—or transdisciplinary problem-solving—differ from other forms? Why are these differences important and how can they be applied in various settings, such as academic research, business, and community programs? This class will look at these questions using the work of leading transdisciplinary scholars, amongst others. Students will develop an understanding of the range of scholarly approaches offered at CGU as well as how to collaborate across them through invited speakers from different programs, written assignments, and hands-on projects with classmates.

^* Class meets in person less frequently but for a longer period of time than a Hybrid-Regular class and is supplemented with equivalent instructional activities between class meetings. Equivalent instructional activities may be synchronous or asynchronous, or a blend of the two.

^** Students who do not need to attend an on-ground class session to meet visa requirements will be able to attend the course online, synchronously via Zoom.

^*** International students who are required to attend this on-ground course to meet visa requirements, may take this course for zero-units.

TNDY 402Z – Akko: Public Archaeology, Conservation & Heritage

Cancelled Due to Covid-19 Pandemic Travel Restrictions

Instructor: Tammi Schneider, Danforth Professor of Religion (bio)
Location: Off-Site
Schedule: Module 2: 2021/06/27 – 2021/07/26
Unit: 4
Note: Requires International Travel

The goal of this class is to better understand Heritage management by examining the city of Akko, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The course is also designed to fit into the educational program for the Tel Akko Archaeological program. The course is structured around excavation, field trips, and daily lectures. Attendance at lectures and field trips is mandatory for everyone: students and staff alike. Heritage Management is core to the mission of the excavation. If excavation is destruction of the site to better understand it and present it to the public, then examining the context of the site through numerous perspectives is fundamental.

The course presents the material through a series of lectures and tours. The lectures are offered by staff and faculty affiliated with the excavation as well as specialists from throughout the country of Israel and visiting specialists from around the world. The lectures are focused on examining the city of Akko from numerous perspectives including: history, archaeology, religion, culture, tourism, conservation, and city government. Another important pedagogical aspect are tours of the Tel, the city of Akko, and other parts of the country. Below is a theoretical schedule of lectures. Lectures on the history of the site and its archaeology are covered by the staff. Scheduling external lectures (members of the IAA, locals, foreign visitors etc.) is underway at present. Therefore, this syllabus includes the general idea of what will happen, though the timing of all of the lectures is fluid.

The method of assessment each summer changes depending on how many students take the class. Since someone is paid to teach the class only if there are five students taking the class for credit, which is seldom the case, all work from faculty is voluntary. When there are more than three students taking the class, a group project is assigned for credit: in the past this has included such things as 1. Planning an exhibit about Akko in Claremont; 2. Helping plan an event where Akko residents view the excavation’s finds of the summer. When only one or two students register, the student works with someone from the excavation on an aspect of the project that aligns with their interests such as conservation, or the academic study of archaeology.

TNDY 407V – Urban Studies

Instructor: Heather Campbell (bio)
Schedule: Monday 4:00 – 6:50PM
Location: Online
Units: 4

Cities represent about 2% of the world’s area, 50% of the world’s population, 75% of the world’s energy consumption, 80% of the worlds carbon emissions. This class will first ground us in an understanding of, the development of cities, basic understanding of the urban system, how cities are believed to grow (or not), and how we might measure the complex known as “cities.” Once we have those foundations, we will turn to a variety of topical urban policy issues, including environmental justice, public safety, public health, housing, etc., and how recent research addresses such urban policy issues. Studying cities is inherently transdisciplinary since the city is a complex system of systems—the economic system, the governmental system, the transportation system, the environmental system, the social system, the public health system.

TNDY 408D – Hip Hop, Reggae, and Religion: Music and the Religio-Political Imagination of the Black Atlantic

Instructor: Kevin Wolfe (bio)
Schedule: Saturday 9:00 – 11:50AM
Location: Online
Units: 4

Hip-hop and reggae are among the world’s most popular musical art forms. While contextualizing the emergence of these cultural formations, we will interrogate the dynamic relationships between them and the religio-political imagination of the Black Atlantic. The course will pay particular attention to the ways that the various cultures of hip-hop and reggae offer critique to Christianity and contemporary arrangements of power. Listening to the religio-political perspectives expressed in these cultural formations we will question whether or not the music provides a prophetic challenge to these arrangements. Giving attention to the music, from the Spirituals, to Hip-Hop, and Dancehall, we will contextualize it with an interest in understanding how it (if it) reflects a unique political imagination. Weekly, we will encounter material from numerous genres as we theorize the music.

TNDY 408E – Mechanisms That Rule Our Social Universe

Instructor: Josh Tasoff (bio)
Schedule: Tuesday & Thursday, 10:50 – 12:40PM
Location: Online
Units: 4

Billions of years ago, chemicals formed on planet Earth that could replicate themselves. These were the progenitors of life. Over eons of evolution, autonomous living agents predated, cooperated, and competed with each other to eventually create the modern world of today. Across that history, there have been several recurring themes on how agents interact. In the course we will study fundamental forces that drive sociality at multiple levels, from viruses to markets. We will uncover some of the hidden mechanisms that rule our social universe. For example, we will discover why genes form chromosomes, why people form nations, and why the reasons for the two are similar. The emphasis will be on a few key ideas that have broad and profound application. In our journey, we will learn from where social systems evolved and perhaps to where social systems may be evolving. This course is intended for students who are interested in having their perspective shifted through provocative frameworks (colloquially referred to as “blowing your mind”). Additional time will be devoted to professional self-examination and prioritization (colloquially referred to as “what the heck am I doing with my life?”).

TNDY 404S – e-Learning

Instructor: Lorne Olfman (bio)
Schedule: Wednesday, 5:50 to 7:40PM
Location: Online
Units: 4

This course will explore a wide range of topics related to adult-based formal and informal learning and teaching. The topics will include “A theory of e-Learning”, “Modes and methods of e-Learning”, “Instructional design”, “Instructional technologies”, “Learning ecosystems”, “Social and cultural impacts”, “Economics of e-Learning”, “Community and knowledge sharing”, and “Data-driven teaching and learning”. Class sessions will feature active learning with breakout rooms. Assessment will include individual assignments and a group project.

TNDY 408F – Transdisciplinary Tools for Equity: Institutions, Organizations, and Systems

Instructor: Andrew Vosko (bio)
Schedule: Module 2: 03/22 – 05/15, Thursday, 3:30 to 5:20PM
Location: Online
Units: 2

Beyond ‘promoting awareness’ of systemic injustice, this new, transdisciplinary survey course offers a tools-based approach to first reveal entrenched inequities and then affect change at the institutional, organizational, and systems levels. We will explore the concept of ‘discrimination-by-design,’ use complexity theory, systems thinking and temporal focus to re-frame our understandings of racism, identify effective tools and resources from both traditional academic and emerging fields, and apply realistic practices to help create more inclusive and equitable spaces of excellence. Experts from the CGU community and across the Claremont Colleges will guide us with their own work in education (eg. Daryl Smith’s work in Diversity’s Promise for Higher Education), voting rights (eg. Jean Schroedel’s work in Voting in Indian Country), and health (eg. work from CGU’s faculty in Community and Global Health and the Inequality Research Institute), to name a few. Students will have an opportunity to apply course tools and outcomes to their own disciplines and research with the goal of more broadly contributing to a better functioning pluralistic society.

TNDY 407X – Leading Change

Instructor: Len Jessup (bio) / Jennifer Villalobos (bio below the course description)
Schedule: Module 2: 03/22 – 05/15, Wednesday 3:00 – 5:50PM
Location: Online
Units: 2

The world is changing at an exponential rate. As it does, your ability to adapt and manage change not only sustains your employability but allows you to have a positive impact on your work and your life. Through structured learning activities (video lectures, live presentations and discussions, reflective assessments, and experiential activities) this course will provide tools on how to effectively influence change by understanding change from an interdisciplinary lens, developing a ‘change mindset’, and leading yourself and others on the change journey. You will learn how to reframe the cognitive dissonance that often comes with change by redefining the change problem and developing a balanced and reflective change mindset. Change is inevitable but you can influence how it affects your organization.

Jennifer Villalobos is an advanced doctoral student in Evaluation and Positive Organizational Psychology at Claremont Graduate University (CGU). She has a master’s degree in Positive Organizational Psychology and Evaluation from CGU, and bachelor’s degrees in Psychology and History from USC. Jennifer has over 16 years of experience working in research, evaluation, and organizational consulting, and has worked with major brands, such as The Aspen Institute, Better Up, Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation, Camber Outdoors, San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, The Wonderful Company, UCLA, and Kaiser Permanente. Jennifer’s primary research interests are exploring organizational and individual level outcomes associated with evaluation capacity building, positive organizational interventions, and change management initiatives that aim to increase organizational improvement and member well-being.

TNDY 304 – Traversing the Transdisciplinary Imagination: Communication & Collaboration

Instructor: Marcus Weakley (bio)
Schedule: Module 2, Wednesday 10:50 – 12:50PM
Location: Hybrid: online with an on-ground lab component geared to meet international student visa requirements
Units: 2

What does it look like to communicate and collaborate across boundaries? How does transdisciplinary research—or transdisciplinary problem-solving—differ from other forms? Why are these differences important and how can they be applied in various settings, such as academic research, business, and community programs? This class will look at these questions using the work of leading transdisciplinary scholars, amongst others. Students will develop an understanding of the range of scholarly approaches offered at CGU as well as how to collaborate across them through invited speakers from different programs, written assignments, and hands-on projects with classmates.

TNDY 305 – Global Leadership

Instructor: Ryan Patel (bio)
Schedule: Module 2, Asynchronous, Saturday 10:00 – 12:00PM, with two additional online synchronous meetings on Saturday 11/14 & 12/12, 10:00AM – 12:00PM
Location: Online
Units: 2

In this course, we will explore what global leadership means and how it is practiced in today’s business world and beyond. We created this learning experience for students to boundary cross outside their native school environments and to explore opportunities that lie outside.

The major changes the world has gone through have rendered business and institutional success stories fewer and far between as they have struggled to adapt in their disrupted landscapes. As organizations struggle to stay relevant within their industries and on a global stage, so too do the individuals within these spaces. This course aims to help students by addressing important trends in the changing global landscape, cultivating global mindsets to help make strategic decisions, and preparing individuals to lead organizations in our interconnected world.

Course learning outcomes:

• Diagnose the effective and ineffective ways companies look to scale globally
• Provide the necessary tools and foundation for each individual in building a global mindset
• Highlight the different approaches and ways to be more inclusive of the interconnectivity that global leadership provides from/through all industries

Textbooks or other required resources (external): none

Audience: CGU students interested in global markets, inclusive of Drucker audiences but not limited to business. As an elective for Drucker degrees (leadership), public health, transdisciplinary studies, CISAT.

TNDY 336 – Analysis of Social Networks

Instructor: Wallace Chipidza (bio)
Schedule: Friday, 1:00 – 3:50PM
Location: Online
Units: 4

This course explores the defining characteristics of social networks, how they form and evolve over time, and ultimately how they influence various outcomes of interest. Students utilize a variety of quantitative techniques to visualize and model the structure, formation, and evolution of social networks. Students also learn statistical and machine learning techniques to understand how individuals influence each other’s behaviors and attitudes in these networks.

TNDY 404L – Judeo-Christian Thought Across the Disciplines

Instructor: Mary Poplin (bio)
Schedule: Alternate Saturdays (09/12, 09/26, 10/10, 10/24, 11/07, 11/21, 12/05) 9:00 – 2:50PM
Location: Updated: In-person Online
Units: 4

In the last several decades, prominent intellectuals have begun to challenge the secularization of the West and the Western academy. Scholars across the disciplines (both religious and secular) suggest that there is unique knowledge inherent in the Judeo-Christian worldview that is foundational to various spheres of public and academic life and across the various academic disciplines. This Transdisciplinary seminar will examine 1) the assumptions and principles of prominent secular and religious scholars, 2) the contemporary challenges both to Judeo-Christian thought and to the dominance of secularism across the disciplines, 3) the intellectual principles of Judeo-Christian thought and their implications in the sciences, social sciences, and arts/humanities, and 4) examples from various related scholars’ work across the disciplines. Throughout the course each participant will work with a team of other classmates from diverse disciplines to address a related issue(s) of their choice and design – defining and investigating the particular topic/issue using their multiple disciplines, and ultimately developing and presenting their final project with outcomes and recommendations to the class.

TNDY 404O – Corruption

Instructor: Robert Klitgaard (bio)
Schedule: Tuesday/Thursday 3:30 – 5:20PM
Location: Online
Units: 4

Around the world, corruption is high on the list of challenges. This course examines corruption from a variety of academic perspectives, and then what might be done to reduce, though alas never eradicate, corruption. By working through case studies, we assess the uses and limitations of theory, data, and international collaboration. We study countries such as Afghanistan, Brazil, China, Colombia, Georgia, Haiti, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, Singapore, South Sudan, Uganda, and the United States. Although the course focuses on corruption, it engages with fundamental issues about the possibilities and limitations of theory, data, and working across cultures.

TNDY 407P – Global Diplomacy: Peace, Governance & Gender

Instructor: Sallama Shaker (bio)
Schedule: Tuesday 3:30 – 5:20PM
Location: Online
Units: 4

In a Report Published by The Institute for Economics & Peace in 2019 on UN Sustainable Development Goals #16 (Peace & Good Governance & Justice) the Report emphasizes “the importance of negotiating constructively on global and local levels to achieve ‘positive peace’ with a focus on conflict, justice and good governance which can be attained by building collective political will and exploring innovative ways of promoting inclusive approaches to conflict prevention and conflict resolution to pave a pathway to sustaining peace.”

Designed as an interactive seminar, this course will ask students to engage in an empirical analysis of ‘positive peace’ through collaborative group projects and case studies. We will explore the correlation between peace, development, justice, and gender equity, and how negotiations with ‘velvet gloves’ need to be globally oriented with respect to various cultures rather than following the traditional conservative style of diplomacy to create the pragmatic and innovative processes required to address the complex nature of failure in the current international world order.

TNDY 407Y – Screening Religion: Film and Religious History

Instructor: Daniel Ramirez (bio)
Schedule: Monday 8:10 – 10:00PM
Location: Online
Units: 4

The religious studies domain is a contested one in which historians strive to carve out and protect disciplinary turf, while comparing notes with (and sometimes fending off) others: sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, theologians, etc. The guild is also perennially challenged by the alternative narratives offered by practitioners (testimonials, diaries, etc.), journalists (biographies, exposés, hagiographies, etc.), creative writers (historical novels, plays, epics, etc.), documentarians and filmmakers. The cultural, linguistic and other turns in history have likewise opened new analytical vistas beyond the guild’s traditional approaches and methods, and have pressed historians to reflect critically on our own narrative practices. For example, do the “historical” studies based on Christopher Columbus’ diaries engage the magical narrative elements in these sources? Do novelistic treatments of these render a fuller understanding of human history and experience? One particularly promising transdisciplinary interlocutor can be found in the cinematic arts. This course will examine how notable cinematic treatments of religious events, movements, figures (both human and suprahuman) and phenomena diverge from or converge with authoritative “historical” treatments of these. Rather than scream at the screen, we will assay a transdisciplinary conversation between history and cinema, querying the shared and disparate narrative conventions and choices. Although this is not a course in Film Studies per se, we will begin with primers from that field, to see how specialists view cinema’s approach to religion and especially religious history. We will screen feature films and analyze these in light of related critical historical and primary readings, which are based, in turn, upon primary historical data. (Among the topics: Martin Luther, Henry VIII, Jesuit missions, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, the Scopes Trial, and the Cristero War.) The comparative study of the filmmaker and historian’s craft and method will yield a fuller appreciation of the latter guild’s creative narrative practices. A final collaborative project will apply the course findings to newly proposed community, biographical, familial or other religious histories.

TNDY 408B – Law and Economics: Theory and Practice

Instructor: Greg DeAngelo (bio)
Schedule: Tuesday 10:50 – 12:40PM
Location: Online
Units: 4

This course is an opportunity for students to obtain a deep understanding of the theory and empirical support in law and economics. While the course will cover many areas within law and economics, a focus will revolve around criminal justice issues. The course will be balanced out by the presence of a recently retired district attorney, who will provide practical insights into the criminal justice system. Indeed, there is often a disconnect between the way that laws and written versus the way that laws are imposed. In this course we will focus on such differences and highlight areas that are void of research, thereby promoting areas of potential dissertation research.

TNDY 408C – COVID-19 and Health Systems in the USA and Around the World

Instructor: Debbie Freund (bio)
Schedule: Thursday 5:50 – 7:40PM and 8:10 – 10:00PM
Location: Online
Units: 4

Note: This course will be completely online and will meet Thursday evenings within the two time blocks listed (5:50–7:40 and 8:10–10:00 pm). We will do our best to accommodate student schedules for those in different time zones or who have additional needs. Please email the course instructor if you have specific scheduling needs at debbie.freund@cgu.edu.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caught all countries by surprise. In the USA and around the world, it has challenged our health systems, our insurance systems, health providers, such as hospitals and physicians, and patients themselves. And it has highlighted great disparities in care and in death rates among people by class and race. In this class we will learn about the US health system and those abroad, to understand why many countries were less prepared and some were more prepared, and what legislative, governmental, health system, insurance, pharmaceutical and provider responses have been to attempt to bring COVID-19 under control. In addition, we will understand the impact on economies around the world. We will also study the number of cases and the underlying science of COVID-19. Depending on their availability we will likely hear from highly regarded featured speakers who are working on the front lines to taking care of patients and tackling the disease and the health policy issues that impact our daily life. Class topics will be flexible in order to incorporate the most recent and pressing issues and solutions regarding COVID-19

TNDY 430 – Transdisciplinary Pedagogy for Ethical Education

Instructor: Shamini Dias (bio) and Shelby Lamar (bio)
Schedule: Fridays 9:00 – 11:50AM
Location: Online
Units: 4

This course invites you on a transformative journey to develop the mindsets to become an ethical, agile leader of learning. We present teaching as a transdisciplinary and inclusive future-focused endeavor for positive learning and development in diverse settings, within and beyond the classroom. In doing so, we engage with the question of how we can effectively and ethically respond to increasingly complex global and institutional contexts in preparing learners holistically for their futures. Working collaboratively in multidisciplinary teams, we will use systems, complexity, and design thinking frameworks to explore student identities and diversity in our classrooms, the changing global paradigms that shift our teaching missions and methods, and what learning sciences and the ethics of education tell us about engagement and motivation. We will also draw from other key frameworks such as Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Active Learning, and Good Work in this exploration. We will work reflexively by integrating a Portfolio-based approach individually and in teams to explore and document our own assumptions, values, and beliefs about education and how these transform in the light of our discoveries about ethical, agile teaching. Our goal will be to co-create pedagogical principles that transcend disciplinary teaching and learning cultures toward agile, ethical leadership of learning in our diverse educational and work contexts.

To earn the College Teaching Certificate, you also must complete the PFF 531 course, Pedagogy Practicum and Portfolio.

PFF 530 will not fulfill the TNDY course requirement for doctoral students. Only TNDY 430 will meet the TNDY course requirement.

TNDY 407G – Integrating Arts and Sciences

Instructor: Andrew Vosko
Online, Module 2 (07/06 – 08/22); Monday 1:00PM – 3:50PM; Wednesday 4:00 – 6:50PM
4 Unit

This course is for students from all backgrounds who want to explore the historical, theoretical, and evolutionary connections between scientific and artistic practices through complex systems, design, and transdisciplinary thinking. Both art and science are treated as ‘ways of knowing’ beyond value-neutral constructs or products of creative expression. The class will further examine artistic and scientific practices as social products derived from networked processes with diverse elements, functions, and connections. Through participating in cross-disciplinary lectures and discussions, applying creative tools, and reflecting upon disciplinary frameworks, students will delve into the application of arts and sciences to complex problem (re-)solving.

Throughout the course, perspectives from the neurosciences, education, psychology, and the fine and performing arts will be integrated through transdisciplinary methodologies. Students will participate with active discussion, reflections, in-class exercises, group-based problem-solving and a collaborative capstone project. By the end of the course, students will be able to apply artistic and scientific practices to both transdisciplinary, ‘wicked’ problems as well as issues and ideas housed in their respective home disciplines.

TNDY 408A – Data Analytics Using R and Python

Instructor: Claudia Rangel
Online, Full Term (5/18 – 8/22); Monday/Wednesday 11:00 – 12:30PM
4 Unit

The aim of the course is to prepare students to address the new challenge of multi-type data manipulation, analysis, and interpretation. Due to its nature, a TNDY type course lies outside the existing traditional curricular structure. We propose a curriculum that involves teaching and a set of activities to create a transdisciplinary training ground wherein students will gain experience working across disciplines employing statistics, computing, and machine learning techniques to solve important problems. Working with data from the students’ fields of research we will develop technical and software skills necessary to succeed in analyzing, visualizing, mining, and discovering important structure in their research data.

Module 1: Review of basic concepts and techniques of statistics, including estimation (point and interval), and hypothesis testing; fundamentals of data science, including sources of bias, unintended/undesirable consequences of algorithms, and data ethics. Cases from Cathy O’Neil’s Weapons of Math Destruction will be studied and discussed.

Module 2: Data analytics: raw data, challenges, goals, tools, and conclusions; basics of R and Python, data transformation, false positives/false negatives, R-Shiny (https://shiny.rstudio.com/), Art from data and The R graph gallery (https://www.r-graph-gallery.com/, ggplots), and data mining.

Module 3: Contemporary examples and applications of data science; collaborative student projects.

TNDY 430 – Transdisciplinary Pedagogy

Instructor: Shamini Dias
Online, Full Term (5/18 – 8/22); Monday 1:00 – 3:50PM
4 Unit

This course invites you on a transformative journey to develop the mindsets to become an ethical, agile leader of learning. We present teaching as a transdisciplinary and inclusive future-focused endeavor for positive learning and development in diverse settings, within and beyond the classroom. In doing so, we engage with the question of how we can effectively and ethically respond to increasingly complex global and institutional contexts in preparing learners for their futures. Working collaboratively in multidisciplinary teams, we will use systems, complexity, and design thinking frameworks to explore student identities and diversity in our classrooms, the changing global paradigms that shift our teaching missions and methods, and what learning sciences and the ethics of education tell us about engagement and motivation. We will also draw from other key frameworks such as Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Active Learning, and Good Work in this exploration. We will work reflexively by integrating a Portfolio based approach individually and in teams to explore and document our own assumptions, values, and beliefs about education and how these transform in the light of our discoveries about ethical, agile teaching. Our goal will be to co-create pedagogical principles that transcend disciplinary teaching and learning cultures toward agile, ethical leadership of learning in our diverse educational and work contexts.

Note: TNDY 430 fulfills the PFF 530 requirement for the PFF certificate. PFF 530 does not fulfill the TNDY course requirement for doctoral degrees.

TNDY 304 – Traversing the Transdisciplinary Imagination: Communication & Collaboration

Instructor: Marcus Weakley
Online, Module 2 (07/06 – 08/22); Tuesday/Thursday 2:00 – 3:30PM
2 Unit

What does it look like to communicate and collaborate across boundaries? How does transdisciplinary research—or transdisciplinary problem-solving—differ from other forms? Why are these differences important and how can they be applied in various settings, such as academic research, business, and community programs? This class will look at these questions using the work of leading transdisciplinary scholars, amongst others. Students will develop an understanding of the range of scholarly approaches offered at CGU as well as how to collaborate across them through invited speakers from different programs, written assignments, and hands-on projects with classmates.

TNDY 407X – Leading Change

Instructor: Len Jessup and Jennifer Villalobos
Online, Module 2 (07/06 – 08/22); Day/Time: Wednesday 3:00 – 5:50PM
2 Unit

The world is changing at an exponential rate. As it does, your ability to adapt and manage change not only sustains your employability but allows you to have a positive impact on your work and your life. Through structured learning activities (video lectures, live presentations and discussions, reflective assessments, and experiential activities) this course will provide tools on how to effectively influence change by understanding change from an interdisciplinary lens, developing a ‘change mindset’, and leading yourself and others on the change journey. You will learn how to reframe the cognitive dissonance that often comes with change by redefining the change problem and developing a balanced and reflective change mindset. Change is inevitable but you can influence how it affects your organization.

Course Prerequisites

This course is open to both master’s and doctoral-level students who have an interest in exploring a new/emerging issue in leading change. There are no pre-requisites.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

• Develop an interdisciplinary knowledge of the contemporary theories, constructs, and research being examined across multiple fields that examine organizational change, including from business, evaluation, and various psychology domains.
• Develop and practice skills in critical analysis of research and practice related to change management
• Accumulate first-hand knowledge and experience in the practice of change management
• Gain self-insight into one’s own development towards leading change

TNDY 407V Urban Studies

Heather Campbell
Thursday 4:00 – 6:50PM

Cities represent about 2% of the world’s area, 50% of the world’s population, 75% of the world’s energy consumption, 80% of the worlds carbon emissions. This class will first ground us in an understanding of, the development of cities, basic understanding of the urban system, how cities are believed to grow (or not), and how we might measure the complex known as “cities.” Once we have those foundations, we will turn to a variety of topical urban policy issues, including environmental justice, public safety, public health, housing, etc., and how recent research addresses such urban policy issues. Studying cities is inherently transdisciplinary since the city is a complex system of systems—the economic system, the governmental system, the transportation system, the environmental system, the social system, the public health system.

TNDY 405L (3392) Cyber Security Risk Management

Tamir Bechor

Borders are gone; we are all connected! The rapidly changing society of technology and information has given rise to a new paradigm of “black swan” disruptive cyber-attacks.

Cyber criminals are stepping up their game and cyber breaches are becoming both common and devastating. At the beginning of the year, the World Economic Forum (WEF) listed the top five risks facing world leaders today and found that cyber-attacks are now among the top five risks to global stability. President Obama has declared cyber security to be “one of the most serious national security challenges we face as a nation.”

This course will reveal the dimensions to cybersecurity and empower you to be more aware of the trend and the perspectives needed to take appropriate actions.

TNDY 404O Public-Private Partnerships

Robert Klitgaard
Tuesday 4:00 – 6:50PM

From health care to education, from the provision of infrastructure to grassroots development, we must go beyond the old duality of “leave it to the state” or “privatize it.” But what does “go beyond” mean? This course explores how to design, lead, and manage public-private partnerships. We examine theoretical approaches, especially in economics, to analyze when various forms of collaboration make sense. We consider the practical challenges of making public-private partnerships work, using outstanding case studies. Along the way, we reconsider the meaning and practice of public policy. Examples are drawn from public health, education, international development, urban renewal, infrastructure, minimum-wage reforms, anti-corruption initiatives, and more.

TNDY 407R The Practice of Self-Management

Jeremy Hunter
Tuesday 1:00 – 3:50PM

The Practice of Self Management is a rigorous exploration of the student’s sense-making, action-taking, and result-creating process. The course is focused on the student’s own processes and results, not distant third-person cases. The course aims to be both practical and integrative across disciplines. Because one of its central foci is human attention, it is necessarily relevant to anyone interested in human functioning and weaves through multiple disciplines.

To support this exploration, we will draw upon a number of disciplines, including psychology, management, physiology, contemporary art and architecture, and meditative traditions. We will also move out of the classroom and into active environments available in Los Angeles, including downtown Grand Avenue culture district for a “Street Retreat” and the LA County Museum of Art.

TNDY 405I Data Analytical Tools, Technologies and Applications

Hovig Tchalian
Tuesday 7:00 – 10:00PM

This course focuses on using Big Data tools and technologies effectively across various disciplines and settings – e.g., social sciences, humanities, information systems, policy, and healthcare. The enormous volume, velocity, and variety of data created every day from social media in the form of Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, and countless other platforms and sensors show no signs of abating. This constant stream of data has created enormous hype and promise around what big data can do for all of us – researchers, managers, policy-makers, patients, and consumers. However, this hype often overshadows evidence and examples of genuinely productive applications of data analytical tools and techniques. This course takes an applied, hands-on approach to learning about, using, and managing big data and big data analytic tools. The course is built around numerous case studies and an applied final project where students demonstrate their understanding of the principles and fundamental concepts of Big Data in a culminating project, i.e., the use of big data analytics to examine a real-world problem.

TNDY 407P Transformative Diplomacy: Technology, Social Justice and Gender

Sallama Shaker and David Drew
Tuesday 4:00 – 6:50PM

In the UN Report “Transforming our world: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” there has been an emphasis on how all countries and all stakeholders can act together in collaborative harmony applying transformative diplomatic steps to embark on collective journey to realize the human rights of all and seek universal peace which requires collaborative partnership to free the world from the tyranny of poverty in all its forms and achieve gender equality and education for all and inclusive societies as embedded in UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals” with a transformational vision.

Clearly there is a growing demand to establish transformative diplomatic approaches which can define the “tool-kit” required for visualizing how diplomats, and economists and leaders can acquire these skills at bilateral and multi-lateral levels of negotiations. The course which is designed as an interactive collaborative seminar will train students to think ‘out of the box’ and cooperate together – as local and global strategists – in a collective action plan to visualize a new multi-dimensional approach for the implementation and the measurement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2015- 2030 with particular emphasis on challenges facing data collection and analysis of wealth discrepancies between nations utilizing especially the Gini coefficient. Together we will focus on analyzing strategies that enable a developing nation – and individuals within a developing nation- to become economically successful. In this context, issues of economic development converge with issues of social justice will be addressed with case studies from the six continents of the world. As analysts, we will focus on exploring strategies of the UN SDGs and how and why some countries were able to achieve ”success stories.” We will address in details the transformative effect of quality education, the catalytic impact of technology on societal changes while analyzing the challenges facing women to become agents of changes in their societies. An integral part of the course will be dedicated to teaching students how to be effective in negotiating to overcome the technological division between the developed and developing countries with case study from the Group 77+China at the UN. The students will be collaborating together in groups to evaluate some of the results of the 17 UN SDGs in the process of learning how to analyze the causal roots of the problems and innovate strategic thinking with multi-dimensional approaches of solving the challenges facing the implementation of some of the UN goals in view of the need to acquire country tailored programs. This method can only succeed if we are trained to negotiate with transformative diplomatic skills and abilities which requires in-depth understanding of how diplomacy can advance and protect a nation’s economic and social interests.

TNDY 402X Introduction to Persuasive Technology

Samir Chatterjee
Tuesday 4:00 – 7:00PM

Can computers change what you think and do? Can they motivate you to stop smoking, persuade you to buy insurance, or convince you to conserve water when you shower? The answer is a resounding “yes”. Until recently, most software applications and technologies were developed without much thought to how they influenced their users. This perspective is changing. Today, industry experts and academics are embracing a purposeful approach to persuasive design. In an industry context, designing for persuasion is becoming essential for success. In academic settings, the study of persuasive technology illuminates the principles that influence and motivate people in different aspects of their lives. This course will bring together the latest research happening in multiple distinct disciplines: information and communication technology, design thinking, psychology and health sciences. Persuasive technology may be defined as any interactive computing system designed to change people’s attitudes or behaviors. The emergence of the Internet has led to a proliferation of web sites designed to persuade or motivate people to change their attitudes and behavior. Daily we encounter e-commerce sites with enough credibility that persuades their users to make financial transactions and to divulge personal information. Within the domain of mobile health, systems such as mobile applications for managing obesity and digital interventions to overcome addictive behaviors have demonstrated the huge potential of persuasive technologies for behavioral changes. Even Amazon Alexa can be called a persuasive device.

There is a vibrant community of trans-disciplinary researchers worldwide that have been actively advancing the field of persuasive technology. The annual conference Persuasive Technology for 2017 was held in Amsterdam and 2018 conference was in Waterloo, Canada in April 2018. Dr. Chatterjee is a prominent member of this community and was the host/organizer of the 4th International Conference on Persuasive technology that was held at Claremont in 2009. This course will cover the necessary content through presentations, discussions, case studies and projects. Students will explore latest research results, best practices and guidelines for the use of persuasive applications. Student teams will work on actual real world projects in which they will design and implement persuasive technology applications. In addition, the course will host several expert guest speakers (practitioners, researchers, etc.) from CGU and other outside institutions who will share their latest findings.

TNDY 407U Science of Human Flourishing

Saeideh (Saida) Heshmati
Thursday, 1:00 – 4:50PM

The Science of Human Flourishing course is based on an interdisciplinary model of human flourishing, a set of innovative pedagogical practices, and a developmentally-informed theory of change regarding how the curriculum and pedagogy might facilitate flourishing in graduate experience. In this course, we not only aim to educate graduate students from various disciplines about the pillars of flourishing and the scientific pursuit of thriving in life, but also intend to provide a collaborative environment in which discussions are facilitated in re-framing the understanding of human flourishing from a transdisciplinary perspective.

The theoretical model of human flourishing that we will discuss is developed based on extant theories of well-being and flourishing (Ryff & Keyes, 1995; Seligman, 2011), insights from the fields of social-emotional learning, contemplative science (Goleman & Davidson, 2017), and contemplative education (MLERN, 2012). The Model of Human Flourishing encompasses 5 dimensions: (1) Awareness, (2) Well-being, (3) Connection, (4) Wisdom, and (5) Integration. This course explores these five dimensions through 14 related qualities of flourishing (Figure 1). Students explore this big idea throughout the course and this aspect of the course, and the systems thinking underlying it, developed from conceptions of “secular ethics” (Dalai Lama, 1999). For each of the flourishing topics explored in the classroom, students will learn about the scientific research behind the topic and will form collaborative groups to discuss how their own discipline can contribute to the conceptualization of the matter. In groups, by adopting a design thinking method, students will creatively develop an innovative way to define the flourishing concept from a transdisciplinary perspective (e.g., each student bringing their own discipline’s framework into the definition) and to brainstorm on ways that their definition can be validly and reliably measured and tested.

In addition, throughout this course, we adopt the doctrine that to “know” flourishing is to practice and embody the concepts in a direct way through procedural forms of learning and skill development (MLERN, 2012). We accomplish this by engaging students in reflective practices, including formal mindfulness, compassion, and positive practices (Roeser et al., 2014). As opposed to procedural learning, declarative learning is conceptual learning “about” things. We can teach the value of flourishing and the importance of happiness and well-being, but this declarative understanding does not translate into greater happiness or well-being. Procedural learning creates embodied habits and operates through different neural circuits that requires practice. While declarative learning is important to provide a conceptual framework, we lead with procedural learning that provides access to direct experience, and sows the seeds for the development of habits conducive to flourishing.

TNDY 404L Judeo-Christian Thought Across the Disciplines

Mary Poplin
Alternate Saturdays (9/7; 9/21; 10/5; 10/19; 11/2; 11/16; 12/7) 9:00 – 3:00PM

In the last several decades, prominent intellectuals have begun to challenge the secularization of the West and the Western academy. Scholars across the disciplines (both religious and secular) suggest that there is unique knowledge inherent in the Judeo-Christian worldview that is foundational to various spheres of public and academic life and across the various academic disciplines. This Transdisciplinary seminar will examine 1) the assumptions and principles of prominent secular and religious scholars, 2) the contemporary challenges both to Judeo-Christian thought and to the dominance of secularism across the disciplines, 3) the intellectual principles of Judeo-Christian thought and their implications in the sciences, social sciences, and arts/humanities, and 4) examples from various related scholars’ work across the disciplines. Throughout the course each participant will work with a team of other classmates from diverse disciplines to address a related issue(s) of their choice and design – defining and investigating the particular topic/issue using their multiple disciplines, and ultimately developing and presenting their final project with outcomes and recommendations to the class.

407P Spectrum of Negotiations: Polylateral Diplomacy

Sallama Shaker
Thursday Tuesday 4:00 – 7:00PM

The prominent philosopher Plato emphasized “He who wishes to serve his country must NOT only have the power to think but to analyze and act.” The course will explore how negotiations are a multi-layered and multi-disciplinary process. Each type of negotiation demands “spicy skills” to reach ultimate goals be it ending wars and conflicts or/and negotiating in multi-lateral forums like the European Union, NATO, and the United Nations with its agencies to resolve global and national targets. These new dimensions of diplomacy are characterized by Geoffrey Wiseman as polylateral diplomacy. Analyzing the complex nature of the major structural challenges at the national and global levels will shed light and enable the students to engage as diverse stakeholders to collaborate effectively to resolve problems such as gender equality, environmental challenges, refugee problems, and inclusivity in societies. How can we as a group of “reflective diverse stakeholders” establish a mechanism which can help our communities and the United Nations in reaching a bottom-up approach to reduce inequality and create inclusive societies. This question will guide our major collaborative project during the semester and will inform our presentation before the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Chairperson during our trip to the United Nations late in the Fall semester.

407T Experiencing Sustainability: Experiments in the Transdisciplinary Collaboratory

Andrew Vosko (Transdisciplinary Studies, CGU)
Teresa Spezio (Environmental Analysis, Pitzer)
Anne Harley (Music, Scripps)
Wednesday 7:00 – 9:50PM

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them: the oft-cited Einstein quote has been widely used in the field of sustainability, a complex problem unto itself. While there has been no lack of drive to improve our lives on this planet, the ways we have approached sustainability have not appropriately addressed this complexity in the past, bringing us to a critical place in the present.

There is a need to interpret, measure and share in how we experience sustainability from diverse perspectives in order to elevate it beyond a buzzword. This course will bring together a riot of students from different backgrounds with faculty from the neurosciences, environmental sciences, and performing arts to creatively imagine the look, feel, sound and smell of a more sustainable world. Together, we will use science, performance, history, etc. to better understand and imagine the world and its future. All course participants, including faculty and guests, will be co-learners in this environment. Ultimately, the course will create a different awareness around sustainability as well as new tools to advance the field.

Specifically, the course will examine the benefits and limitations of past and current siloed approaches, and we will work with students to expand on concepts of inquiry and how they can align with their own values, individually and collaboratively, to create more holistic experiences around ‘getting it’. Practices would include: contemplative pedagogy’s contribution of first-person inquiry, and how to bring it into conversation with second- and third-person inquiry that are typically more valorized in academia, performance and activated spectatorship, transdisciplinary re-framing, systems-level analysis, complexity theory, action research and applied research, and artistic/scientific integration. he course is set up to be activity- and experience-based. In addition to some didactic and theoretical approaches, every class session will involve students “breaking out” in group work. It is designed to be transformative in getting students to think differently about their academic careers, their relationships with each other, and their place in co-creating our future world. Most of the ‘a-ha’ moments are structured to emerge from collaborative projects trying out the ideas discussed in class.

TNDY 405A Heritage, Culture and Managing the Past in the Old World and the New

Joshua Goode

Module 1: 6/4 – 7/5/19

Two class meetings in Los Angeles for CGU students the week of 6/3/19, tentatively schedule for 6/4 and 6/6, 11:00AM – 1:00PM (lunch provided)

Site Visits:

In LA, 6/10/19 – 6/14/19

In Bath, England 7/01/19 – 7/05/19 (plan to arrive a few days early to acclimate)

Costs:

Tuition (Fellowship applies)

Accommodations and travel to England (you arrange)

Course Fee: usually $800

This course is a jointly taught, dual campus class that examines heritage management of historical sites and museums in both Los Angeles and the Bath region. While in Los Angeles, students from Bath and from CGU will explore important cultural heritage sites, including the Getty Villa, the San Gabriel Mission, Old Pasadena, Watts Towers, La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, El Pueblo de los Angeles Historic Monument, among other sites. In Bath, the students will use the university as home base to explore the city, named a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1987, and its many museums and historical sites, including its complete Roman baths, One Royal Crescent House Museum, and the Jane Austen Center. Outside Bath, we will explore Oxford and London to talk with museum leaders and heritage management experts. Stonehenge and the Victoria and Albert Museum are already planned as part of the itinerary outside of Bath.

The differences between the two locations, Los Angeles and Bath, will pose in very clear relief the different kinds of issues that face heritage management experts in both contexts. How do we protect and manage historical sites and collections? Where do we find funding for the arts and cultural patrimony in a complicated setting of public and increasingly private fund-raising? How do we convey and maintain the cultural significance of these sites to contemporary and future audiences? Particular focus will be placed on the structural and economic differences between the regions that define how the arts and heritage efforts are funded, and how broader, more globalized forces will define civic and national commemoration and historical education efforts in the future.

TNDY 402Z: Akko: Public Archaeology, Conservation, and Heritage

Tammi Schneider

Module 2: 06/30 – 07/29/19

Location: This class takes place as part of the archaeological excavation, not on the CGU campus.

The goal of this class is to better understand Heritage management by examining the city of Akko, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The course is also designed to fit into the educational program for the Tel Akko Archaeological program. The course is structured around excavation, field trips, and daily lectures. Attendance at lectures and field trips is mandatory for everyone: students and staff alike. Heritage Management is core to the mission of the excavation. If excavation is destruction of the site to better understand it and present it to the public, then examining the context of the site through numerous perspectives is fundamental.

The course presents the material through a series of lectures and tours. The lectures are offered by staff and faculty affiliated with the excavation as well as specialists from throughout the country of Israel and visiting specialists from around the world. The lectures are focused on examining the city of Akko from numerous perspectives including: history, archaeology, religion, culture, tourism, conservation, and city government. Another important pedagogical aspect are tours of the Tel, the city of Akko, and other parts of the country. Below is a theoretical schedule of lectures. Lectures on the history of the site and its archaeology are covered by the staff. Scheduling external lectures (members of the IAA, locals, foreign visitors etc.) is underway at present. Therefore, this syllabus includes the general idea of what will happen, though the timing of all of the lectures is fluid.

The method of assessment each summer changes depending on how many students take the class. When there are more than three students taking the class, a group project is assigned for credit: in the past this has included such things as 1. Planning an exhibit about Akko in Claremont; 2. Helping plan an event where Akko residents view the excavation’s finds of the summer. When only one or two students register, the student works with someone from the excavation on an aspect of the project that aligns with their interests such as conservation, or the academic study of archaeology.

Preliminary Schedule of Lectures

• Monday: General Overview of Akko, its history, its location the people who live there and the methods that we will be examining it through the summer including: history, archaeology, preservation, modern issues (Ann Killebrew)
• Tuesday: Early History of Akko: 4th Millennium-Iron Age (Tammi Schneider)
• Wednesday: Persian/Hellenistic Period Akko (Martha Risser, Trinity College)
• Thursday: Roman/Byzantine Period Akko (Martha Risser, Trinity College)
• Saturday: Tour of the Galilee (Gary Gilbert, CMC)
• Sunday 10:00AM – 4:00PM: Tour the Crusader Remains in Akko
• Sunday Evening: The City of Akko in the Jewish Antiquity (Gary Gilbert, CMC)
• Monday: European Crusaders and the role of Acre and the Crusades in European History, Literature, Religion, and Politics (Lori Anne Ferrell)
• Tuesday: Napoleon, Akko, and the beginning of the role of the West in the Middle East (Tammi Schneider)
• Wednesday: Faunal Analysis: What it can Reveal
• Thursday: Under Water Archaeology: History, Issues, and Finds
• Saturday: Trip to Bahai Center, Haifa and Caesarea
• Sunday Morning: Tour of Ottoman Akko
• Sunday Evening: Iron Smithing (Turkish scholars working with us. There will also be experimental archaeology in the field determining how our iron smithing might have worked)
• Monday, July 19: Botanical Remains: What can it Reveal
• Tuesday: A Muslim City: Islam and the city of Akko (Nicholaus Pumphrey, Baker University)
• Wednesday: Saving the Stones: History of Conservation in Akko
• Thursday: A UNESCO in Israel: Expectations and Implementation (UNESCO Specialist)
• Saturday: Tour of Jerusalem (Gary Gilbert, CMC)
• Sunday Morning: Akko and the Modern World Tour in Akko of the Baths, the Prison, the Market
• Sunday: The Prison in Akko: Israeli Nationalism and the Development of the Ideology of a Jewish State (Gary Gilbert)
• Monday: Doing Business in a City with Multiple Identities: Panel of Akko Business People
• Tuesday: Educating Akko: How Akko is Treated in the Educational System in Akko (Panel of organizers and parents of the student summer program)
• Wednesday: Award Ceremony for the Jewish and Muslim teenage students participating in the student summer program
• Thursday: Final Party At Uri Buris: Restaurant voted best food in the Middle East

TNDY 407O Corruption

Robert Klitgaard
Monday, 04:00–06:50PM

Around the world, corruption is high on the list of challenges. This course examines corruption from a variety of academic perspectives, and then what might be done to reduce, though alas never eradicate, corruption. By working through case studies, we assess the uses and limitations of theory, data, and international collaboration. We study countries such as Afghanistan, Brazil, China, Colombia, Georgia, Haiti, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, Singapore, South Sudan, Uganda, and the United States. Although the course focuses on corruption, it engages with fundamental issues about the possibilities and limitations of theory, data, and working across cultures.

TNDY 407P Diplomacy: Art of Negotiating the Possible & the Impossible

Sallama Shaker
Tuesday, 04:00–06:50PM

Isaac Newton defined diplomacy as “tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.” This seminar will introduce students to the Art of Diplomacy by providing them with the necessary tools to practice diplomacy. Using case studies of diplomatic practices, past and the present, engaging with Ambassadors-at-Large, and working through collaborative simulation exercises, students will gain a better understanding of the strategies and tactics used to overcome conflicts and build bridges in a complex, globalized world. Additionally, the course will analyze Sustainable Development Goals as an applied multilateral case study in diplomacy that will enable students to visit the United Nations during the course.

TNDY 405I: Data Analytical Tools, Technologies, and Applications Across the Disciplines

Hovig Tchalian
Wednesday, 05:30–08:20
Course will be held at the Reef, CGU’s downtown LA campus

This course focuses on using Big Data tools and technologies effectively across various disciplines and settings – e.g., social sciences, humanities, information systems, policy, and healthcare. The enormous volume, velocity, and variety of data created every day from social media in the form of Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, and countless other platforms and sensors show no signs of abating. This constant stream of data has created enormous hype and promise around what big data can do for all of us – researchers, managers, policy-makers, patients, and consumers. However, this hype often overshadows evidence and examples of genuinely productive applications of data analytical tools and techniques. This course takes an applied, hands-on approach to learning about, using, and managing big data and big data analytic tools. The course is built around numerous case studies and an applied final project where students demonstrate their understanding of the principles and fundamental concepts of Big Data in a culminating project, i.e., the use of big data analytics to examine a real-world problem.

TNDY 407Q The Epicness of Gilgamesh: Sex, Power, and Placement

Tammi Schneider
Tuesday 09:00–11:50AM

CGU recently received a collection by an important Syrian artist centered around the Epic of Gilgamesh, an ancient Akkadian text with third millennium Sumerian prototypes. In this course, we will examine the ancient myth of Gilgamesh, its modern discovery and impact it had on its interpretation, as well as concepts of religion, masculinity and gender revealed in the ancient text. We will also study CGU’s own art collection and its roots in the Syrian context of the late twentieth century, and students will mount the initial exhibit of the collection at CGU, incorporating experiential learning around the issues and mechanics of mounting and presenting and exhibit rich with historical and modern significance.

TNDY 407S Globalization and Its Human Challenges

Anselm Min
Monday, 07:00–09:50PM

This is a comprehensive study of globalization. On the basis of important recent publications we will study the many aspects of globalization, economic, ecological, political, military, cultural, religious, and migratory, study them in their interconnectedness, not in isolation, ask about their total consequences and impact on humanity, who are both agents and victims of globalization, especially on human dignity and human solidarity, and raise critical questions about how to promote human dignity and human solidarity against the many challenges of division and oppression often produced by globalization today. We are not interested in any of those aspects—economic, political, etc.– for its own sake but always for what it does for human well-being, human suffering, and solidarity among human beings who have to learn to live together with a minimum of justice and peace for all their differences. This is a broadly ethical approach to globalization but also based on the empirical facts of globalization as discovered by studies in the seven different areas (economic, ecological, political, military, cultural, religious, and migratory). This is an essentially multidisciplinary approach to globalization from the human perspective. We will ask how globalization—in its many aspects—concretely promotes human dignity and human solidarity and/or further destroys human dignity and human solidarity and how to respond to the many ethical issues it raises.

TNDY 407R The Practice of Self-Management

Jeremy Hunter
Mondays 01:00–03:30PM (starting January 27, 2019)
Sunday, Feb 24 (DTLA: 10:00AM-03:30PM)
Sunday Apr 14 (LACMA: 10:00AM-03:30PM)

The Practice of Self-Management systematically develops skills that lead to personal and professional effectiveness. The primary assumption of the class holds that nothing else is done well without first having solid skills in personal management. The class is oriented around reading, exercises and discussion, and is writing intensive.

TNDY 405J – Cyber Security Risk Management

Bechor, Tamir
Friday: (9/7) 1:00 – 3:50pm; (9/14) 1:00 – 3:50pm; (9/28) 1:00 – 6:45pm; (10/12) 1:00 – 6:45pm; (10/26) 1:00 – 6:45pm; (11/9) 1:00 – 6:45pm; (11/23) 1:00 – 6:45pm (11/30) 1:00 – 3:50pm; (12/7) 1:00 – 6:45pm; (12/14) 1:00 – 3:50pm;

Borders are gone; we are all connected! The rapidly changing society of technology and information has given rise to a new paradigm of “black swan” disruptive cyber-attacks. Cyber criminals are stepping up their game and cyber breaches are becoming both common and devastating. At the beginning of the year, the World Economic Forum (WEF) listed the top five risks facing world leaders today, and found that cyber-attacks are now among the top five risks to global stability. President Obama has declared cyber security to be “one of the most serious national security challenges we face as a nation.” Through a series of readings, exercises and case studies, the course will reveal the dimensions to cybersecurity. Whether you are a researcher, a business leader, policy analyst, or activist, the course will empower you to be more aware of the trend and the perspectives needed to take appropriate actions.

TNDY 407J – Leader Development

Reichard, Becky
Tuesday 1:00 – 3:50pm

This course is designed to teach students about the theory and application of leader development, which is defined as increasing an individual leader’s capacity to be effective in a leadership role. Students will have the opportunity to learn about the existing research on leader development, including various approaches and methods. Students will also have the chance to see these methods in action as they investigate and evaluate a leader development program at an organization of their choosing. Finally, as an additional illustration of the leader development process, students will experience these methods first-hand as they participate in classroom activities, weekly reflections, 360-degree feedback assessments, and craft their own leader development plans.

TNDY 407K – Inequality Transdisciplinary Research

Rodriguez, Javier
Thursday 4:00 – 6:50pm

Different, and many times similar, social problems have been addressed by a great variety of sciences from their own idiosyncrasies. Research on birth control pharmacology is mostly conducted in non-white, non-American women; anthropologists heavily rely on ethnographic fieldwork deployed in poor nations among non-urban, indigenous communities; and social workers use focus groups and in-depth interviews to unearth patient dissatisfaction, family abuse, and guilt in self-confessed alcoholics. The present course titled “Inequality Transdisciplinary Research” is an attempt to integrate—via student-student/instructor collaborative interactions—such diversity of theories and methodologies into hands-on research projects.

The course will focus on how the scientific method can be effectively implemented to answer research questions, even when theories and methods from disparate traditions collide. Accordingly, students will be asked from day one to work in groups and negotiate a research topic they will work on. Together with the instructor, research teams comprised by students from different disciplines, will propose a research question; develop a rigorous research design; and search, download, clean, and analyze data. Students will be exposed to the intense, yet rewarding pace of scientific research from a transdisciplinary approach. Students will write reports, present their findings and project advancements, and both receive and provide constructive feedback (including a blind peer review process). The theories used to frame the social problem under observation as well as the methods used to test the proposed hypotheses will be from different scientific backgrounds. Students will communicate and share their difficulties and their proposed solutions while being exposed to the difficulties and solutions found by other teams of research. Lectures will be purposely assembled to address the specific theoretical frameworks, methods, and analytic approaches implemented by the teams of research.

TNDY 407L – An Introduction to Social Impact Measurement for Private-Sector Organizations with Social Missions

Gargani, John
Thursday 4:00 – 6:50pm

This class will introduce students to the contemporary practice of social impact measurement and how it can be used to create a better world. Increasingly, organizations of every type are applying market-based solutions to pressing social and environmental problems. To understand the effectiveness of their efforts, they engage in social impact measurement. Like traditional program evaluation, it has transdisciplinary roots that span economics, finance, accounting, psychology, health, and anthropology. However, its branches have spread into a space neglected by other disciplines, resulting in something novel. Students will learn the fundamental theories and methods of impact measurement and how they compare to those in other fields. Hands-on exercises and case studies will connect concepts to analytical methods at the forefront of professional practice. The class will culminate in a collaborative group project in which students apply what they learned to a real-world measurement problem in a complex setting. Over the course of the semester, students will investigate six questions. What is social impact? How can organizations create it? How do we distinguish desirable impacts from those that are not? What role should stakeholders play? What methods from which disciplines can be used to measure social impact? How can we judge if a measure is good enough? Students will work in teams as they seek answers that integrate the perspectives of multiple disciplines and stakeholders.

TNDY 407M – Global Challenges: Poverty, Gender, Security – UN Sustainable Development Goals

Shaker, Sallama
Tuesday 4:00 – 6:50pm

In a report published in 2017 by the United Nations entitled Reflecting on Seventy Years of Development Policy Analysis, “Development” was defined as: “multidimensional, context- specific, and about transformation.” The UN aims to achieve adequate and transformative changes across the continents of the world through a 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: a set of insightful policies to implement the 2015-2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These goals target the eradication of poverty, education for all, women’s empowerment and gender equality, sustainable land use and reaching out to the youth of the world to ensure peace and security.

This course, which is designed as a seminar, will explore and integrate engaging discussions across the targets of the SDGs and case study analyses from around the world: Africa, Asia, Latin America and MENA and Europe. While engaging in collaborative projects around finding resolutions, the course will also incorporate cross-disciplinary approaches in simulation exercises and group learning. The collaborative nature of the class will allow for a deeper look into some of the social, cultural, economic and political challenges facing societies in implementing these goals, including the feminization of poverty and lack of means to implement “education for all.” Causal and contextual roots will be explored as assigned collaborative group projects to help develop innovative approaches.

TNDY 407N – Route 66

Bohn, John
Tuesday 1:00 – 3:50pm

This course is interested in pathways. Specifically, we are interested in the sequence of places found along Route 66. An (idio)synthetic aggregation of systems and stories that emerge over time, pathways offer a continuous structure for human experience while traversing across the strata of the natural and built environment. Pathways such as Route 66 are the products of accidents of geology, opportunities for animal habitation and the predispositions of human behavior. Measured and mapped, they are also vehicles for our connection with the world; engineered for economic growth, pathways such as Rt 66 also act as frames personal histories and catalysts for creative production.

Students will use their own area of interest to interrogate the geographic location, histories and contemporary condition of the Route 66 pathway as it passes through California. A close reading of the facts of this pathway curated though the lens of each student will serve as our point of departure. The lives lived, the phenomenon observed and possibilities imagined all have a role in the Route 66 experience. Even informed fictions and wild speculations, always braided into human movement along any path, are encouraged.

It is hoped that the uncovering and layering of these disparate layers found along Route 66 will activate and inform a more profound understanding of the connective spaces in-between places and propel students to dig deeply into the fact of the infrastructure as well as the fictions of pasts, presents and future. The course will be mediated by digital tools, technologies and research techniques that enable the accumulation, registration and representation of information organized by place and time along this route. It is in many ways a curation of public spaces, systems and histories (and futures) along this great American pathway, this ‘Mother Road’ that, like all paths of migration and the daily commute, structure so much of the time and place of human experience.

TNDY 402Z – Akko: Public Archaeology, Conservation, and Heritage

Schneider, Tammi
Module 2 (07/02/2018 – 08/18/2018), Monday – Friday 10:00am – 3:50pm

The goal of this class is to better understand Heritage management by examining the city of Akko, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The course is also designed to fit into the educational program for the Tel Akko Archaeological program. The course is structured around excavation, field trips, and daily lectures. Attendance at lectures and field trips is mandatory for everyone: students and staff alike. Heritage Management is core to the mission of the excavation. If the excavation is destruction of the site to better understand it and present it to the public, then examining the context of the site through numerous perspectives is fundamental.

The course examines the city of Akko from numerous perspectives including: history, archaeology, religion, culture, tourism, conservation, and city government through a series of lectures presented by the faculty on site at the archaeological excavation of Tel Akko, tours of the Tel and the city of Akko and to other parts of the country, and guest speakers. The lectures cover the major historical and archaeological periods represented in Akko and the larger context in which Akko functioned and continues to function. In order to better understand the complexities involved in Akko, people from the city government and tourist agencies, specialists in site management and the Israel Antiquities Authority, as well as local business owners address the problems faced in dealing with a modern city built directly upon a very ancient one. Below is a theoretical schedule of lectures. Lectures on the history of the site and its archaeology are covered by the staff. Scheduling external lectures (members of the IAA, locals etc.) is underway at present. Therefore, this syllabus includes the general idea of what will happen, though the timing of the lectures is fluid.

The method of assessment each summer changes depending on how many students take the class. Since someone is paid to teach the class only if there are five students taking the class for credit, which is seldom the case, all work from faculty is voluntary. When there are more than three students taking the class, a group project is assigned for credit. Past projects include such things as 1. planning an exhibit about Akko in Claremont; 2. helping plan an event where Akko residents view the excavation’s “finds” of the summer. When only one or two students register, the student works with someone from the excavation on an aspect of the project that aligns with their interests such as conservation, or the academic study of archaeology.

TNDY 405A – Heritage, Culture and Managing the Past in the Old World and the New

Goode, Joshua
Module 1 (05/14/2018 – 06/30/2018), Monday – Friday 9:00am – 5:00pm

This course is a jointly taught, dual campus class that examines heritage management of historical sites and museums in both Los Angeles and the Bath region. While in Los Angeles, students from Bath and from CGU will explore important cultural heritage sites, including the Getty Villa, the Autry Museum of the American West, the Huntington Library, Watts Towers, the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, among other sites to be determined. In Bath, the students will use the university as home base to explore the city, named a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1987, and its many museums and historical sites, including its complete Roman baths, One Royal Crescent House Museum, and the Jane Austen Center. Outside Bath, we will explore Oxford and London to talk with museum leaders and heritage management experts. Stonehenge and the Victoria and Albert Museum are already planned as part of the itinerary outside of Bath.

The differences between the two locations, the Los Angeles region and Bath, will pose in very clear relief the different kinds of issues that face heritage management experts in both contexts. How do we protect and manage historical sites and collections? Where do we find funding for the arts and cultural patrimony in a complicated setting of public and increasingly private fund-raising? How do we convey and maintain the cultural significance of these sites to contemporary and future audiences? Particular focus will be placed on the structural and economic differences between the regions that define how the arts and heritage efforts are funded, and how broader, more globalized forces will define civic and national commemoration and historical education efforts in the future.

TNDY 407E – Is It Clash of Civilizations or Clash of Cultures or Power Rivalry?

Shaker, Sallama
Module 1 (05/14/2018 – 06/30/2018), Monday & Wednesday 4:00 – 6:50pm

The course which is taught as a seminar will address and analyze the validity of Samuel Huntington’s theory “Clash of Civilizations & the Remaking of World Order” which assumes that “the clash of civilizations will dominate global politics and fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future” versus the narrative of Edward Said’s “Orientalism” in order to unfold and understand which of the scholarly narratives hold the roots of the conflicts in world politics. The course will explore the complex nature of power struggle in many regions of the world which have been dominated by global power rivalry.

Simulation exercises and class collaborative projects will be analyzing the factors that trigger many conflicts in different regions of the world (Africa, Asia, and the Middle East) in order to figure out the causal roots of the conflicts – political, economic, cultural and /or religion- as well as the overarching foreign policy issues which contribute to the escalation of the conflicts in search for the answer to our major question: Is It Clash of Civilizations or Clash of Cultures or Power Rivalry? Exploring case studies such as the conflicts between the two Koreas, the Chinese- Indian rivalry, the Israeli – Palestinian conflict, Conflict in Yemen will shed light on the reasons behind these agitating conflicts by applying theory to practice where class groups will engage in group discussions to develop innovative multi-disciplinary approaches in an attempt to resolve these problems. The course will acquaint the students with the art of diplomacy and negotiations to avoid a ‘prisoner’s dilemma’.

Data Analytical Tools, Technologies and Applications Across the Disciplines (TNDY 405I)

This course focuses on using Big Data tools and technologies effectively across various disciplines and settings – social sciences, humanities, information systems, policy, and healthcare. The enormous volume, velocity, and variety of data created every day from social media in the form of Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, and countless other platforms and sensors show no signs of abating. This constant stream of data has created enormous hype and promise around what big data can do for all of us – researchers, managers, policy-makers, patients, and consumers. However, this hype often overshadows evidence and examples of genuinely productive applications of data analytical tools and techniques. This course assumes that data, no matter how “big,” can’t become information or true knowledge until users know not only what it is but what it’s for. We therefore take an applied, hands-on approach to learning about, using, and managing data-analytic tools, exploring not only the what, but the how and the why, of big data tools. The course is built around numerous case studies and an applied project that uses data analytics to solve a real-world problem, concluding with findings and a presentation. Instructor: Hovig Tchalian, Tues (1:00 – 3:50) 4 units

Exploring Judeo-Christian Knowledge Across the Disciplines (TNDY 404L)

In the last several decades, prominent intellectuals have begun to challenge the secularization of the West and the Western academy. Scholars across disciplines and worldviews suggest that there is unique knowledge inherent in the Judeo-Christian worldview that is foundational to the various spheres of public and academic life. In addition, there are scholars who articulate unique contributions of Judeo-Christian thought across the academic disciplines. This Transdisciplinary seminar will examine 1) the contemporary challenges to secularism, 2) the intellectual principles of Judeo-Christian thought as compared to other worldviews, 3) the application of these principles across the various disciplines, and 4) examples from various scholars’ work across the disciplines. This course is designed for those graduate students working within Judeo-Christian institutions and those interested in the general topic. Participants in the various fields will work together in Transdisciplinary groups to develop a final project on a related topic. Instructor: Mary Poplin, Sat (9:00 am – 4:00 pm) 4 units

Extremism in Society (TNDY 402A)

The course will be class discussion based and oriented around visiting speakers and student presentations. There will be some double classes or perhaps an all-day class (in lieu of the appropriate number of single classes), which will act as mini-conferences or collaborative hands-on workshops focused on research and/or policy dimensions of the topics. The scheduling of these sessions will be worked out in collaboration with the class at the beginning of the course. Instructor: Michael Hogg, Thurs (1:00 – 3:50) 4 Units

Nature of Inquiry: Indigeneity (TNDY 401X)

The purpose of this course is twofold. The first aim is to introduce students to alternative ways of approaching the research craft. While there will be an emphasis on approaches most commonly used within the social sciences, we also will consider methods primarily drawn from the humanities, as well as critiques of the ways that knowledge has traditionally been acquired from the Enlightenment period onwards. The second aim is to provide students with an opportunity to collaborate on transdisciplinary research projects. Students from different academic disciplines and research orientations will form teams that will design projects that explore in some way the economic, social or civic status of indigenous peoples. The teams may develop projects that deal with indigenous peoples within the United States or internationally. The choice to focus on indigeneity is appropriate, given that many of the strongest critiques of western research methods have originated among indigenous communities. The hope is that this emphasis will provide us with a continual reminder of the importance of the philosophical and ethical underpinnings of our research. Instructor: Jean Reith Schroedel, Weds (1:00 – 3:50) 4 units

Regional and Global Power Rivalry in the Middle East (TNDY 405P)

As early as 1919 President Woodrow Wilson dispatched a theologian named Mr. Henry King and Mr. Charles Kane on a mission ”to sort out the the Middle East and figure out how the region’s residents wanted to be governed in view of the Sykes-Pecot secret Agreement which was drafted in secrecy in 1916 between Britain and France to divide the Ottoman Empire. The King-Krane Report concluded that “lumping diverse ethnic or religious groups together in larger states could lead to bloody results”.(King-Krane Report 1919). Apparently the report was predicting the regional conflicts that made the Middle East region volatile and unstable. No wonder many scholars argue that World War I was not only a war of unprecedented devastation with global ramifications that reshaped world politics -for ever- in light of its impact on the Middle East region which became the center of rivalry between global powers because of its strategic significance and oil wealth. In an article written by Walter Russell Mead, entitled “‘The Return of Geopolitics”, the scholar emphasizes that the year 2014 has been a tumultuous one, as geopolitical rivalries USA, RUSSIA, and CHINA have stormed back to center stage in the Middle East region to balance their priorities at a time when the region is being remapped. Deeper understanding of the impact of power rivalry in the Middle East necessitates analyzing the major factors that have overarching impact on the struggles and conflicts such as: religion, culture, ethnic groups and impact of history on the people living in the region. Simulation exercise will be held to familiarize the students with skills of negotiations and conflict resolution. Instructor: Sallama Shaker, Tues (4:00 – 6:50) 4 units

Special Seminar in Social Demography (TNDY 407I)

The seminar is designed to develop student research skills in social demography and better understand links between demographic characteristics and social factors on growth, recovery and inequality. Using a transdisciplinary lens, this course will trace the interactive effects of fertility, mortality, migration, aging and urbanization and link them to retirement, economic growth and population health. Course readings will provide background for further exploration, and students are encouraged to pursue further investigation in topics in which they are most interested. Course grades are based upon participation, a major collaborative paper, and a final exam. Students are expected to have come to each class session prepared to discuss required reading materials. Instructor: Jacek Kugler, Tues (7:00 pm – 9:50 pm) 4 units

PERSUASIVE TECHNOLOGIES (TNDY 402X – 1)

Can computers change what you think and do? Can they motivate you to stop smoking, persuade you to buy insurance, or convince you to conserve water when you shower? The answer is a resounding “yes.”

Until recently, most software applications and technologies were developed without much thought to how they influenced their users. This perspective is changing. Today, industry experts and academics are embracing a purposeful approach to persuasive design. In an industry context, designing for persuasion is becoming essential for success. In academic settings, the study of persuasive technology illuminates the principles that influence and motivate people in different aspects of their lives. This course will bring together the latest research happening in three distinct disciplines: information and communication technology, psychology and health sciences. Persuasive technology may be defined as any interactive computing system designed to change people’s attitudes or behaviors without coercion or deception. The emergence of the Internet has led to a proliferation of web sites designed to persuade or motivate people to change their attitudes and behavior. The auction site eBay has developed an online exchange system with enough credibility that users are persuaded to make financial transactions and to divulge personal information. Within the domain of e-health, systems such as mobile applications for managing obesity and digital interventions to overcome addictive behaviors have demonstrated the huge potential of persuasive technologies for behavioral changes. Through presentations, discussions, and case study analyses students will explore this fascinating new field. In addition, the course will host several expert guest speakers (practitioners, researchers, etc.) from SBOS, SCGH and other institutions who will share their latest findings. Instructor: Samir Chatterjee Th (1:00 – 3:50) 4 units

E – LEARNING (TNDY 404S – 1)

The purpose of this course is to explore in depth the concept of electronic (also called online) learning. The course will be based on a recent book, “E-learning Theory and Practice,” by Caroline Haythornthwaite and Richard Andrews (Sage, 2011). The book addresses key topics such as learning theories and a theory of online learning, participation in discourse and learning communities, the context for learning as reflected in multiple learning ecologies and how it is leads to ubiquitous learning, and researching e-learning. It is likely that additional readings such as journal papers, conferences papers, cases, and trade press articles will also be used to supplement the book with recent literature. There will be a group project which will involve designing and evaluating a set of prototype courses that use a variety of e-learning environments, or developing a research proposal that explores differences in e-learning environments. Environments range from face-to-face teaching with support for virtual conversations in small size classes (a traditional class with an electronic discussion board) to virtual teaching and communications in extremely large classes (MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses). Instructor: Lorne Olfman M (7:00 – 9:50) 4 units

DATA ANALYTICAL TOOLS, TECHNOLOGIES AND APPLICATIONS ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES (TNDY 405I)

This course focuses on using Big Data tools and technologies effectively across various disciplines and settings – social sciences, humanities, information systems, policy, and healthcare. The enormous volume, velocity, and variety of data created every day from social media in the form of Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, and countless other platforms and sensors show no signs of abating. This constant stream of data has created enormous hype and promise around what big data can do for all of us – researchers, managers, policy-makers, patients, and consumers. However, this hype often overshadows evidence and examples of genuinely productive applications of data analytical tools and techniques. This course assumes that data, no matter how “big,” can’t become information or true knowledge until users know not only what it is but what it’s for. We therefore take an applied, hands-on approach to learning about, using, and managing data-analytic tools, exploring not only the what, but the how and the why, of big data tools. The course is built around numerous case studies and an applied project that uses data analytics to solve a real-world problem, concluding with findings and a presentation. Instructor: Hovig Tchalian Tu (1:00 – 3:50) 4 units

CYBER SECURITY RISK MANAGEMENT (TNDY 405L)

Borders are gone; we are all connected! The rapidly changing society of technology and information has given rise to a new paradigm of “black swan” disruptive cyber attacks. Cyber criminals are stepping up their game and cyber breaches are becoming both common and devastating. At the beginning of the year, the World Economic Forum (WEF) listed the top five risks facing world leaders today, and found that cyber-attacks are now among the top five risks to global stability. President Obama has declared cyber security to be “one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation.” Cyber threats can come from unexpected sources and directions. To thoroughly understand the nature of a cyber-attack and build appropriate expertise, we need to explore a broad range of issues (social, political, economic, cultural, organizational, law, behavioral, and technological) that shape and alter the extremely fast-moving cyber environment.

The course provides a transdisciplinary perspective on one of the world’s more pronounced phenomenon. Through a series of readings, exercises and case studies (including the recent SONY Pictures Entertainment cyber-breach) the course will reveal the technical, social, economic, management and policy dimensions to cybersecurity. Whether you are a researcher, a business leader, policy analyst, or activist, the course will empower you to be more aware of the trend and the perspectives needed to take appropriate actions. Instructor: Tamir Bechor F (1:00 – 3:50 or 6:30, varies by day) 4 units

THE CHANGING ROLE OF GENDER: A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE (TNDY 405S)

In a report published by United Nations in 2006 titled: “Women, Girls, Boys, and Men – Different Needs- Equal Opportunities”, the term ‘GENDER’ explains how many people think of ‘gender’ as being about women only while, in fact, the term ‘gender’ refers to ”the social differences between females and males throughout the life cycle that are learned, and though deeply rooted in every culture, are changeable over time and have wide variations both within and between cultures”. By 2015, the World Health Organization, defined gender roles as ”socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities that a given society considers appropriate for men and women”. These roles are deeply rooted in cultures, religious beliefs, families and laws and vary widely throughout the world. Gender role inequality is deeply embedded in patriarchal notions of power, authority and financial dominance.

The course, which is designed as a seminar, will explore and discuss the changing roles of gender globally through politics, economics, education, health, religion, history, and popular culture. The course will explore why does social norms play a central role in the relations between people’s agency and the available opportunities in a society. This class will also discuss the challenges of immigrants from non-Western countries in the United States and how they negotiate gender role expectations in a new nation. Due to the rescission of discriminatory immigration laws after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s against applicants from non-Western countries, in the past 30 years, the greatest wave of immigrants to the United States have come from Latin America, Asia and Africa. As a result, the number of first generation immigrants has quadrupled.

Exploring and utilizing studies and reports from the United Nations, the World Bank and UNESCO, films, autobiographical writings of first generation immigrants in the US as well as case studies from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East and Latin America, the course will enable the class to apply critical thinking to help in addressing and raising the awareness about the many controversial and contested issues about the ‘changing role of GENDER ‘ from multidisciplinary dimensions. Instructors: Linda Perkins and Sallama Shaker Tu (4:00 – 6:50) 4 units

LANGUAGE GAMES AND DISCIPLINARY IDENTITY (TNDY 407F)

How does your field talk about itself? How is it even possible for it to communicate with other disciplines? This course will contend that disciplines can be understood as “language games” – modes of discourse that determine what counts as successful or unsuccessful, legitimate or illegitimate “moves” of argumentation in any given field. But are we all speaking our own languages? What happens when our respective language games are incompatible with one another? The persistence of many of our great debates – from public health, to global warming, to education policy and information management – results not from different disciplines fighting over the same terrain, but from talking past one another about what that terrain is in the first place. This course will consider the implications for conceiving of disciplines as rhetorically constructed. Students will apply different paradigms for language games to their own fields. We will go on to ask about the conditions under which disciplines can communicate with one another – which means also considering the sites where they cannot, and where transdisciplinary communication breaks down. Our focus will be less on “following the problem” than on asking whether it is possible for multiple disciplines to address a problem together at all. To meet these goals, students’ individual writing will entail analytically reflecting on their disciplines, and their collaborative projects will involve articulating the discursive conditions under which particular problems can be addressed. Instructor: Mark Pedretti We (4:00 – 6:50) 4 units

SPECIAL SEMINAR IN ARTISTIC PRACTICE AND INNOVATION (TNDY 407G)

This course is for students from all backgrounds who want to explore artistic practice through the frameworks of systems and transdisciplinary thinking. Students will be tasked with tackling the complex question: “What makes art relevant?” from the perspectives of stakeholders in the creative process, arts management and business, and the evaluation of artistic endeavors. In this way, the class can examine artistic practice beyond the scope of the individual artist and instead see art as a set of networked processes with diverse elements, functions, and connections. Through participating in cross-disciplinary lectures and discussions, applying creative tools shared by artists, and reflecting upon disciplinary frameworks, students will delve into the different relationships inherent to the system of artistic practice. Throughout the course, perspectives from education, psychology, and the natural sciences will be introduced, and transdisciplinary methodologies applied. By the end of the course, students should be able to apply systems thinking to issues and ideas housed in their respective home disciplines as well. Instructor: Andrew Vosko, with guest speakers We (1:00 – 3:50) 4 units

EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT OBAMACARE AND TRUMP CARE BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK (TNDY 407H)

The course will trace the history of how and why Obamacare included the provisions that are included and the changes proposed by President Trump and the current Administration. This will include understanding the design of private health insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare and the impacts that they have had on health, access to medical care, and cost of healthcare. This course will cover basic concepts in health policy, and is intended for students outside the fields of: community and global health, economics, politics and policy, and psychology. Instructor: Deborah Freund Th (4:00 – 6:50) 4 units