Category: Course Design Project

SE 130: Socioeconomic Status   

Description:  

This class is an introductory class for understanding the effects of one socioeconomic status. It’s difficult for a student to grow up in an environment which is from a lower level than someone who is in a higher level. A lot of the effects of status is shown in exams such as the SHSAT or the SAT. Students will explore how segregation is displayed because of the socioeconomic status of a family in New York City. It’s important to know that schools need to change how they function to create a better environment for all.   

Readings:

• Jones, David: New York’s Segregated School System Is an Embarrassment.  
• Martens, C: The Effect of Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status on Education and Health Outcomes for Children Living in Social Housing.  
• Watch videos on YouTube related to the news articles.   

 This course is essential because as a resident of New York one needs to understand the segregation that exists in the school system. 

Course Name:

Personal Development

Learning Goals & Methodologies:

To become the best version of yourself. This class will focus on creating a mindset for success through engaging students in philosophical texts, financial literacy, and creating structure. This will mainly be a discussion based course where students discuss what they have learned from the readings and the professor will elaborate on the message as well as promote a socratic style discussion. Students will be assessed through proving that they have used the skills taught in class in a real world application such as balancing a checkbook or opening a checking, savings, or investment account while the professor evaluates their work ethic, effort, and personal growth throughout the course. Furthermore, they will write about their preferred philosophy / philosophers after reading various texts and how it helped them create structure in their life. This class is focused on making the student best prepared for their future while giving them the skills necessary to be a successful adult.

Readings:

• Meditations – Marcus Aurelius
• Summa Theologica – Thomas Aquinas
• Why Didn’t They Teach Me This in School – Cary Siegel
• Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together – Erin Lowry
• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success – Carol Dweck

Prospectus:

Course Name: Fertility in the context of women empowerment.

Methodologies and Learning Goals: This course is consists of lecture-based and discussion-based classes. During the lecture-based meetings, students will be introduced to the fertility trend before and after the industrial revolution, learn about changes in developed countries that gave rise to women’s social status. During the discussion-based meetings, the student will examine the effects of maternity leave policies, fertility incentive policies, and public pre-school programs have on women’s ability to achieve economic progress. Students will also discuss the cultural effects patriarchial societies have on women in different countries(Ex. India, China, Finland, America)

Readings:

1. The decline of fertility in Europe by Ansley Johnson Coale
2. Women’s empowerment and fertility changes by LY PHAN
3. Below-Replacement Fertility in Nineteenth-Century America by Warren C. Sanderson
4. The Timing of Childbearing and Women’s Wages by Hiromi Taniguchi

Black Studies:

Summary:

The purpose of this class is to educate students on the history of African people and slavery. We will expose false history on the topic. We will focus on African slavery and migration in the “New World”, but also touch other places around the world as well. Not only will we talk about the history of slavery but we will also address the psychological, societal, govermental and overal modern day effects of slavery. Examples on a few topics in this course: Racism, Discrimination, Sterotypes, Colorism, Texturism, Featurism, Culture Appropriation, Etc.

Assignments:

Papers:

• History of African Slavery and Migration on one part of the world. ex: entire New World, America, the Caribbean, Europe, etc. 
• Effects of African Slavery: choose an area in the world and also give a summary of effects worldwide. ex: entire New World, America, the Caribbean, Europe, etc.

Group projects: (choose one)

• Pick and research a topic on the one effect of African slavery in modern day society.
• Find 3 false historical stories or events on African slaves, how they were treated or migration and provide the correct information backed up with research. 

Classroom debate:

• There will be an organized debate. The topic is chosen by students.

Readings: (will be articles)

• Racism and Discrimination
• Self-Hatred in the Black community
• Psychological Effects of Slavery and Racism 
• Etc.

*My hopes are to enlighten you on the issues black people deal with in society so you can help make change somehow. The first step towards change is education.

Mental Health in the Modern World

• • I believe this should be a discussion based course since this is a topic that can be talked about for hours. There would also be a final paper in which students get to write about a specific topic, such as beauty standards, and mental health.
  • The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
  • The Beauty Clause by Melissa Sievers, Jordan Moses and Audrey Johnston
  • This course is unique since it touches base on a topic that many young people are impacted by.
  • The class would be discussion based, with debates and times where students get to speak on the book they read or the topic we are presenting on. I believe group presentations would also be beneficial since they teach students how to work together while also learning important information. A final paper would be given to test how much they have learnt throughout the course.

 

                                         Minorities and the media 

Hello my name is Joshua Vargas and I’m going to be your professor this semester for the Minorities and the media course. My goal in this class is to inform my students of what is going on in the world around us and how the media portrays people versus how they actually are. This course will be broken down into three sections each section will count as 33 percent of your grade. We will meet Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10 AM, please be on time!

 

• Stereotype teaching by the media 

 

In this section of the class we will discuss why and how the media uses stereotypes and actually teaches people how to accept them and make it seem like they are okay to use. This section will include two papers and three quizzes, the papers will be fairly easy, we will also have a discussion on the topic you chose and give feedback during our class. We also be reading Noam Chomsky “media control” for this section

 

• Decision Making

 

This is my favorite section to teach, in this section we will learn how the media controls everything. They will get one colored person and will use them as a way to say we are all diverse and will control everyone’s opinion because of that one thing.

This section on the other hand will require you to write on the discussion board on blackboard a simple recap of what we learned each class and to finish it off you will be assigned a 5 page paper and research a public case that fits what we’ve learned overall throughout this section. We also read Thomas de Zengotita “Mediated” for this section

 

• Image making 

 

The final section will be simple, we will talk about how the media portrays places in poverty and how they freely talk about minorities when in reality what there is saying is not true and it’s based on opinions not facts. This final section will include two papers and they will be 3-5 pages each, and a final that will be a breakdown of all three sections. You will have to write a 2 page paper in the end just giving a brief summary of each section and what you took from each one. For this section the reading will be Matt Taibbi “Hate inc”

I am so excited to teach you guys, my goal for this course is to inform you guys and make sure all of you gets something from this class, because a lot of you might think that this class will be useless and wont benefit you but in the end you’re gaining knowledge of how minorities like me are portrayed on tv and how we as the people need to come together and change this for a free and diverse America forever. If you have any questions please feel free to email me.

Course Name: U.S Political Parties Course

This will be a lecture and group-based course. There will be some group assignments, but for the most part, it is a lecture. There will also be a lot of analysis of important documents and material involved. There will be a 3-4 page writing assignment at the end of the year about topics you learned in this class. I will assign some quizzes and online tests throughout the semester to assess these students.

Readings:
Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein
Guide to U.S Political Parties textbook edited by Marjorie R. Hershey
U.S Political Parties Development and Division by Philip Wolny

This course will give students the insight they need to understand the political parties of the U.S. It will teach you the good and the downsides of certain political parties and will also teach you how to be a smart voter. I made the class informative and it keeps students attentive. I incorporated some kahoots to be a fun way to review the material. I made sure the tests are not very long, at most 30 multiple-choice questions. I wanted to make sure this class is actually helpful to the students and they take something away from this course that will actually benefit them.

MSI 117: Introductions to Music Industry

Description:

This class is an introductory class for understanding the layers that compose the music industry. These layers include starting out, branching out, major record labels, and independence/independent music labels. The course is designed to act as a guide for upcoming artists to flourish in today’s music scene. Subject matter will be taught chronologically according to the stages of an artist’s career and student debates will be held to best decide the artist’s next step. Readings will be assigned and act as both homework and sources to use for the debates. At the end of the semester, following the winning arguments of the debates, students will see an overview of the effects of their choices on the artist’s career based on real-world examples and statistics. Students will be assessed on their participation, homework completion, as well as their overall contribution to the class.

Readings:

• David Arditi, “iTunes: Breaking Barriers and Building Walls.”
• Danielle Fosler Lussier, “Copyright, Surveillance, and the Ownership of Music.”
• David Bruenger, “Making Money, Making Music: History and Core Concepts.”
• Peter Mills, “Media and Popular Music.”
• Rory Taylor, “The Evolving Relationship of Record Label and Artist.”

This class plays a different spin on the typical class structure. Students will make choices controlling the outcome of the artist’s musical success through what they have learned in and outside of class. An environment welcoming open class discussion and debate will propel more students to be engaged in the subject. Additionally, many students pursuing a music career will be attracted to this class as the course material pertains very much to them. Overall, the course’s structure and inclusion of student discussion make learning a blend of both exciting and captivating.

 

Business Management in Economic Crises

August 2023 – December 2023

Professor Daniel Deets

 

    In this course, the primary learning objective will be what preventative and recovery steps should be taken to maintain revenue and profit drops, or at the very least to minimize those drops. Economic Crises can happen several ways: stock market crash, pandemics, real estate bubbles, etc… The type of economic crisis doesn’t necessarily matter as the steps to protect your business from it will be generally the same. By the end of the course, not only should you know the steps you can take, but will have seen several businesses in real life who have done this and had success with it; one example that you will learn in the first class will be the soccer industry during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. 

    The majority of this class will involve performing case studies and using them to understand what steps the businesses used to prevent massive losses. In addition to this, there will be discussions based on reading in hopes that classmates will be able to bounce ideas off of each other and come up with solutions to their problems, relatively free of aid from the teacher. That being said, there will be a few lectures scattered out throughout the semester.

Required readings for the course:

• “Dangerous Markets: Managing in Financial Crisis” (First Edition) by Dominic Barton, Roberto Newell, and Gregory Wilson
• “The upside of the Downturn: Ten Management Strategies to Prevail in the Recession and Thrive in the Aftermath” by Geoff Colvin
• “Coronavirus: Leadership and Recovery: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review (HBR Insights Series)” by the Harvard Business Review

There will not be quizzes or graded assignments based on these readings, but there will be mandatory class discussions in which the participation will be graded. 

At the end of the year there will be a final project in which you and a partner will be given a firm to research into, then given a crisis that faces it. The hope is that you will be able to take all the information from the course until that point and use it to recommend a specific, multi-faceted solution to the class. In some cases there will be no solution, in which case you will have to recognize that the best move is to cut your losses. 

In taking this course, the student will be better able to improve their business management under pressure in a crisis in three areas. The first is in team leadership, part of which cannot be taught, and must be something learned by experience; however, as much as can be taught will be. The second aspect will be public relations and marketing, something that is massively important in times of crises because the way consumers perceive your business will change their demand for your product. Lastly, the third section is made up of the more basic aspects of business management such as production output and employee salaries/ layoffs.

 

 

Citations:

Barton, Dominic, et al. Dangerous Markets: Managing in Financial Crisis. Wiley, 2003.

Colvin, Geoff. The Upside of the Downturn: Ten Management Strategies to Prevail in the Recession and Thrive in the Aftermath. Portfolio, 2009.

Harvard Business Review. Coronavirus: Leadership and Recovery. Harvard Business Review Press, 2020.