University Wide Cross Discipline (UNXD)

This short course will start with an overview of how mapping and spatial analysis are used in real world business, government, and non-profit contexts. Next we’ll cover the basics of digital maps, including file types and map projections as well as best practices for mapping with regards to technology, accessibility, and social responsibility. We will then make choropleth maps, point distribution maps, and heat maps in Tableau, followed by the same in ArcGIS Online, comparing the advantages and disadvantages of each. We’ll publish maps in both tools and explore the best ways to share maps in a variety of contexts. Then we'll explore some of the more advanced mapping options in Tableau, like flow maps and spider maps, and discuss their use cases. Finally, we'll use ArcGIS Online to learn how to do basic spatial analysis tasks, such as summarizing data, choosing best facilities, finding hot spots, and creating distance and drive time buffers, and we'll discuss the business and government questions we could answer with those methods.

This course will cover the basics of the internet and the fundamentals of web design. Students will each build their own basic web page, and add new features to it as they learn new skills. Rather than creating generic pages that could easily be built with cookie-cutter tools, we will go beyond the ordinary by incorporating advanced creative coding techniques into our individual designs. By the end of the course participants will have created their own unique web-based art, using the same tools and skills required to make any web page from scratch. These skills will help you stand apart from the crowd with unique, eye-catching designs. Based on curriculum developed for CCTP-702 Creative Web Development, this course will emphasize skills that empower participants to be life-long-learners, understanding that programming is a practice of problem identification, research, and experimentation.

This brief course will delve into the basics of writing and communicating in a professional space, exploring the rhetorical foundations, best practices, and research skills necessary to turn writing and language into a proactive tool that can be used for ethical action in a multitude of situations. Beginning with a broad perspective, we'll develop an understanding of the rhetorical foundations of writing in a public space. We'll learn about common audiences and contexts in professional settings, discuss how professional writing differs from academic writing, and analyze how empathy can be applied to effective document creation. This will culminate in an overarching understanding of how you can use effective professional writing, and even simple shifts in language, to not only apply for jobs but also create change in whatever professional space you may find yourself in.

This course will explore the theoretical and practical issues related to the design and presentation of complex and multivariate information. Students will learn design elements related to presenting information, which will include design theory, aesthetics, and principles of visual communication. Students will use a variety of tools to process data and to create compelling and effective graphics such as Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Datawrapper, and Flourish. The course will introduce students to the design process: finding, collecting, and exploring data; constructing compelling stories with data; and using design to bring those elements together. Students will be required to identify and critique examples of information design and to create simple and complex graphics. Additional details: Students may be required to conduct online learning so as to maximize contact with the course instructor. Discussion forums through Canvas will also be a part of this course

The primary objective of the course will be to help students develop their own unique financial philosophy and learn some basic principles of personal finance that will help them navigate through the various choices that their future selves may face. - Some of the concepts covered will include: - Value and worth, - Cash management/ expense tracking, - Budgeting, - Investing (short-term goals, medium-term and long-term) - Debt management (credit cards, student loans, car purchase/lease, mortgage), - Credit (credit scores - how to get one and what it is used for), - Taxes (income, property and future tax considerations); etc. Some of the financial principles and terms that students will learn include the time value of money, dollar-cost averaging, net worth, the Rule of 72, diversification, interest (simple, compound), debt-to-income ratio, etc.

We will begin with an overview of what is AI, traditional programming vs AI programming, how accurate is AI, AI vs ML vs NLP, what can AI do for business and government organizations with real-world examples of how it's already being used (in banking, transportation, and weather forecasting for example). Then we'll turn to the role of the cloud and what vendors like AWS do. Thereafter, we'll cover bots, what they can do, how they know what we're asking them to do, anatomy of a typical lexical bot, and the bare minimum of python code you'd need to know to be able to build your own simple bot using tools like Amazon Lex Bot. Faculty Co-Lab Facilitator: Prof. Jason Schloetzer Corporate Co-Lab Partner: Nilanjan Sengupta (MSB alum). Nilanjan leads Accenture's AI work and internal AI training

(ROI): Return on Inclusion in Today’s Workforce Diversity is a reality in our society and workplaces today. Yet, even the most well-intentioned teams can often struggle with managing all types of diversity and maximizing the benefits of such diversity. Inclusion is the way we manage the individual, group and cultural differences that can make our teams stronger. In this course students will learn the fundamentals about how diversity and inclusion can lead to positive outcomes for teams and organizations. The course will also explore challenges felt by diverse teams and how individuals can manage challenges such as unconscious biases. Course activities will focus on leveraging diversity and inclusive practices for higher team performance. Students will also develop communication skills for how to talk about differences and contribute to inclusive team environments. Corporate Co-Lab Partner: PwC Partners Faculty Co-Lab Facilitator: Professor Ella Washington

Business Analytics, NLP, and Textual Data. Companies and many federal agencies have collected a significant amount of unstructured data (documents, images, etc) and they need to digitize all of it to be able to use it and connect it datasets within their environment. This co-lab will provide a foundation in Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to analyze and extract text from a variety of documents to address practical business and organizational problems. There will be four 90-minute sessions to learn (one per week), time in between for teams to create using what they learn, and a fifth 90-minute session for teams to share what they create with a "Shark Tank"-like panel. Day 1: Text Summarization techniques – create small abstracts for each document in the corpus Day 2: Sentiment Analysis - Identify opinions/emotions on sentences/documents/tweets Day 3: Skill extraction - extract skills with years of experience from corpus of resumes Day 4: Use AWS Textract to extract useful documents form PDFs Corporate Partners: Damon Griggs, CEO of Dovel Technologies and Georgetown MBA alumnus; and Rod Fontecilla, Ph.D. | SVP, Chief Innovation Officer, and Chief Data Scientist, Dovel Technologies. Dovel is a 2000+ employee firm headquartered in Northern Virginia and serving a variety of public and private clients, especially in health IT and life sciences. Their work involves advanced data analytics and AI. Faculty Partner: Prof. Jason Schloetzer, McDonough School of Business

Idol Fellows enrolled in this course will explore integral professional development topics that will prepare them to succeed in their internship this summer, and into their future early careers. Some of the concepts covered will include: identifying and leveraging strengths, goal setting, networking, informational interviews, navigating LinkedIn, honing your professional narrative, and GU resources and supports for career development.

Students will have the opportunity to practice their networking skills at a dinner with alumni from the Idol Fellowship, as well as staff and faculty champions. There will also be a short session on living and working in Washington, DC, so students can deepen their connection to the city this summer, and reflect on being a young professional in an urban environment.

The CALL created the Advancing Women’s Empowerment & Service (AWES) fellowship to establish womens’ leadership and professional empowerment as pillars of the CALL Program. This program is designed to explore the major themes regarding the intersections of women, leadership, and power. As a group, students will interrogate the concepts of leadership and gender, and how their interactions affect professional choices and outcomes.

The Forum I is open only to students admitted to into the John Carroll Fellows Initiative. For current information on the forum and the CFI please contact Professor John Glavin (glavinj@georgetown.edu).

The Forum II is open only to students admitted to into the Carroll Fellows Initiative and who have completed the Forum I. For current information on the forum and the CFI please check http://gervaseprograms.georgetown.edu/carroll/.

Mastering the Hidden Curriculum introduces and equips incoming first generation and low-income college students with the skills and cultural capital to navigate Georgetown’s academic community and collegiate environment. The course combines a multidisciplinary approach to examine the research and theory on first generation and low-income (FGLI) college students and complicates the discourse on identity. By the end of the course, students gain knowledge of available GU support systems, tools for academic empowerment, and a greater recognition of their strengths as scholars from first generation and/or low-income backgrounds.

Borrowing upon Georgetown’s Jesuit values such as the value of reflection, discernment, and the power of accompaniment, this course is specifically created for you as first-generation, soon-to-be graduates. Post-grad life poses a new set of challenges that might include less financial security than your continuing-generation peers who may have a financial safety net, networks, and stronger professional guidance. Tools to manage complexity around money, your relationship to money, and decision-making will be critical. The biggest aim for this course is to help you build on the resilience you developed throughout college as you transition to your next chapter. This course will provide structure and space for you to engage and interact around a variety of topics related to what GU-GSP alums identified as the the most important considerations to make in your post-grad life. We will combine an academic lens with a tangible, practical lens on financial literacy, identity, and personal and professional relationships. This course will be a launching point to solidify your community of allies in not facing any of these challenges alone. Through this course, our aim is to: ● Empower you to leverage your “first gen mindset” as essential to life after college ● Dispel the myth that “everyone else has everything figured out” ● Offer practical support and preparation for the “fall-off-the-cliff” feeling many graduates experience ● Provide structure and space for you to critically reflect on and prepare for the next decade

UNXD 1130 CBL: Social Action is a 1-credit, community-based, experiential course offered through Georgetown University's Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching, and Service (CSJ). Students integrate their academic studies with direct or indirect community engagement work of their choice. While most of the learning takes place in the community, UNXD 1130 participants meet asynchronously for reflective sessions, read pertinent scholarly work on critical social activism, compose three reflective activities and contribute to discussion board reflections over the course of the semester. Participation in UNXD 130 requires the completion of an interest form in which students explain the connection between coursework and community-based work. For more information and to complete this interest form, visit https://csj.georgetown.edu/unxd1130/. The course is taken as a "pass/fail." This class will meet starting 1/20/26 to 4/28/26.

The one credit course, UNXD 351: Social Justice Leadership & Immersion, is designed to enhance students’ learning and commitment to social justice by offering the space and skills needed for meaningful and reflective social action. All students enrolled in the course must be current trip leaders or board members in the program. Through the study of immersion pedagogies and experiential learning theories, students will examine the mission and vision of the Alternative Breaks Program. Using the text, Working Side by Side: Creating Alternative Breaks as Catalysts for Global Learning, Student Leadership, and Social Change, students will deepen their knowledge of effective and ethical immersion experiences and apply it all through assignments, such as writing a social action plan. Course assignments will directly impact the students’ trips and their immersion work in the community. The course sessions will take place throughout the Spring semester, allowing for the students to learn about social justice leadership and immersion before, during and after the trip.

This course will be an exploration of the Bridges to Social Justice (Pathways of Public Service and Community Engagement) model that details six possibilities by which we can make a contribution to the common good (direct service, community-engaged research, philanthropy, policy and politics, community organizing, and social entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility). In this course, students will identify the ways in which their own interests, gifts, and leadership practices align with these bridges and how they may use these to affect social change throughout their lifetimes.

This course is designed to continue discussions begun in GOVT 040, Comparative Political Systems, in Fall 2020, by engaging emerging political issues in a global context. Employing a small-group discussion format, and short readings, videos, or podcasts as the launching point for conversation, it will foster integration of academic understandings of key trends of political and social life and students’ lived experience both at Georgetown and in the communities in which they currently reside during the pandemic. Course Objectives and Goals: This course has two main goals: 1) Foster an ongoing sense of friendship and community among Georgetown students during this time of pandemic, building on shared interests in political and social issues in a global context. 2) Deepen understanding and personal reflection on key political and social issues around the globe today, including issues of governance, democracy and autocracy, identity, ethnicity, gender, distribution and inequality, educational opportunity, and social and political change. Choice of which issues to take up will be made in consultation with the students enrolled, and it is hoped that these will intersect with topics emerging in their other courses at Georgetown.

Welcome to Facilitation Skills for Dialogue! This is an offering of Georgetown University’s intergroup dialogue program A Different Dialogue, part of the Doyle Engaging Difference Program at the Center for New Designs in Learning & Scholarship (CNDLS). Intergroup dialogue is an approach to education that engages students from two or more social identity groups in facilitated and sustained exchange across cultural and social divides, around a central topic. The educational goals of A Different Dialogue center: raising awareness/consciousness of personal and social identities and of social systems; relationship-building across sociopolitically and historically situated differences and conflict; and ultimately fostering individual and collective capacities to promote social justice. This process asks students to engage in genuine dialogue, which — different from debate, in which participants typically listen to gain advantage — we believe affords opportunities for a deeper understanding of the issues at hand. Over the course of A Different Dialogue sessions, groups engage in four sequenced stages of intergroup dialogue: (1) group beginnings — forming and building relationships; (2) exploring differences and commonalities of experience; (3) exploring and dialoguing about hot topics; and (4) action planning and alliance building. Dialogues are structured, co-facilitated spaces. In this one-credit course, students will gain the tools needed to skillfully and confidently co-facilitate groups of their peers within intergroup dialogues and other small group settings. The course mirrors the structure of dialogues, offering students one credit and meeting for either seven or eight, face-to-face, two-hour sessions. The classes themselves are a mix of seminar-style instruction, in which students would read and discuss texts on critical pedagogy and the practice of thoughtful facilitation, as well as receive a firm grounding in the subject matter of the dialogues (privilege, power, identity, and the various –isms in a social and historical context). By the end of the course, these conversations will be co-facilitated by pairs of the students in order to build their comfort with facilitation and to give their instructors and peers the opportunity to assess them and provide feedback on their technique. Interspersed throughout the sessions will also be practical opportunities for the facilitators to experience dialogic pedagogy and activities that they might employ in their facilitation practice.

**Interested students must complete this short google form application: https://ctl.georgetown.edu/programs/hoyas-and-highlanders. Ready for a new view? Power of Dialogue: Deconstructing the Rural-Urban Divide (POD) is a 3-credit experiential learning trip held for students from Georgetown and Radford Universities in Appalachia and Washington, D.C., for one week in mid-May and classes in September (see section note for specific dates). This immersive experience will be followed by class sessions (at mutually-agreeable times for students) and final presentations in the Fall semester. Students spend the first half of the May immersive experience in Appalachia exploring in-depth conflict resolution skills through interactive simulations and exercises, theater modalities, exciting outdoor activities, and learning more about Appalachian culture. Outdoor activities include canoeing, ropes course, hiking, and visiting rural communities. The program continues for a three-day session held in Washington, D.C. Students immerse themselves in the D.C. community and explore issues salient to urban development, with the aim of further developing skills in dialogue and cultural dexterity explored during the first part of the program. Site visits include Anacostia, Capitol Hill, and other historic D.C. neighborhoods.

Students learn how to share their story verbally, in writing, and how this connects to vocational options and career strategies such as writing resumes, interviewing, and networking. This course prepares students for life after Georgetown including pathways leading to employment, graduate school, fellowships, or service.

Georgetown’s Pathways to Social Justice (PSJ) common curriculum prepares students to critically analyze historical and contemporary power differentials. A cornerstone of this requirement is the one-credit University Seminar on Race, Power, and Justice at GU (UNXD 1200), which is designed to ensure that every student at Georgetown develops a baseline vocabulary for discussing racial differences and marginalization. Students will be introduced to the university’s history and relation to the city, nation, and world through conversations with experts and exploration of resources across campus and in the Washington, DC region that address issues of race, power, and justice. It will model having constructive conversations on difficult issues and help to provide students with a sense of Georgetown’s diverse community. This seminar will provide the foundation for each student’s engagement with other PSJ-attributed “overlay” courses offered across Georgetown’s Main Campus. Every Georgetown student must take two three-credit PSJ overlay courses before graduation.

UNXD 1200 Race, Power, and Justice at GU will meet over six weeks. Enrollment will consist of an in-person or asynchronous lecture paired with an in-person discussion section taken concurrently. All first-year and transfer students will be assigned and pre-enrolled in a live lecture section during the first half of the semester, Mod A OR during the second half of the semester, Mod B. An asynchronous lecture option will be available for each half semester. The discussion sections, each led by a member of the faculty, will engage students in discussing the lecture events and complementary readings.

Students should review their in-person lecture assignment in GU Experience. In the event of a scheduling conflict - or simply by preference - students may move their enrollment to the asynchronous lecture section of the same assigned half-semester (Mod A or B). If room capacity is reached in the in-person lecture, students may be enrolled in an overflow lecture section with a synchronous video feed of the live lecture -or- the asynchronous lecture. All students should enroll in a concurrent discussion section in the same half-semester as their assigned lecture section. Any enrollment change must be made before the respective add/drop deadlines for Mod A and B sections.

Students should consult with their Advising Deans for general questions. Students may reach Professor Adam Rothman for questions regarding academic expectations and accommodations.

Full Title: Race, Class, and the City: Detroit Intersections Using Detroit as a case study, this course will consider ways of thinking about race, class, and place – and how they shape each other. Drawing on a wide range of artistic and analytical materials, we will consider the interpretive tools that different disciplines bring to our understanding of race, class, and the city. Students will work independently to explore varied sources, and together we will build an interdisciplinary review of Detroit’s intersections.

Title: Hoya Saxa: Values for Self and Community Description: Learn about Georgetown’s distinctive place in Catholic higher education and discover how key values (Community in Diversity, Contemplation in Action, Faith that Does Justice, and Care for Our Common Home) invite us to sharpen our moral vision and character for our own well-being and the world’s. Together, we will examine our human and ecological interdependence as an overlapping religious and secular basis for these values and learn from the past to shape our future. In addition to short academic readings, students will read stories and poems, watch movies and engage with guest lectures in order to reflect on and imagine how they can foster and honor their values. Come ready to discuss what we as a community do well and what we can do better.

Full Title: 3D Design for Real-World Interventions "“How can we use 3D printed objects installed in public spaces to give visibility to issues of injustice, and to manifest visions of a more equitable future?” In this 1-Credit course, students will learn to use simple 3D modeling tools like TinkerCAD to develop “Intervention Objects,” objects designed to be installed in public spaces with the purpose of inspiring joy, reflection, and/or civic engagement. In addition to learning the practical skills of 3D modeling, students will also engage in readings on the history and practice of Guerilla Art; participate in discussion groups to develop their own identity, creative vision, and goals; practice exercises in ideation and iteration; and ultimately design, 3D print, and install their own Intervention Object. Students will observe the public’s response to their object, and reflect on how the reaction compares to their expectations. "

"Design Justice” is a 1-credit course offered by the Design faculty of Georgetown University's Ethics Lab. Together we’ll explore how norms and values are present in seemingly value-neutral products and systems, and introduce Design approaches for reimagining more equitable alternatives. This course follows a ""virtual studio” model, in which core content and exercises are shared online for asynchronous engagement, supplemented with synchronous online sessions for discussion and small-group critiques focused on developing students' craft. Students will gain experience working with visual design techniques and be introduced to the Design Justice framework, which is adaptable to collaborative work in any discipline.

Recover, Remember, Respond: Engaging Slavery Via Research and Radical Imagination. As Nikole Hannah-Jones has recently argued, for true justice and equality to be achieved, Americans must account for the centrality of slavery to the development of America and must address what the U.S. owes Black Americans. Yet, many White Americans have resisted such accounting, preferring to erase histories and to forget the structuring legacies of slavery as an American insitutation. At Georgetown, our campus community has often forgotten the histories of Jesuit slaveholding and the sale of 272 people in 1838 by the Jesuits of Maryland. Over the past half-decade, students, faculty, alumni, and the Descendants of the GU272 have sought to recover these histories, to remember the people who were enslaved and sold by the Jesuits, and to respond to these legacies by working together to achieve justice in the present and for the future. In this class, we will review and engage with this work. We will engage different ways of exploring and understanding the histories and different ways of responding to the legacies of Slavery in America, with special interest in Georgetown’s own history of Jesuit slaveholding. We will engage with guests including faculty, members of the GU272 Descendant Community, and Georgetown student researchers, artists, and activists. We will consider projects including the Georgetown Slavery Archive, the Georgetown Memory Project, the Names Project (an effort to memorialize the 66 enslaved people who were buried on Georgetown’s campus), two creative projects of radical imagination undertaken by descendants Meli Colomb and Jessica Tilson, and the 2019 Georgetown Student Referendum in which a majority of undergraduates approved a student fee as an effort at reparations for Georgetown’s involvement with slavery. Students will have opportunities to practice research methods and to develop ideas for creative projects as a radical response to the persistent legacies of Slavery.

Leadership in and for a Just Community. The term “leadership” shows up everywhere these days, sometimes with reverence and sometimes with skepticism. What does it mean in your daily life? Leadership for and in a Just Community is designed to introduce students to leadership theory and consider their role in practicing leadership on campus, in their academic discipline, and within a larger community. The course centers on leadership as a relational process, beginning with introspection, self-exploration, and reflection, and considering the effects of identity on leadership practice. This course will entail reflection on leadership issues and strategies through a critical lens to challenge widely held ideas about leadership, and prepare students to be effective in working with individuals, groups and organizations in leading and managing change on campus and beyond.

Outside of Georgetown’s White-Gravenor Hall sits an iconic commemorative bench and statue honoring Holocaust witness, Polish World War II hero, spy and diplomat, Jan Karski, one of the most influential and legendary professors ever to teach at Georgetown University. This course explores Karski’s story and its contemporary resonance centered around Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski, a celebrated original theatrical production created by The Laboratory of Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown starring Oscar-Nominated actor David Strathairn. Karski’s remarkable legacy speaks to the importance of moral courage; of bearing witness to history; of respect for others, especially those who are different; of the responsibility to question; and of the role of the individual in speaking out, even when the message is not “convenient.” Using Karski’s life and teachings as inspiration, we will examine our own relationship to the current historical moment, how individuals may bear witness to history and, following Karski’s example, “shake the conscience of the world.” This course will include several guest speakers, including actor David Strathairn as well as playwrights Derek Goldman and Clark Young. Additionally, students will visit and view Karksi archival materials as well as have opportunities for site visits in Washington, DC.

Full Title: Seeing and Hearing Race from the Cinematograph to TikTok The shadows of minstrelsy pervade American popular culture. As the dominant form of entertainment of the 19th century, minstrel shows shaped everything from the structure of performances, such as vaudeville and television variety shows, to, most perniciously, stereotypes that still operate today. This course will look at representations of race in popular film and music over the past century. We will primarily explore portrayals of African-Americans, but we will also consider those of Asian, Native American, and Latinx peoples.

Understanding and Navigating Health Inequities in the Time of Covid. This course addresses the intersecting crises of Covid-19, Economic Downturn, Health Disparities, and Racism. Beginning with an historical approach, we will look at how diagnosis and sociopolitical power relations have interacted in the last 400 years, pathologizing race and gender, and rationalizing colonialism and the institution of slavery. We look to these histories to understand how health inequities have been produced and perpetuated in concert with forces that produce racism, poverty, and gendered inequities. We will then engage in implications for social responsibility and human health in our communities in the present, through applied activities and guest speakers, fostering collaborative thinking towards change. This course will involve a blend of historical and scholarly writings, memoir and journalistic writings, as well as literature and art as we seek to trouble the narratives that have covered over and perpetuated histories of violence and inequity that have contributed to our current crises.

Full Title: Intergroup Dialogue: Engaging race and ethnicity In a multicultural society, discussions about issues of racial and ethnic conflict and community are needed to facilitate understanding among different racial/ethnic and other social/cultural groups. In this intergroup dialogue course, students will participate in semi-structured meetings across racial identity groups. Students will discuss relevant reading material and will explore group experiences in various social and institutional contexts. Participants will examine narratives and historical, psychological, and sociological materials to help explore who we are, what we know and understand about each other, and how race and racism impacts our lives and relationships. The goal is to create a setting in which students engage in open and constructive dialogue, learning, and exploration concerning issues of intergroup relations, conflict, and community.

Entrepreneurial Thought and Action for the Common Good. Learning to think and act like an entrepreneur could be the most valuable life skill you acquire in your time at Georgetown, even if you never want to start a business. Entrepreneurship is one of the world’s most powerful forces for positive change, yet it is often misunderstood. This course will help students to broaden their view of entrepreneurship beyond popular Shark Tank or Silicon Valley mythology and to recognize how entrepreneurial thought and action are relevant and accessible to EVERYONE - no matter what major or career path you choose. In a world of ever-increasing disruption, change, and uncertainty, we will explore ways that entrepreneurial leaders can use creativity and innovation to solve important problems, and we will introduce students to resources that will help them become more entrepreneurial in their chosen field.

By all accounts, these are among the most challenging times to be a student and young professional. This course will focus on aspects of personal well-being and flourishing that are basic to human health. It provides an overview of essential topics and opportunities to apply principles of well-being to your life even during difficult times. Physical, social, and emotional health along with ways to maintain optimal health while living in community with others are central to the course.

We are living through a period of rapid and dynamic change. Worldwide pandemics and health crises, health and social justice inequities, and political upheaval can contribute to feelings of instability, uncertainty, and anxiety. This course will focus on vital components that contribute to community and personal wellbeing and how to optimize wellbeing in your daily life.

Full Title: Black Lives Matter: Facing Racism, Injustice, and Systemic Oppression This course seeks to respond, in part, to the need to develop the intellectual and spiritual resources needed to combat racism and dismantle systems of oppression in contemporary American society. We will explore social, cultural, and political constructions of race in the U.S. past and present. We will collectively contemplate questions related to race, social inequality, and violence in the making of American democratic society, as we aim to strike a balance between courageous inquiry and action.

Challenging Gentrification: Toward a More Just City. What does gentrification mean? Why do neighborhood gentrify? Who benefits from this process? How do urban policymakers respond to gentrification? In this seminar, we will interrogate the process of gentrification through an analysis of Washington, DC. By investigating the persistent legacy of racial segregation and disinvestment from largely African-American neighborhoods, students will begin to understand the history of American cities as a contested site for gentrification. We will discuss questions about the rights of long-term citizens to shape their own communities, the unequal distribution of benefits that result from neighborhoods change, and the policies enacted by local governments that impact gentrification. Ultimately, the course aims to provide students with a toolkit to participate in the creation of more equitable, just cities. Students will develop skills to engage as critical urbanists with a deeper understanding of the forces shaping contemporary urban life.

Full Title: Thriving in College (And Beyond)

Policing in An Era of Mass Detention and Deportation.Over 11 million migrants are left out of any form of immigration protection, while another 17 million people live in a household with at least one family member who is unauthorized. Under current immigration law, anyone without authorization to be in the United States is subject to detention and deportation. Surfacing unauthorized individuals requires racialized surveillance and policing that is part of and fortifies a broader carcerality that is not exclusive to immigration enforcement. The expansive immigration carceral state transpires alongside racial profiling, brutal policing, and mass incarceration of Black individuals. This is most clear when police, ICE, and Border Patrol work together in a range of policing activities: from routine traffic stops to immigration enforcement raids. Through a framework of the criminalization of immigrants, this course explores these critical linkages between racialized and brutal policing, the rise of mass incarceration and Black disenfranchisement, and immigrant detention and deportation. A key theme in the course will be refusal, resistance, and resilience. In addition to scholarly materials, we also will read manifestos and other rebellious documents produced by members of targeted communities.

This course explores the kinds of care made possible through disability justice-informed ways of knowing and being, particularly disability justice's commitment to radical access. It examines anti-racist disabled activism and organizing, including in the time of COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement, to provide a blueprint for creating structures of care to address the needs of Georgetown students and their communities. It will focus on mental health, collective trauma, student experiences, and access-centered pedagogy, and will draw on wisdom and offerings from queer and trans disabled people of color.

In a moment of particularly intense division within an already highly ideologically, socially, and politically polarized era, we find ourselves experiencing what we might call a "conversation emergency" in which meaningful, productive conversation itself is increasingly elusive. Yet so many of us yearn for alternatives that cut against the prevailing grain of silos and slogans, “us and them” thinking, retreat and avoidance, rigidity and the circling of wagons. In order to meet this moment with wisdom, these times call on us to slow down and clarify our vision, strengthen our resolve, and acquire the skills for more productive engagement with one another when significant social, ideological or political differences are present among us. We can derive great benefit for ourselves and others from experiences that nurture our resilience, fortify our empathy, inspire our search for unity of purpose while at the same time honoring our real differences, and build diverse communities equipped to forge new ways forward together. In this course we will co-create such an alternative way of being together that is both substantive and exciting. The course will feature a creative and supportive exploration of our own experiences* of today's “conversation emergency” through the In Your Shoes performance technique-based process. Though absolutely no theater experience is at all necessary nor presumed**, we will also co-create and present a very informal performance piece (what we call a “share out”) for peers and friends, scripted directly from our interactions throughout the process. We will thereby widen the circle to include the audience in our experience and offer them a glimpse into what is possible when we create communities of trust in challenging times. In this course, we’ll do all that and through guest speakers, we’ll gain some exposure to organizations engaged in a range of other approaches to dialogue and working together across differences. * All prompts are very specifically designed to create space for participants to respond with any level of personal sharing or vulnerability they like - from a little to a lot. Participants are asked to share simply what they’d like others to know. Responses always run the gamut from lighthearted and humorous to very personal and serious, and everything in between. All these types of responses are valued and celebrated. **In the majority of In Your Shoes experiences, most participants consider themselves “non-performers.” For the share out participants will not have to memorize anything - scripts will be in hand. But serious performers are welcome too, of course.

Drawing, Technically: Sociotechnical Systems Edition — This 1-credit studio course taught by Ethics Lab faculty is an introduction to drawing, technically… but more than that it’s an exploration of the ways in which we shape our tools—and how thereafter they shape us. Through doodling, diagramming, mapping, and more, we’ll experience the discursive and epistemic power of drawing to better understand, explain, and ideate on complex, interdisciplinary challenges at the intersection of tech and society.

We are constantly shaping and being shaped by our environment, that is layered with built and natural systems. Packed into this are the layers of human interactions with and within these systems. This 1-credit course offered by Ethics Lab faculty seeks to unravel those systems hidden in plain sight. Using exploratory design methods that center responsible play, reflection and curious awareness we will be building interpretative maps of every kind – sensory, participatory, colored with memory, intuition and embodied experiences to identify our roles in transitioning towards just environmental futures. Participants will learn to apply design-led-research methods along with basic drawing/collaging techniques (analog and digital) as a way to responsibly navigate complex environmental systems.

This is a required gateway module (UNXD-200) that introduces students to the challenges in childhood course cluster and its major content. This 1 credit module runs the first 4 weeks of the semester and focuses on theory and research related to children’s physical, cognitive, emotional and behavioral health and the social contexts in which they live, learn, and play. The gateway module is organized around key influences that challenge or protect children during their journey to adulthood: genetic, prenatal and environmental factors; family, peers, and significant adults; educational and health systems; mass media and community exposure; and political, socio-cultural, and economic forces. The module introduces students to these complex and interacting pressures on children’s development, their biopsychosocial origins, and their impact on educational, economic, health, and mental health outcomes. This course runs for 2 class periods on Thursday mornings with a 1 class recitation section on Tuesday mornings. In combination with 2 other 1 credit modules from the CC&S course series these 3 credits can be bundled to make a course. See also UNXD 201 and 203 for more information on this semester's CC&S course modules. Students may accrue credits across 2 semesters and bundle into a course.

The UNXD 200 is a prerequisite for students to enroll in this module. In this module which runs for the second 6 weeks of the semester, students can enroll in the community-based learning course (UNXP-201). This course brings students out into the Washington, DC community to youth- and family-oriented educational settings and social service agencies. Course faculty travel with students to these placements. While on-site, students and faculty engage in direct observation and field study of children in context and under the guidance of expert professionals. Community-based learning is an innovative and immersive educational experience. The course seeks to foster students’ understanding of children’s unique health and psychological needs, and emerging social relationship structures in an up-close manner with ample opportunity for learning and reflection. This course runs for 2 class periods on Thursday mornings with a 1 class recitation section on Tuesday mornings. In combination with 2 other 1 credit modules from the CC&S course series these 3 credits can be bundled to make a course. See also UNXD 200 and 203 for more information on this semester's CC&S course modules. Students may accrue credits across 2 semesters and bundle into a course.

UNXD 200 is a prerequisite for students to enroll in this module. UNXD 203 is a component of the Challenges in Childhood and Society (CC&S) course cluster. This is a 1 credit, 5 week module that focuses on contemporary issues in early childhood mental health. Early childhood mental health is synonymous with social-emotional development and serves as a foundation for healthy relationships and development across the lifespan. Using the ecological systems theory of development, the module examines typical and atypical social-emotional development in childhood, the impact of trauma and early adversity on development, the importance of caregivers, and stigma associated with mental health. The module highlights evidence-based research and applications across the continuum of promotion, prevention, and treatment. The module runs twice a week, with class periods on Thursday mornings and recitation periods on Tuesday mornings. In combination with 2 other 1 credit modules from the CC&S cluster these 3 credits can be bundled to make a course. See also UNXD 200, 201, 202 for more information on Challenges in Childhood and Society modules. It is possible for students to enroll in 4 modules. Students may accrue credits across 2 semesters and bundle into a course as well. ?

This course focuses on theory and research related to children’s physical, cognitive, emotional and behavioral health and the social contexts in which they live, learn, and play. Students will also go out into the Washington, DC community to youth- and family-oriented educational settings and social service agencies.

This course builds off UNXD-204 by expanding on the theories and community engagement principles introduced in the previous module. Students will spend some class sessions engaging with community partners in DC, and will also do a case study on a current issue related to child health and society.

The UNXD-204 is a prerequisite for students to enroll in this module. In this module that runs for the second half of the semester, students will continue along the Challenges in Childhood and Society thematic pathway from community engagement to public policy in childhood and society by analyzing and evaluating programs and policies serving children and families in a systematic nature. More specifically, its purview includes the origin and effect of health, education, and social policies on children and families using a legal lens and with an international focus. This course will further explore the juvenile and criminal justice systems as contexts in which a significant number of children and adolescents develop. The community-based learning component can include visits to local courts, correctional facilities, and legislative proceedings, among others. While on-site, students and faculty engage in direct observation, interviews, and/or field study of children, families, and system stakeholders in context and under the guidance of expert professionals. Community-based learning is an innovative and immersive educational experience. The course seeks to foster students’ understanding of children’s unique health and psychological needs, and emerging social relationship structures in an up-close manner with ample opportunity for learning and reflection. This course runs for 2 class periods on Thursday mornings. In combination with other 1.5 credit modules from our thematic pathway series, the 3 credits can be bundled to make a whole course. See also UNXD-204 for more information on this semester's thematic pathway course module.

How can we invite members of our campus community to meaningfully engage with others who hold different perspectives, backgrounds, beliefs, and faiths? And how might the Georgetown campus or experience change when we engage across silos and divides? Since 2018, the In Your Shoes (IYS) project, created by the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, has been a way to move beyond social divides by illuminating the hopes, fears, and dreams that animate the daily lives of students through performance and dialogue. Students in this course will build upon the IYS experience by learning and practicing critical facilitation strategies used in the IYS approach. By the end of the class, students will help co-facilitate IYS Dialogues between students, faculty, and staff to illuminate the different perspectives on identity and learning on our shared campus. Students will also present on IYS to audiences outside of the classroom community. Interested students do not need to have any previous performance or facilitation experience, though previous experience with IYS is strongly encouraged (students can also take the 1-credit IYS class offered in Spring 2022). To enroll in the course, students will need to complete a short interest form to receive instructor permission.

The CALL Global Scholars program helps you learn in real-time how to leverage your study abroad experience to advance your personal and professional goals. A two-part for-credit program, Part I is integrated seamlessly with Georgetown’s study abroad programs. The program offers flexible opportunities to engage in individual and peer-to-peer reflection activities intended to derive meaning from your social, intercultural, academic and personal experiences abroad. In Part II, you will co-create your own learning experience – from reading lists to project development – building on your own documentation from Fall and apply critical reflection on your enhanced “global citizenship” and intercultural competence to help you translate your global learning into the language of describing your skills and abilities. Your final project will produce a significant artifact of your study abroad experiences: an overarching, reflective cover letter, blog, podcast, mini-documentary, video, web site, etc

Through the lens of the Georgetown University Health Justice Alliance, this 1-credit course will introduce you to the Medical-Legal Partnership (MLP) model of healthcare delivery. MLP is an innovative approach to healthcare that recognizes that some barriers to good health have legal remedies. In an MLP, doctors and other healthcare professionals work with lawyers to improve the health and lives of vulnerable populations in ways that neither medicine nor law can alone. This class will provide foundational knowledge about MLPs and how their collaborative approach to health and justice can be used to improve the lives of historically underserved and marginalized communities of color.

This course is one of many courses in the yearlong Core Pathway on Climate Change, open to all students. Each semester in the pathway students MUST pair together two 1.5 credit 7-week courses focused in the area of Climate Change. The other courses for this semester can be found using the “core pathways” attribute or by visiting the core pathways website. All courses in the Core Pathway on Climate Change are offered during the same time slot TR: 2:00-3:15PM so that students can enroll in two over the course of the semester. To learn more about the courses and Core Pathways, visit www.corepathways.georgetown.edu.

Students will be introduced to the history of Leadership Theory from the “Great Man” theory of "born leaders" to many modern leadership theories and models including Adaptive Leadership, Transformational Leadership, and Systems Thinking. The course will help students build the knowledge base and skills necessary to be an effective leader, teammate, and follower in a variety of settings.  This class is intensive in reading, reflection, case studies, and in-class discussion. A group presentation provides students with an opportunity to critically explore one particular theory through the lens of their own experience. Students will assess their personal leadership qualities and consider ways to incorporate course content into various life experiences.

The term “leadership” shows up everywhere these days, sometimes with reverence and sometimes with skepticism. What does it mean in your daily life? Is leadership something you “do,” something you “are,” a combination, or something else entirely? Leadership in Action, Leadership in Reflection is designed to introduce students to leadership theory and consider their role in practicing leadership on campus, in their academic discipline, and within a larger community. The course centers on leadership as a relational process, focused on the connection between introspection, self-exploration, and reflection, and considering the effects of identity on leadership practice. This course will entail reflection on the practice of leadership within the community at Georgetown, consideration of contemporary leadership issues, and critical lenses and strategies to challenge widely held ideas about leadership. This course is designed to engage students to be effective in working with individuals, groups and organizations in leading and managing change on campus and beyond.

Students will discuss and practice a wide variety of speaking skills. We will start with how to introduce/present yourself, how to speak up in small meetings and then move to delivering short remarks, giving speeches and dealing with the press/public. Sessions will feature discussion of videos as well as practical exercises to build the speaking skills critical for success in careers. Students will have extensive in-classroom practice. Guest speakers will offer differing perspectives and their personal tips for effective speaking.

This course will focus on inequities in health care coverage, including insurance and public programs, and efforts to create a more equitable system. We will explore barriers to health coverage based on race, ethnicity, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status and how such barriers affect the ability to be healthy. We will also look at how laws, public health programs, and efforts by employers and insurers have advanced health equity and access to care.

In this Convergence Lab, you will work with a multi-disciplinary team of HJA faculty and clinicians to help explore and develop a role for undergraduates with HJA. Using a design-thinking process, students will examine gaps in HJA’s current services, research similar undergraduate models, and engage with key HJA stakeholders and community members to advance this goal.

Consulting for Social Impact will provide an opportunity to not only learn about the rapidly evolving social impact sector--which includes nonprofits, foundations, socially responsible businesses, and movements--but also a golden opportunity to explore where you may fit into that work as a future career as you offer consulting services to those very organizations.

Full Title: Building a Social Impact Consciousness SeminarThis course is part philosophical, part practical, and part introspective designed to help students build a holistic understanding of how social change works, its potential ills despite good intentions, and how to understand our individual roles in doing good. Designed to integrate their social impact internship experience with their learnings, students will wrestle with the fundamental question of “what it means to do good” and how to navigate the inherent trade-offs that exist within a complex system. Students will explore this question through the lens of different roles within the impact ecosystem such as how policymakers may create better laws that protect and support residents, or how business leaders can steward its resources to invest in the communities they operate in, or even how activists use grassroot efforts to raise awareness to key social causes.

Between the moment you received your Georgetown acceptance letter and the moment you cross the stage at Commencement, there are thousands of decisions to make and experiences to enjoy. How can you ensure that the Georgetown you create for yourself is true to your values, interests, untapped potential, and developing identity? In this course, we'll use readings, discussions, podcasts, videos, written reflections, and activities developed in the Life Design Labs at Stanford and Johns Hopkins to think deeply about personal formation, consider big questions about the purpose of an undergraduate education, design a Georgetown that aligns with your goals and values, build a life and career that is meaningful and fulfilling.

What are my values and how do I live by them in my personal and professional life? What does success mean to me? Who do I aspire to become and how might my journey lead me there? How do I build and maintain meaningful relationships after college? By grappling with these questions (and others), this course will help you design your post-Georgetown journey, taking into account not just what you hope to do (i.e. your career) but who you aspire to become. We use a range of readings and design thinking activities to help you identify and live your values, explore and prototype future pathways through a deeper engagement with Georgetown and DC, and build a life of meaning and purpose.

This course is an opportunity for students continuing their studies at the Capitol Applied Learning Labs for a second semester to deepen their internship experiences and expand on what they learned through their first Internship Seminar. This course is part of the Capitol Applied Learning Labs. CALL students have first priority. If you're a CALL student, you will be manually enrolled in the course. Contact thecall@georgetown.edu for more information, or if you are not a CALL student but you want to take this course. This class is taken in conjunction with a 17.5 hour internship

This course is part of the Capitol Applied Learning Labs.

This course is part of the Capitol Applied Learning Labs

This course fuses entertainment and art with activism and advocacy. The artistic approach is a distinct strategy to penetrate minds and hearts. Change society through entertainment, media, performance, and all forms of art. This course focuses on the process from inception to creation and implementation; how to do this and how to solidify and refine this approach, with attention to the intention, the message, the target audience, and the Production. How do you create content as advocacy and activism? It starts with self, self-identity, self-representation, and self-expression. It leads to community and initiates presentation, representation, and communication. Content Creation is about sharing a narrative – sharing a story. This workshop leads active content creators, artists, and creatives to Create Content that Creates Change.

This experiential course will introduce students to the expansive world of historical research, including the use of archival resources. Students will have the opportunity to visit some collections* in the city and engage with experts, including from Georgetown. They will become acquainted with research involving on-site and digitized collections, as well as critically thinking about and conducting oral history work. At the end of the class, students will produce a short project, from a few different assignment options, employing what they learned in the module. This course is part of the Capitol Applied Learning Labs and will be taken place at the Capitol Campus located in 500 1st NW. CALL students receive priority registration. If you are not a CALL student, and you want to take this course you may join the waitlist at https://forms.gle/3d7xZcAhdADNsUmm7. If you're a CALL student, you will be manually enrolled in the course. For more information, visit http://thecall.georgetown.edu or contact thecall@georgetown.edu.

In this course, students will learn about historical and contemporary immigration in DC, immigrant communities, social justice issues in the past and present, and the many organizations that advocate and support immigrants. We will engage with a variety of materials across a range of disciplines and methodologies. Students will select a topic that relates to the course and create a digital story that deepens our understanding about immigration in the nation’s capital.

This course is designed to serve as an introduction to the Cultural Humanities and Arts at Georgetown by allowing students to walk in the footsteps of the literary, political and artistic history of Washington DC and through ongoing conversations with influential DC-based authors, musicians, photographers and filmmakers. From the Civil War era to the Jazz Age to the present-day life of historic DC neighborhoods such as Shaw, Columbia Heights and the U Street District, students will examine the city explore aits embodiment of the intersection of topics such as race, identity, economic justice, slavery, displacement, incarceration, gentrification and immigration. Students in this course will gain an up-close understanding of the influence and cultural contexts of literary luminaries such as Walt Whitman, Henry Adams and Zora Neale Hurston through walking tours with literary historians. They will visit an array of famous DC museums and art galleries and conduct interviews with invited guests. Ultimately, students will learn to use critical humanities frameworks to analyze and deconstruct institutions of power, reflect upon DC’s past as agent in its present and acquire a foundational knowledge of the communities, challenges and crises at the center of Washington DC today.

Art for the Emergency: Climate Change Storytelling and Performance. How do we tell stories of climate crisis? Since long before the advent of the written word, humans have told stories, transmitting the earthly wisdom—and warnings—of our ancestors from generation to generation. But what artistic forms can hold the dizzying complexities of the climate emergency? What tales can capture the interlocked crises of extraction and extermination? What legends invite us to imagine radical futures? With a special emphasis on contemporary performance, this course offers a survey of methodologies for climate storytelling rooted in creative nonfiction, literature, and cultural criticism. While forging connections with DC-based arts and environmental workers, students will craft and present an original climate story as the culmination of a two-credit course (Module A). Students will also have an opportunity to publicly perform their story as part of the Kennedy Center’s upcoming RiverRun Festival for an optional third credit (Module B). This course meets on Fridays for three-hour seminar and studio sessions (including discussion of course materials and creative workshops) and on Saturdays for DC connections (visits to cultural and environmental spaces). Please note that the course does not meet every Friday and Saturday; specific weekends to be determined by instructors. Students must be available Fridays 1-3:30pm and Saturdays 12-4pm as needed.

This is a short course that will introduce some of the theory behind legal argumentation within the context of an environmental case currently active in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. We will look at how lawyers and judges communicate in the formal structure of courtrooms and in the world outside of the courtroom. The goal is to provide perspectives both on the practice of environmental law in a case-specific instance and on how to manage and present an oral argument.

This is not a course on the history of photography. Rather, it is a course about how historians can read photographs as historical evidence. Naturally, this requires some understanding of the physical changes over time in the production process of photographs. But this course focuses more so on the cultural aspects of American history that can be better understood if and when historians can use photographs as primary sources. The course will be taught through a combination of lectures and photograph workshops. No camera or photography experience is required.

This course examines Georgetown University’s historical connections to slavery, the legacy and memory of this history, and the ongoing efforts at reconciliation and repair. Students will read scholarship, explore archives, engage in conversations with members of the GU272 descendant community, and reflect on the meaning of the past for Georgetown’s identity and commitment to justice in the present and future.

This is an introduction to historic preservation, focusing on cultural and material history. Field trips and material workshops in class will provide an “applied component” to what is learned through lectures and readings. Because of limited time, and for ease of application, this course will focus mainly on historic preservation within an American context, but will not neglect global historical patterns shaping the American built environment.

Personal finance worries were deemed the #2 source of stress for college students in 2023 with over half of college students reported seeking services to help them navigate their personal finances. What if students received the dedicated support they need to navigate their financial journey and make healthy money choices? This course aims to empower students to develop a solid foundation in personal finance, manage their money effectively, and navigate the complexities of the modern financial landscape.

Students in the Entrepreneurship Immersion Lab will learn by experiencing first-hand the vortex of a startup company. A cadre of undergrad and graduate students from multiple disciplines will have exclusive access to the day-to-day activities of a real-life early-stage startup so they may experience first-hand the many challenges, difficulties, decisions, and issues faced by an entrepreneur. Note: MBA students may not be eligible to enroll. For more information, contact Professor Jeffrey Reid, jeff.reid@georgetown.edu.

What does it mean to fail? Is it a setback or, after careful examination and reflection, an opportunity to succeed? When we are confronted by failure, our instinct is to often view it as all-encompassing and all-consuming: that it will define us, including our future, forever. Each week, through readings, discussions, podcasts, videos, written reflections, and activities, we will examine the failures of entrepreneurs, researchers, politicians, artists, and other leading figures in the world, and how these innovators/change-makers took stock of their setbacks to inform future decisions. We will also take inventory of our own failures (both at Georgetown and beyond) and examine not what could’ve been done differently, but how we can respond moving forward. In a world so driven by labels, titles, success, and failures, how do we really define ourselves?

This course will enable students to design and develop a book manuscript or podcast season, with a focus on examining a topic or topics where a student has a long-term interest or passion. The program leverages Professor Koester’s “Creator Pedagogy” wherein an individual openly demonstrates their purpose/passions to enhance their credibility in a field, industry or area. This Pedagogy was named USASBE’s 2018 “Most Innovative.” The course is taught using the creation of a product (a non-fiction book or a podcast season). The course is a hands-on experiential style.

In this course you will learn the fundamentals of the book publishing industry. You will explore editorial acquisitions, production, marketing, sales, and the business of publishing. You will create your own hypothetical book and complete a series of small projects that will introduce you to the real world of publishing decision making.

This course is for sophomore students in the Community Scholars Program who identify as first generation scholars. Permission of instructor is required. Email Dean Erin Force at erin.force@georgetown.edu for special registration procedures. The sophomore year is a time of transition between the newness of the first year, when all possibilities are in front of you, and the certainty of the upperclass years, when your direction is more established. Although the sophomore year leaves plenty of time for exploration, you may find yourself feeling uncertainty about the choices before you, as well as pressure to choose quickly. Our goal in this course is to support each other as the sophomore year unfolds and to experiment with and plan for the decisions that will shape the upperclass years. We'll use readings, discussions, podcasts, videos, written reflections, and activities developed in Stanford's Life Design Lab to think deeply about personal formation, consider big questions about the purpose of an undergraduate education, and work toward designing a Georgetown experience that is true to your developing identity, values, interests, and untapped potential.

This one-credit elective is designed to cultivate essential AI fluency and critical literacy, supporting both graduate and undergraduate students in thoughtfully integrating generative AI into their university experience. The course develops AI literacy through technical proficiency and fosters AI fluency as a component of modern academic life and responsible digital citizenship at Georgetown. The course is structured across two complementary layers totaling approximately 12.5 contact hours. Students complete the Applied AI Microcredential (approximately 7 hours, asynchronous), which establishes a shared conceptual foundation. They also attend five synchronous sessions (approximately one hour each), offered both in person and online, organized around three thematic areas: the technical layer, the ethical and social layer, and applied practice and judgment. Activities focus on practical educational applications, such as leveraging AI for research ideation, study techniques, and academic writing, while also examining the ethical, privacy, and contextual limitations of these tools. Foundations of AI sets the curricular foundation for more advanced AI courses at Georgetown, whether approached from a critical, technical, or applied perspective.

The University as a Design Problem is a combination seminar and studio centered on imagining and designing new models for a Georgetown education. This year’s focus will be at the intersection of the environment, justice (especially systemic racism) and high-impact learning experiences. The seminar portion will have two layers: 1) it will ground students in the history and present conditions of environmental racism around the world, with particular emphasis on recognizing the leadership of afflicted communities in defending and healing their land, air, water and lives. Our inquiry into environmental justice will be significantly shaped by Georgetown’s location in Washington D.C., whose present too reflects centuries of violence, as well as the desire to transform the relationships among humans and their homes; 2) the second layer will introduce students to theory and philosophy of education and learning, especially focus on justice and decolonization. The studio portion will focus on using design methodologies to develop and mount educational initiatives that both build upon the efforts of environmental justice activists everywhere and imagine new ways of addressing this urgent and existential moment through innovative new curricula. The primary purpose of the course is to create a community of practice among students, faculty and academic staff around a common problem, inquiry and multi-faceted project.The course is designed for a semester, though it may continue for the whole year if the class community desires it.

The overall goal of the course is to help students make better personal finance decisions. The course has two components. First, the course will help students understand the numbers behind personal financial decisions. Specifically, this part of the course will focus on the how much good (bad) financial decisions can save (cost) individuals. Second, the course will help students understand why they make the financial decisions they do. Specifically, this part of the course will focus on the psychology of financial decisions and how to deal with emotional, social, and family pressures when dealing with money.

Just Mercy is designed for incarcerated students in the PJI Prison Scholars Program who have already taken UNXD-404 Forgotten Humanity of Prisoners. This course builds on that prior course and allows incarcerated students to further their collaboration with main campus Georgetown undergraduates and continue to engage critically with questions of prison and punishment and explore alternatives to our existing system of mass incarceration.

The Georgetown Startup Internship (GSI) Seminar is designed to offer students from across the university access to real-world skills building while working part-time as an intern at a startup, growth-stage company, or international social enterprise where they can apply those skills. The GSI program encourages whole-person learning through our holistic pedagogy combining formal, experiential, and developmental learning. Students will have access to asynchronous training modules to build core professional skills such as emails, meetings, and working remotely, as well as training on networking, informational interviews, sales, presentations, managing up, and more. The seminar includes a leadership coaching element that can bridge the gap between what students learn and apply in their internship and academic life and what they can carry forward into the rest of their lives, professional and personal. Students must apply to internships and receive an offer before the semester begins to be eligible to register for this class. Students must visit https://linktr.ee/georgetownstartupinterns to see a list of internship options and complete step 4 to finalize their internship to enroll in this class.

The CALL Internship Seminars offer students the chance to integrate their professional experiences with their personal, academic, and career goals. UNXD 250 is a required course for all CALL students.

This is a required course for CSJ/Berkeley Center summer research fellows. Email csjcbl@georgetown.edu with questions.

This 1-credit course wraps around the global field-based research experience of the Education and Social Justice Fellows of the Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching, and Service and the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. It builds on the preparation of the student research fellows during the Spring semester through the 1-credit course, UNXD 230. The course timeline depends on each fellow’s specific fieldwork. The fieldwork typically is three weeks and starts no later than early July. Prerequisites: Successful completion of UNXD 231 offered in the preceding Spring semester. Must be an Education and Social Justice Research Fellow in Summer term and have successfully completed UNXD 230 during the Spring.

Full Title: Education & Social Justice Research. This 1-credit course wraps around the global field-based research experience of the Education and Social Justice Fellows of the Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching, and Service and the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. It builds on the preparation of the student research fellows during Spring semester through the 1-credit course, UNXD 230, and their fieldwork conducted during Summer term (UNXD 231). Successful completion of UNXD 230 in Spring semester and UNXD 231 in summer term is required. Prerequisites: Must be an Education and Social Justice Research Fellow in Summer term.

AI is transforming the world of work, both at the level of discrete tasks and decisions and the very concept and structure of the workplace. This course explores those ongoing transformations, their practical, ethical and cultural dimensions, and equips students with new ways to use, relate to, and benefit from AI. "AI at Work" blends asynchronous and synchronous elements, online self-paced modules along with interactive classroom lectures led by leading GU faculty experts on AI in the workplace and society, and hands-on challenges to develop facility and fluency with AI tools. Upon completion of the course, students will also earn the new GU AI Microcredential.

This course is only open to students in the Summer Institute in Law & Practice.

This course is only open to students in the Summer Institute in Law & Society.

The goal of this course is to provide a broad perspective on the field of environmental law. What is environmental law? Where does it come from? How does it work? What are some of the problems with the system of laws currently in place?

We live in a moment of unprecedented global urbanization, where more than half of humanity resides in urban areas. In just a few short decades, this percentage will rise to 75% with cities around the world having absorbed an additional 2-3 billion people. And yet, during this globalized mega-trend, every city is host to unique communities, who reside in unique physical places and fosters unique spatially distributed cultures and economies. This course explores facets of global urbanization in Washington, DC as embodied and expressed by local people, local places and local networks. The expression of Washington, DC as a global city both supports and transcends its legacy and identity as national capital of the United States. This course will intentionally not focus on Washington’s role as national capital. This course requires off-campus travel in order to visit sites and conduct field work; students will be exposed to a variety of methods of urban analysis.

This course will explore important urban planning concepts including walkability, green infrastructure, and placemaking, and over the semester, students will apply mapping technologies to capture, analyze, and represent the unique aspects of Washington DC's people, places, and systems resulting in an online portfolio of digital mapping and analysis projects. This course offers an introduction to urban analysis methodologies with a focus on Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and other digital tools that can aid in analyzing and visualizing data. This course also delves into the role of GIS in various applications, with a particular focus on creating sustainable, smart, and livable cities both locally and globally. Though not required, this course has been developed to be taken in conjunction with UNXD 3303 which is a seminar that introduces students to trends in global urbanization and explores the expression of these trends in Washington, DC. UNXD 3303 emphasizes place-based inquiry which can be supported by research skills developed in this practicum.

This seven-week seminar course provides an introduction for how to apply principles of directed campaigning to win outcomes and goals that benefit the environment from governments and corporations. Students will hear directly from leading green campaigning and political practitioners at agencies, nonprofits and businesses and learn basic principles and how to leverage them on behalf of the environmental objectives of an NGO, movement, or business. Topics addressed will include public affairs and political change analysis, market research and the use of grassroots (and movement building) campaigns, the role of social media, celebrity and influencers, and corporate campaigning. Students will create a campaign plan (and conduct opinion research and analysis in support of this plan) on behalf of a real or theoretical “client” (either selected by the students or assigned by the professor).

A seminar series exploring the intersection of technology and democracy—dynamics, implications, challenges, and opportunities. The course will blend theory and scholarship with practice, examining the relationship between technology and democracy through the lens of different fields.

In recent years we’ve seen a technological explosion that has reformulated every aspect of human life, from healthcare and commerce to education and entertainment. Martin Luther King Jr. reflected on the potential for technology to eclipse our sense of humanity, observing the need for a shift “from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society.” As King inferred, scientific progress could give the illusion that equivalent gains had been made in the social, cultural, and political realms, thus rendering the realization of justice even more elusive. When such concerns are expressed, one may hear the retort that it’s “just technology” in the sense that any ethical concerns are dependent upon what we do with it. Yet what if we took this notion and inquired what “just technology” would look like in practice, if it was produced, consumed and utilized with justice infused throughout the chain? How might values of access, mobility, collaboration, and equity transect the aims of technology and justice? How are movements for justice using technology, and how are they regulated with it? In this course, we will engage these queries through an array of texts and design based activities for mapping the ethical implications of our interactions with technology. The aim is to deeply interrogate core issues of justice embedded within modern technology and explore these through a studio environment.

“Women are the backbone of the movement” is a phrase often heard in labor organizing spaces. Which movement and how may vary, but what remains constant is that without the labor, knowledge, and leadership of women, movements would not happen. This course explores the labor movement through feminist care ethics, asking not only how women participate in organizing, but how practices of care, interdependence, and emotional labor function as strategic infrastructure within movements. This course is not a survey of labor history. Rather than attempting comprehensive historical coverage, it draws on selected historical moments, organizing traditions, and contemporary case studies to examine how feminist organizing operates in practice. Students will explore labor histories and organizing philosophies alongside feminist theoretical texts, many of which fall outside traditional labor studies in order to analyze the modern labor movement and its future. Grounded in the belief that “theory without practice is sterile”, the course is designed as a discussion-based, experiential seminar, not a lecture course. Class sessions emphasize reflection, peer collaboration, and collective analysis, often in conversation with guest organizers and practitioners. Experiential learning takes place primarily during scheduled class time, with one required off-campus labor event attended independently by students. Learning is treated as a process that is co-constructed among students, guest speakers, and the instructor.

Our changing climate impacts all industries, both goods-producing sectors such as energy, construction and manufacturing, and service-providing sectors such as transportation, health care, and financial services. Businesses across the spectrum are realizing this and increasingly identifying climate change as a cross-cutting, strategic issue throughout their value chains. Furthermore, financial markets as well as private investors are increasingly aware that some companies will not be sufficiently resilient to overcome the challenges, while others will race ahead with business models and solutions that beat the competition.

The universality of climate change impacts means that students who understand the basics and best practices of how businesses measure, manage, reduce, and disclose climate change-related activities will be better equipped for success in whatever career they choose. Students taking this one-credit course will have a clearer sense of whether a business is effectively managing its exposure to climate change-related risks, as well as taking full advantage of opportunities arising from the transition to a low-carbon economy. They will also be in a better position to apply this knowledge in support of company strategy as they progress in their careers.

This course examines the paradigm of the solidarity economy and seeks to introduce techniques of audio storytelling in this domain. The course covers the evolving understanding of a "solidarity economy" and related theories of economic justice and community development. It introduces students to the major organizations and institutions that work in this area. It also engages students with various professionals from media institutions in the podcasting field. Students will learn (1) story development and planning, (2) studio-based and in situ audio recording techniques, (3) audio editing techniques, (4) scriptwriting and editing, (5) podcast industry best practices, (6) audio distribution techniques, (7) podcast marketing and social media promotion, and (8) project management and team building.

The goal of this course is to explore interactions between business and economic activities and the natural environment. The focus is on Earth systems and how economic activities overlap with, depend upon, and affect these systems. We will examine the business case for environmental sustainability including motivations, incentives, regulatory frameworks, reporting requirements, and bottom line issues that corporations consider in their decision making processes. Our economic dependencies upon Earth systems such as water, carbon, and nutrient cycles, energy flow, and climate will be examined. Specific environmental impacts and limitations of economic activity will be considered such as energy use, carbon emissions, water depletion and degradation, global transport of persistent pollutants, agricultural dynamics, impact of invasive species, and non-sustainable exploitation of fisheries and forests. We will end the term with an exploration of environmental challenges facing businesses and explore strategies for addressing these challenges moving forward.

This interdisciplinary, experiential learning professional workshop uses the social sciences to deepen understanding of the social and structural determinants of health. It examines the differential impact of these determinants on population health while focusing on developing and implementing innovative strategies tailored to the specific needs of diverse populations and communities. This interactive, hands-on learning experience provides students with new knowledge and skills through practical activities and real-world application. Taking advantage of Washington, D.C.’s unique location, the workshop occurs in various settings and involves conversations and collaborations with experts from organizations developing and implementing new ideas, technologies, processes, and services. These approaches may include targeted public health interventions or programs, public and private partnerships, policy changes, and health promotion campaigns. Such efforts aim to expand access to health resources and improve population health outcomes at the local, state, and global levels in service of the common good.

Full title: Global Perspectives on Environmental Protection and Health. This course uses a cross between conceptual and experiential approaches to teach the relationships between environmental protections, human health, and government regulations. It focuses on the core concepts embedded in U.S. and international governance frameworks, using individual statutes and cases as examples, and by the end of the course students will have a thorough understanding of major health and environment protection concepts. An important issue to consider during this course is to understand that without good science, there can be no meaningful environmental law or policy, and without good environmental protections, human health protections cannot exist.

Creating an Equitable City: Environment is the first in a series of 4-credit seminar courses focused on historical, experiential, and imaginative engagement with the aspirational ideals associated with DC and the ways in which inequality is constructed, how practitioners respond to inequality, and how we might imagine alternative futures that hold space for a more equitable future. This seminar will focus on the disproportionate impacts of environmental exploitation and change in DC. The course is offered by Capitol Applied Learning Labs in collaboration with the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor and will take place at the Capitol Campus (500 1st NW). For more information, visit http://thecall.georgetown.edu

No medical condition has been cloaked in as much shame and blame throughout our history as mental illness. And no doctors have provoked as much skepticism and outright hostility in the mass media as those who treat mental health issues. Those long-standing attitudes have a big present-day impact: As we’ll see in this class, they’ve helped make it enormously difficult for those who suffer to get the help that they need. In this workshop, students will read, observe, and reflect upon how representations of mental health issues and treatments in popular media (journalism, film, fiction and non-fiction) have fed a culture of mental health stigma. They’ll come to understand the pernicious effects that the stories we tell have on real people with real problems that require real help. They’ll learn strategies for pushing back against our culture’s often unrecognized narratives of stigma in their social and academic lives, and in the world beyond Georgetown’s gates. And they’ll learn about new media initiatives that are doing great work to create change from within.

Although we have by far the most costly health care in the world, tens of millions of Americans lack adequate insurance to make care affordable and, relative to other countries, we're not getting better quality care. Almost no one is happy with this arrangement, yet it persists. Why? In this class, you will learn that the design of our healthcare system is not an accident; it has emerged from political choices over decades that politically lock in policies that impede universal coverage at affordable cost. In each of our classes, informed by a set of readings I expect you to draw on, we'll examine those choices, the policies they've created, the challenges they pose to building a better system, and how advocates/policymakers have tried to overcome them. The class will depend on your investment--in absorbing the readings, raising questions, and participating in finding answers. No grades--but if you invest, you'll come to understand health policy politics and, given your own values, what you think it would take to produce a better approach.

Mediation, a collaborative process for resolving disputes, helps parties avoid litigation and come to a mutually agreeable solution. This interactive, simulation-based course will raise your awareness of your own approach to conflict, introduce theories about mediation and participatory processes, and will help you build skills necessary for managing conflict. Whether you are planning to be an attorney, policy advisor or entrepreneur, this program will help you build essential active listening and consensus building tools. The hands-on nature of this class provides participants with an opportunity to work closely with each other and with the instructor. Students in this course may have the opportunity to observe live court-based mediations in the D.C. court system.

This one credit course will examine challenges in and build skills for effective leadership. Students will discuss core leadership skills: competence, confidence, communication, compassion, courage, and creativity. Sessions will feature discussion of case studies as well as practical exercises to build skills critical for success in careers. Current and past policy practitioners will join select sessions to offer differing perspectives. The class will talk about emerging leadership issues such as challenges in representing controversial policies, work/life balance, and gender. Students will also explore the concept of leadership and making an impact at all levels of a career. The required reading list features classic leadership styles as well as leadership under adverse or unique conditions. Students will also explore leadership issues through new media such as podcasts, blogs, social media sites that offer thoughts on leadership beyond the classroom.

Where do your best ideas come from? How long does it take to think of one? What if you could hack the inspiration process to make this discovery lightning fast? What if the same effort to produce one idea yielded many, so that you could work from your favorites rather than your only? Using Ethics Lab’s approach to design thinking, this course will introduce the skills and mindsets to rapidly generate ideas, prototype proposals, and learn from fast feedback. Accelerate your process through each stage of a project’s development, regardless of discipline or topic, to transform good proposals into great solutions.

“By the time they graduate from college, most students still have not achieved the kind of self-authorship that would allow them to think independently, make choices, and pursue their dreams.” - Marcia B. Baxter Magolda This course will offer space and structure for seniors to develop, integrate, and express a personal narrative that helps them move forward into the world. Through a critical examination of constructs such as Social Cognitive Career Theory (Lent, Brown, & Hackett), Chaos Theory of Careers (Pryor & Bright), and Self-Authorship (Baxter Magolda), students will identify a framework to guide their reflection process. Readings, written assignments, group discussion among students, and conversations with participating alumni will facilitate the development of stories related to beliefs about life and work, values, strengths, and relationships with others. Students will create and present a living digital, oral, or written project that can be refined in the years to come. Exercises will be drawn from Stanford University’s Life Design Lab, Florida State University’s Center for the Study of Technology in Counseling and Career Development, and other sources. There are no prerequisites for this course.

This course introduces students to the tools, concepts, and skills necessary for making compelling quantitative graphics. Students will learn about the fundamental concepts of graphical design and visual perception such as to inform making charts and maps that are intuitive, effective, and memorable. The course will cover making powerful data-driven graphics with R, aesthetic visual design using Adobe Illustrator, and an introduction to Tableau. Each student will create an aesthetically compelling and analytically sound visualization portfolio. No prior programming or computer science skills are necessary. Course meets on Thursdays from 6:30 - 8:30 PM, January 26 - March 30. Last day to add/drop (must visit Registrar's office): January 30.

In its 2010 reflection on the distinctive nature of a Georgetown education, the Jesuit community underscored the centrality of vocational discernment to the pedagogical charge of this university. Georgetown bears a duty to both person and polis, its authors observe, as “the growth into human excellence is rooted in the discovery of a personal vocation within the human community,” and that vocation, “the work for a world more just and gentle,” serves as the medium through which one exercises his or her civic responsibility. It is in this very spirit that Georgetown aims to guide its students in their pursuit of personal and professional fulfillment, equipping them with the capacity to lead lives of meaning by working for a better world. In accordance with that mission, this course provides a new context for graduating seniors to reinforce the knowledge, skills, and dispositions they have developed during their undergraduate careers with a sense of vocational purpose.

This course explores how people and organizations work. Beginning with the individual and focusing upon typical work environment issues the course moves through aspects of management (including self), team work and leadership.

This course examines concepts and theories relevant to environmental stewardship. Environmental stewardship is defined as the responsible use and protection of the natural environment through conservation and sustainable practices. Learn about critical environmental health issues, methods to support environmental stewardship efforts, and lobby for pro-environment policies.

: In this course, students will begin by understanding what their own definition of “success” is, and what ingredients are necessary to achieve it. It also encourages them to be intentional as they make career and life choices so that those choices are congruent with their individual definitions of success. Taking students beyond the career exploration and job search process, Intentional Work: Meaning and Performance in the 21st Century Workplace helps them hone skills that are critical to advancement and satisfaction in the working world.

“You can run, but you can’t hide.” What boxer Joe Louis is reported to have said about his ring opponents could also be said about you and ethical challenges. You can run from them, but you can’t hide from them. They will confront you in your personal life and in your professional life. Indeed, in all likelihood, they already have. Leadership or ethics? Leadership and ethics? Some people think you have to choose between the two. The premise of this course is that leadership and ethics are two sides of the same coin. The ideal is ethical leadership. It’s not only ideal, but it’s possible (though not always easy) to practice both. That is what this course is all about. This course will help prepare you to deal more successfully with some of the kinds of ethical challenges you might face in your career. It will do so by using case studies of people, leaders at various levels, some real and some fictional, in different kinds of settings, who have been confronted with ethical challenges, and by introducing you to various concepts and frameworks for moral reasoning and ethical decision-making. Applying the concepts and frameworks to the case studies should help you build your own tool kit for moral reasoning and ethical decision-making --- helping you become an ethical leader. We will be analyzing various actors in the case studies, but in the end, this course is not about them, it’s about you. This is a course in applied ethics or practical ethics, one that does not fall into one of the traditional academic disciplines, but rather should appeal to students with various academic majors. It will help prepare you to deal more successfully with some of the kinds of ethical challenges you might face in your career. It will do so by using case studies of real people who have been confronted with ethical challenges, and by introducing you to various concepts and frameworks for moral reasoning and ethical decision-making.

This course addresses the potentially profound implications of significantly increased longevity – the fact that average life expectancy continues to increase by 2-3 months per year, and that a 20-year old student in the United States today has a better than 50 per cent chance of living to 100. Navigating a 100-year life, and working into one’s 70s or 80s, will become the norm rather than the exception – and the consequences may be quite as transformative as those of globalization, technology and climate change. The course explores the ramifications of longevity both holistically and through several lenses – viewing it as a medical, socio-economic, workplace, institutional, educational and personal phenomenon. In this way, the course facilitates engagement with a complex and important issue from a multi-disciplinary perspective – drawing upon macroeconomics, public policy, finance, medicine, organizational behavior, social psychology, life and career design. It requires integrative problem solving to address an open-ended question – how will longevity change the society in which we live? And it enables students to understand in a thoughtful and nuanced way what it will mean for them personally to live their lives in an era of increased longevity. Led by Nick Lovegrove, former McKinsey senior partner and author of the recently-published book The Mosaic Principle, students in this course interact with several global experts on the subject of longevity – including the co-author of The 100-Year Life – and follow a structured path to understanding the implications of longevity for themselves and for us all.

The PERSONAL FINANCE course is a one-credit course focusing on certain aspects of personal finance. We start with why financial literacy is important and end with how financial literacy can create opportunity. Other key topics include time value of money, capital markets, investing, credit, taxes and budgeting.

This course will take students through the leadership and management skills necessary to excel in entry to mid-level careers in Washington and beyond. Leaning on five years of experience as the Director of White House Personnel during the Obama Administration, and coordinator of a leadership development curriculum for senior political appointees throughout the Administration, the instructor will engage students on five key aspects of successful leaders: innovation, management, communications, personal management, and project management. At the end of this course, students will have gained practical skills to excel in any workplace in their first job.

"Risking Taking and the Experimental Mindset" will focus on developing a life-long “experimental mindset” and will explore frameworks and tools for designing, conducting, and evaluating the results of experiments. Well-designed experiments can provide insights for public policy, business decisions, and personal life choices. Students will learn the basic concepts of experiments that apply across many disciplines throughout the sciences and social sciences and how to interpret data-driven results. They will also learn about major experimental results in the social sciences, particularly in the area of behavioral economics, and will design their own experiments that have direct relevance to life and career decisions students may be facing in their lives beyond Georgetown.

How can students apply creativity gained before and at Georgetown to their lives beyond the Hilltop? This course will offer seniors organizational plans for maintenance, growth, for using creative gift(s) for creative expression and creative problem solving. The fulfillment of a creative need will be investigated for personal growth, and innovative thinking through a variety of creative means, and professional branding for the future of the student. Maintenance, nourishment, and currency to fulfilling a creative need will be investigated as well. This course is not lecture-based, rather it is highly experiential; students will engage in creative exercises each week that draw on the readings and their personal experiences. No previous knowledge or coursework of art, drawing or art history is required.

The experiences undertaken in the undergraduate years echo into adulthood: many of the types of challenges confronted in the college years will present themselves again. Within this course, you will deeply reflect upon the person you were when you entered Georgetown, grapple with your growth and development during the college years, and prepare to meet future challenges mindfully. Each week, through readings, discussions, podcasts, videos, written reflections, and activities, you will recognize your tremendous personal and intellectual growth over the past four years and will be encouraged to consider the personal and professional challenges you might encounter as an independent adult. What tools and strategies do you now have to confront these challenges? What lessons have you learned, and what wisdom have you earned? Finally, how can you use all you have gained during your time at Georgetown to design a life that brings you joy and fulfillment?

Environmental degradation. Gender inequality. Toxic political division. The list of challenges facing society can often seem endless, overwhelming and without solutions. What can one person do to make an impact on the world? Dr. Jane Goodall, the international environmental icon who is literally the woman who redefined our notion of man through her groundbreaking work with chimpanzees, thinks deeply about these questions. She responds with a simple, yet provocative philosophy that has become the signature of her work: the need to have reasons for hope and then to act upon them. Dr. Goodall has five reasons: the determination of young people, the resilience of nature, the human brain, the indomitable human spirit and the power of social media (her latest). As she reminds us, “the greatest danger to our planet is that we lose hope. Because, if we have no hope, we give up and stop trying to do our bit to make a difference.” Using her book, Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey, as a guide, students will explore Dr. Goodall’s framework and be challenged to interact with tangible examples in their everyday lives that illuminate each reason. They will then reflect deeply on their own values to create their personal reasons for hope, along with a plan for how to activate them as they proceed to the next stage of their life’s journey. Along the way, students will also meet change makers leading with a hope mindset while they apply lessons from Dr. Goodall’s remarkable life story, the instructor’s personal experience working for her, and even the famous chimpanzees themselves.

This course focuses on how Georgetown students develop a sense of well-being, belonging, and purpose within the various communities they live. We will be adopting a project-based approach where you will design your own project in consultation with the instructor and complete low-stake assignments to complete the project-based component. This course takes a social and developmental psychology perspective, encouraging students to reflect, explore, and discuss how key aspects of their identity have evolved during their time at Georgetown (and beyond). The learning environment will be enhanced through a cross-cultural component where students from the main campus and GU-Qatar campus will interact in real-time. The course will create opportunities for exploring and expressing one’s authentic self through in-class interactions with peers and various out-of-class experiences (online and volunteering). Students will attend to the relationship between their individual well-being and a sense of purpose and that of the multiple communities they live and represent (Georgetown, Qatar/DC, groups that reflect various identities). In doing so, students will address the following existential question: to what degree should I expect to nurture myself or my communities and vice versa? Topics that influence the interaction between personal development and community affiliations – power dynamics, identity statuses, core values, belief systems, and social-navigational strategies – will be investigated. In doing so, students will strive to understand their optimal balance between personal fulfillment and responsibility to the communities within which they exist.

This course will expose students to the biopsychosocial theory and application of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), and its relationship to young adult physical health and social/emotional well-being. MBSR (sometimes termed ‘meditation’) is a mind-body practice. Although there are many types of MBSR, most can be traced back to ancient religious and spiritual traditions. MBSR practitioners tout the benefits of becoming conscious of their own thoughts, feelings, and sensations and observe these states in a nonjudgmental way. Modern medicine has rediscovered the power of MBSR to heal both the body and mind. This has raised interesting questions about the mechanisms of action of MBSR (how and why it works), and wonderment about its utility (where it can be applied)? The course explores what is known about the neurobiological effects of MBSR on the brain, especially areas related to attention and memory, sensory processing, and stress and emotions, and downstream effects on physical functions. Importantly, this course exposes students to fundamental insights from mind-body medicine that can be used in everyday life. Lifespan experts have noted that transitioning from college to young adulthood requires students to become more self-reliant, self-confident, and remain "present" to help them focus on their futures. MBSR is widely available and commonly used for stress management: it is a teachable life skill for unlearning old habits and forming new and healthier ones. The course posits that MBSR is an essential tool that college students can appreciate the rich history of, acquire, and then apply across multiple school-home-life situations to help them remain grounded in the present while they prepare to leave The Hilltop.

What would happen if leaders prayed, meditated or sat in contemplation before making a decision? Most leaders spend years taking classes or reading books on how to assemble the dream team, how to inspire others toward a common mission or how to make tough decisions. But rarely do leaders talk about the lessons that spirituality played in getting them where they are today. This course will explore aspects of leadership including ways in which you can grow and develop as leaders in the world. Additionally, students of all religious backgrounds, or those with none at all, will define what spirituality means to them and how they can lead themselves and others from an open heart.

A collaboration between the Center for Social Justice and the Maker Hub, this course integrates design-thinking, experience, and reflection through a community-based making project serving individuals experiencing homelessness in Washington, D.C. Together, students and faculty will practically and critically analyze the concepts of making, innovating, and doing justice. Working with the making mantra that the “freedom to fail” is a good thing, students in this course will interrogate together how the frameworks and context in which innovation projects are situated inform their ultimate success at shifting systems of injustice toward justice. Students in this course will hone practical making skills and critical reflection skills by collaborating with D.C. community members on tangible projects and processing that collaborative work. Guided by Georgetown’s missional commitments to “sustained discourse among people of difference” and educating “life-long learners” who “live generously in service to others”, this course is an ideal reflective experience for seniors looking to make meaning of their university experience and consider how they would like to practically carry forward what they have learned at Georgetown.

You came to Georgetown because you were interested in a career in public policy. And as you’re nearing graduation, you still aren’t quite sure what holding a job in the Executive Branch, on Capitol Hill, or in the non-profit space is actually like, how to get one, and whether you’d even enjoy it. This course will provide a deep dive into better understanding the political ecosystem that drives our nation. The course will give specific and detailed exploration for those wanting to work in government, the non-profit space, or in any of the many other jobs related to influencing public policy. We’ll talk to people who perform key unseen roles and who sit in the jobs similar to the ones you might want to hold. You’ll assess whether your own values and skills line up with these career paths. At the end of course – if you’re still interested in the career path, and even if you’re not -- you’ll get a far better picture of how our political system really operates and the jobs that drive it. And through taking the course, you will gain a better understanding of yourself, your skills, your values and what type of job might provide you the most fulfillment. This course is part of the Red House's Senior Bridge Courses; see more info at futures.georgetown.edu/bridge.

STAR (Start Talking About Race) is a credit-bearing course that was born out of an initiative started by Whitney Maddox at Georgetown University in 2019 after noticing that the conversation around race was an intellectual exercise that lacked personal accountability. STAR combines reflection, storytelling and vulnerability in order to center a topic that we often try to avoid - race. This course provides students a space to question how your race impacts who you are, what you believe and how you engage with others. We will also go beyond the individual level of looking at race to thinking about the group and systems levels in order to see how race is intertwined into every fabric of our society. We will also have the treat of engaging in a conversation about race with staff from National Public Radio (NPR).

UNXD 3371: The Weight of Information Taught by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kate Woodsome In an era of nonstop information, AI, and burnout, how do we make sense of it all — ethically, responsibly, and humanely? This class explores how power, stress, and identity shape the stories we tell — and how those stories shape the world. Using Georgetown’s trauma-informed Journey Framework, students will build practical skills in communication, active listening, and narrative discernment to lead with clarity, empathy, and resilience in high-stakes environments. * Experiential learning * Grounding + somatic tools * Real-world application in media, law, government & beyond

This seminar explores case studies of contemporary civic leadership in the context of a rapidly transforming District of Columbia. This course includes readings, mandatory field study and structured group reflection which together are designed to investigate the changing nature of civic leadership in a municipal and local community context. This is a one-credit course conducted in a seminar format. The course will meet five times throughout the semester for three hours per class.

Caring For Others (and Ourselves) will bring together students who feel a sense of leadership to learn skills which will help them care for their community in a way that encourages connection between students and fosters friendships across campus. Students of the CFO(2) program will learn how to connect with others on a personal level and acquire skills such as vulnerability, conflict navigation, and decisive leadership. The goal of CFO(2) is for students to form a community with other students in the group and apply skills in their daily life to decrease loneliness and stress across campus.

This course is part of a suite of elective courses offered in partnership with the Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues (Office of the VP for Global Engagement) open to all undergraduate and graduate students. Though there is no required sequence, you may wish to take 4101, 4103, or 4103 along with 4100, to get more comprehensive preparation for engaging with children and youth globally.

Course Description This class explores experiences of children and childhood around the world, particularly common challenges that children in adversity face, and how children’s protection and resilience can be promoted in both development and humanitarian settings. More than half of the global population is under the age of 30. It is the biggest child and youth population in history, with 90 percent living in less developed countries and disproportionately affected by poverty, poor health, climate change, violence, conflict, exclusion and other adverse experiences. More children are on the move than ever before, with nearly 40 percent of the 100 million displaced persons worldwide under the age of 18. Child marriage rates have increased to their highest level in 25 years. More than half of the world’s young people experience physical, emotional, and sexual violence, with increasing numbers affected by online abuse. Children bear the brunt of these difficulties in their daily lives, yet their unique needs are often not prioritized in policy and practice.

The evidence shows that investing in children, youth, and caregivers across the life-course is a primary means of achieving sustainable human, social, and economic development, all of which are vital to ensuring international peace and security. Additionally, involving children and youth as partners in problem-solving, development, humanitarian, and peacebuilding efforts contributes to economic growth, democratic progress, and social stability. This course will help students understand major child protection violations like child marriage, child labor, family-child separation, violence, and lack of nurturing care, as well as responses to strengthen child protection and child well-being.

This course is part of a suite of elective courses offered in partnership with the Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues (CGCI) (Office of the VP for Global Engagement) open to all undergraduate and graduate students. Though there is no required sequence, you may wish to take 4101, 4103, or 4103 along with 4100, to get more comprehensive preparation for engaging with children and youth globally.

Most post-graduate level researchers and professionals in the social sciences, or aspiring to pursue careers in areas like international development and protection, receive basic academic training on research methods. However, few programs prepare their students into the practice of fieldwork: the process of collecting data in its natural settings to understand social dynamics, practices or environments. Furthermore, despite the aspiration of many professionals to work with specific populations like children and young people, academic and/or training programs that provide insights on the specific dynamics concerning working alongside them are scant.

Moreover, training that examines the pitfalls of mainstream research and data collection methods, and their historical tendency to replicate inequalities and knowledge hierarchies –in the process silencing or dismissing the perspectives of communities or groups like youth and children—is limited. Faculty or employers often lack time to discuss field dynamics or challenges with students or incoming employees, or assume that people will simply learn how to conduct fieldwork through practice. Most troublingly, while organizations put emphasis on reducing the vulnerability of researchers in the field in compliance with their institutional guidelines, there is limited focus on how researchers unaware of fieldwork politics and dynamics may further the vulnerability of the people they seek to assist.

This class seeks to address these gaps. It serves as an introduction to field research for those with limited or no prior experience conducting fieldwork, and who aim to work with young people and children. It aims to provide a critical overview of the dynamics of field research –especially on the ways it impacts groups in vulnerable situations –and effective techniques to reduce the inequalities inherent to research projects.

This course is part of a suite of elective courses offered in partnership with the Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues (Office of the VP for Global Engagement) open to all undergraduate and graduate students. Though there is no required sequence, you may wish to take 4100, 4101, or 4103 along with 4102, to get more comprehensive preparation for engaging with children and youth globally.

This interdisciplinary course examines the evolving role of youth in shaping local and global peace and security initiatives. Students will explore contemporary youth movements, their impact on social and political landscapes, and the emergence of the Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) agenda on the global stage. The course will analyze key UN resolutions, international policies, and grassroots actions that have elevated youth participation in peacebuilding and conflict resolution processes. Through case studies, theoretical frameworks, and practical applications, students will gain a foundational understanding of youth agency in promoting sustainable peace and security in some of the most difficult environments around the world.

This course is part of a suite of elective courses offered by the Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues open to all undergraduate and graduate students. Though there is no required sequence, you may wish to take 4100, 4101, or 4102, along with 4103, to get more comprehensive preparation for engaging with children and youth globally. In the relatively nascent trust and safety ecosystem, online child protection is perhaps the most mature area with many third-party tools and technological solutions to enhance online platforms’ content moderation operations. These includes Microsoft PhotoDNA to AI-based tools like Google’s Content Safety API; open-source tools like Facebook’s PDQ and commercial products like Thorn’s Safer; traditional tooling to modern, collaborative initiatives like the Tech Coalition's Lantern. The course is designed to foster critical thinking when engaging with Big Tech and their platforms. Through case studies, discussions and practical applications,, you will learn how the technology to detect child sexual abuse material (CSAM) has evolved over the past 15 years. Every class will include guest speakers, for example, the Tech Coalition on their new Lantern program that leverages signal sharing to detect and prevent the spread of child sexual exploitation and abuse across platforms.

Sigmund Freud's "Civilization and Its Discontents" painted a darkly pessimistic vision of current and future prospects for human happiness. He explained that as civilization grows it will gain an increasingly repressive upper hand with the result that coming generations can look forward to diminished freedom for self, family, pleasure, and love. Even worse, cultural expectations will be internalized through socialization, making it virtually impossible for individuals to know what life could be like if they were truly free and able to choose authentic lives. Through an examination of Ernest Becker's "Denial of Death" and Soren Kierkegaard's "The Concept of Dread" and "The Sickness Unto Death," this brief course will consider alternative pathways beyond inauthenticity to a life marked by freely chosen purpose and authentic selfhood..

Major life changes can be difficult to navigate, especially when one’s sense of self is at stake. How do I confront a radically new world in which my old ways of making sense of things no longer apply? How can I remain ‘me’ throughout this transition, given that I will in some sense have to become someone new? These questions are at their most profound and most pressing in a situation of cultural collapse, such as that faced by the Crow people when the U.S. government forbade their way of life and forced them onto a reservation. In Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, philosopher Jonathan Lear considers the experience of the Crow and explores how their chief, Plenty Coups, was able to lead himself and his people through the experience of cultural collapse. In this course, we will discuss Lear’s analysis of Plenty Coups’s courage, hope, and imagination, and determine what lessons we can draw from it about navigating major changes in our own lives. Course meets on Mondays, 7 - 9 PM, March 13 - May 1. Last day to add/drop (must visit Registrar's office): March 16.

We will read Augustine’s autobiographical account of his long and difficult journey to come to a new vision of the world and himself in it. Augustine’s transformation consists in a conversion to Christianity, but we will read his text as a phenomenology of personal transformation generally –and indeed, of transformation that does not happen instantaneously but is born of many factors over a long period of time and requires significant personal labour. We will ask how interactions, role models, speeches, and books together made Augustine who he was, furthered his transformation, and even held him back from it. What do the complexity, the possibility, and the difficulty of Augustine’s transformation tell us about what it means to be human? What do they tell us about how to effect radical transformation in our own lives? Classes will be discussion based and students can expect to complete weekly writing assignments as well as a final reflection paper.

What does it mean to be responsible for oneself and to others in 2018 and beyond? How should we understand the dynamics of accelerated change at work in the world and a heightened level of stress, anxiety and conflict they produce? How are the challenges of terrorism, globalization, immigration, income disparity and environmental degradation to be addressed effectively and justly in a climate of unrelenting ideological partisanship? This course will first examine the radical conception of human freedom and responsibility articulated by Existentialist writers of the 20th century in response to the crisis of the two World Wars. It then goes on to propose a way of understanding cultural evolution that can help us navigate the contemporary dynamics of change and conflict in a way that is both practically realistic and at the same time still consistent with a personal commitment to the dignity of human freedom and the responsibility imposes for one’s own identity as a human being.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky famously wrote that “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” Yet today it is almost impossible for members of free society to go inside of prison walls, much less to interact with incarcerated people as human beings. This 1-credit UNXD course will prepare a select group of Georgetown seniors for life after graduation by exposing them to this forgotten and ignored element of our humanity. It is an extraordinary experience that they will cherish and that will inspire them for the rest of their lives. The course will include approximately six 2-hour sessions at the DC Jail (mainly in February-April), which will be held jointly with a similarly-sized group of incarcerated students from the Georgetown Prison Scholars Program. The sole required reading is Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, which will prepare students to understand the background surrounding poverty, crime, race, and incarceration, as well as the dynamics of prison life. Students will work in mixed (i.e., inside and outside students together) groups to create a joint small creative project at the end of the course.

This course examines our increasingly interconnected – yet stubbornly fragmented and unequal –world, and asks how we might conscientiously choose to live and act in it. Drawing on the fields of comparative political and economic development, we will explore the cross-national patterns of behavior by states and private actors that are shaping outcomes in education, growth, social inclusion, and political participation. We will complement this empirical study with normative perspectives drawn from the fields of philosophy, social and cultural analysis, and theology, ultimately pushing each of ourselves to decide on concrete ways our convictions can shape our choices about how to live as aware and responsible citizens in the world as it exists today. Readings will be composed of two texts each week, one drawn from the empirical study of comparative political and economic development, and another drawn from the normative theory or analysis. Emphasis will be placed on linking the material to Georgetown’s history, values, and student experience (both academic and extra-curricular).

To what degree do we have agency in our lives? Is it possible to direct our lives to thrive in our post graduate lives? Within the last ten years researchers have discovered game changing information about how the body and mind function. With this knowledge, we can steer ourselves to flourishing. This Bridge course aims to provide students with up to date research on human flourishing that they might effectively thrive in their postgraduate lives. Students will learn they have agency in directing the trajectory of their lives through self-care, discernment, and relationships.

The course will be taught using a working scientist's approach to critical thinking. We will use critical issues of the day as illustrations of the life challenges that Georgetown students will need to better understand in order to remain as productive and engaged in the world around them as they can be. In the first part of the course we will inventory critical thinking skills that students have already acquired at Georgetown, sometimes without knowing, and build on a few of them (1st third of the course). Next we will organize into small groups and use "exercises" culled from the current headlines that have biotechnology or biomedical themes and that challenge students to apply critical thinking to problems outside their comfort zone. The goal is to demystify the supposedly mysterious world of constantly evolving biotechnology and show students that they really can figure out anything, regardless their major or specialization. Finally, each small group will choose their favorite biotechnology or biomedical topic and use what is learned in the course to answer key questions (posed by Prof. Roepe) related to that topic.

The world is not fair to educated women. Sometimes injustice works against them; other times they are beneficiaries of inequity. As you prepare to leave the Hilltop with your Georgetown degree, you on one hand face a world where no amount of education safeguards women against the apparent ability of powerful and privileged men to harass them with impunity, while Serena Williams (not to mention the entire U.S. women’s soccer team) can wildly outperform all rivals and still be underpaid and demeaned for behavior widely lauded in men. But on the other hand, you also face a world where a Georgetown degree sets female graduates apart from the increasing number of girls worldwide who cannot attend school of any kind and insulates them from the problems facing the billions worldwide who do not have access to basic necessities like clean water. Facing this odd juxtaposition ranks as one of the greatest challenges facing young women college graduates, and it catches most of them completely unaware. The point is not to nurture a sense of grievance or to tell today’s graduates they should be grateful for how good they have it. The point is that a paradox rests squarely at the center of the 21 st century female graduate’s existence. So let’s take some time this semester to recognize this paradox, think honestly about it, and imagine ways of navigating it. We will use the practice of close reading to explore the drive to use one’s intellectual passions to serve human need in a world that often tries to mock or blunt such desires, especially in young, educated people whose energy and brains just might upset the status quo in some way. In sum, this course provides a place for students to have necessary and sustaining conversations as they prepare to leave a place that has fostered the life of the mind in young women and encouraged the view that such a life should be lived in service to humanity, to enter a world ambivalent about the notion of educated women and cynical about the desire to serve. This course will help students to cultivate inner resources that tell them that both “intellectual” and “passion” matter, and that they can and will find ways to live lives true to both.

Georgetown’s Core Curriculum asks all students to wrestle with important existential questions: How did we come into being? Do our lives have purpose? What happens to us when we die? How do we create an ethical framework for decision-making? How do we create a life imbued with meaning and purpose? Regardless of our personal religious affiliations, how we respond to these questions shapes the contours of our lives – our sense of purpose, our identity, our personal relationships, and our individual ethos. This course offers an opportunity to reflect upon these questions in ways that both draws upon and challenges the Jesuit education under which it is taught. Students of all faiths (and no faith) are invited to participate in this conversation about whether it's possible to create a good life without believing in an afterlife.

This seminar will provide students the opportunity to explore the core beliefs that guide their daily lives, and how their backgrounds and life experiences influenced and shaped the beliefs they hold today. Utilizing Jesuit values as our foundation, this course will examine students’ formation process throughout their Georgetown career within the context of their daily lives. Students will be challenged to contemplate “Where They Are From,” connecting this journey to the larger construct of power and privilege. The course will conclude with students (re)developing “This I Believe,” in order to articulate to themselves and other persons the core of who they and who they aspire to be.

Headlines are dominated not simply with bad news, but potentially catastrophic news. It is not mere hyperbole to note that you will spend your adult lives confronting global challenges and tragedies whose scale goes well beyond that of former ages—from environmental degradation to inequality and poverty to mass migration to technological revolutions and labor disruptions. This creates a uniquely poignant existential burden. The key question this course will examine is: Given this context, how do we utilize our reason and other capacities to pursue both the good and the good life? How do we live well in a dark time? We will read a diverse array of philosophers attempting to answer just this question. Ultimately, this course hopes to inspire you to use reason as a means of promoting hope, and hope as a means of dynamically increasing our ability to live well in dark times.

This course will consist of 7 sessions on questions that will most probably arise as Georgetown Seniors transition from their student life to a working life and beyond. We will reflect on your education at Georgetown and chart a possible courses to apply it for the rest of your life. The problems we discuss have no permanent solutions; people have been wrestling with them from time immemorial. Life challenges you to create answers to new situations, mostly new to you, until it ends. We will explore the idea of a life of learning, based on your Georgetown education, as a path to your most successful and rewarding life.

What does it mean to fail? Is it a setback or, after careful examination and reflection, an opportunity to succeed? When we are confronted by failure, our instinct is to often view it as all-encompassing and all-consuming: that it will define us, including our future, forever. Each week, through readings, discussions, podcasts, videos, written reflections, and activities, we will examine the failures of entrepreneurs, researchers, politicians, artists, and other leading figures in the world, and how these innovators/change-makers took stock of their setbacks to inform future decisions. We will also take inventory of our own failures (both at Georgetown and beyond) and examine not what could’ve been done differently, but how we can respond moving forward. In a world so driven by labels, titles, success, and failures, how do we really define ourselves?

This course will engage students in somatic theory and its application of for personal well-being, goal setting aligned with what you care about, and systemic change. Principles of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) are blended with intentional movements of the body to create an opportunity to deeply exhale and reflect inward. Communities learn how to restore dignity, sense boundaries as a form of self-care, source aliveness and align values to action.

In this course, you will explore a unique and flexible kind of entrepreneurial activity: the intentional community. Whether called a club, society, or association, intentional communities occupy the space between economic ventures and individual pursuits. Forming your own intentional community as a recent graduate is not only a great way to solve the problem of loneliness and isolation that often accompany the first years out of college, but also counterbalances career pursuits that risk crowding out everything else in your life. By focusing on a greater purpose — social, educational, political, charitable — an intentional community invites you to live your ideals while providing a platform for satisfying human connection with like-minded people. Above all, it’s entrepreneurial: you’re not joining someone else’s venture; you’re creating your own. Universities like Georgetown are great incubators of clubs and societies. But what do you do when you’re on your own, without the nurturing structure of your alma mater? This course answers that question! Entrepreneurship is promoted in many parts of the University, but almost always in ways encouraging you to view it within the context of the “economy of cash:” i.e., how can you monetize your efforts? This course introduces instead the idea of an “economy of grace,” a world of immaterial benefits and relationships that are the source of meaning, relationship and, ultimately, mental (and physical) health. Entrepreneurship is possible in this economy, too. And such ventures are not necessarily without compensating cashflows.

This course will introduce students to the history and current discourse surrounding the decline in public trust in higher education, with particular emphasis on the role that higher education itself can play in shifting this trend. Students can also opt to enroll in either a 1-credit or 3-credit version of the course; the 3-credit version adds a significant studio component, whose focus would be to design and mount externally-facing dialogues, resulting in one or more published reports, on the future of higher education and the public trust.

Enrollment is limited to Georgetown CyberFellows. Registration in this class requires department approval.

This seminar is part of a two-course sequence that teaches students the common forms of professional writing and presentation required for the field of cybersecurity. In the fall seminar, students master specific techniques and strategies that let them to clarify a document’s purpose; design pages for readers who scan; and edit documents to ensure logical organization, flow, effective tone, clarity, concision, and correctness. In the spring seminar, students proceed through three writing challenges based on documents used in the workplace. To complete each writing challenge, students study models of the document type; hear from working professionals who have mastered the document type; complete numerous drafts; refine their drafts with peers; and review their drafts. The final writing assignment of the spring seminar involves reflecting on the knowledge gained from the presentations in the Cybersecurity Seminar and summarizing current practice in cybersecurity in the public sector.

UNXD-456 is a 1-Credit course through Georgetown’s Maker Hub in which students actively integrate academic studies with hands-on, project based learning, by developing a physical product, prototype, or creative work utilizing the fabrication equipment in the Maker Hub. This work must enhance and deepen the classroom learning of a 3-credit course in which the student is currently enrolled. The Maker Hub at Georgetown is a unique space that provides a range of fabrication equipment, both modern and traditional, along with a community and support system that makes these tools accessible and productive for experts and newcomers alike. Equipment includes a print shop with book-binding, 3D printers, Laser cutter, electronics, wood shop, sewing and embroidery machines, a loom, and more. For admission into UNXD-456, students will submit a project proposal explaining their project idea, how it relates to their class, and an estimate of the tools and equipment they will need to complete it.

How can artwork alter our perceptions of today’s most pressing topics? And why does live performance remain a powerful venue for fostering community and communicating critical messages? Designed for students across the disciplines with an interest in the power of performance and the arts to engage with global issues, this one-credit course offers Georgetown students exposure to and engagement with a diverse set of acclaimed theatrical productions presented in the Washington, DC area—including in-depth interaction with creative professionals from these productions. No previous experience with performing arts is required. This section will meet every other week throughout the semester. During two of the class meetings, students will be provided free tickets and transportation to performances in the Washington, DC area. Each performance will also include an opportunity to talk to members of the production’s or theater’s creative team.

This project is aimed to educate, train, and equip students with the resources to fight for the health care rights of all people around the world by representing Georgetown University at the World Health Assembly (WHA). Started by undergraduate students to advance global health education in public service, GHGAPS serves to break down barriers around diplomacy and governance in public health at Georgetown, and create a training program which prepares doctors, nurses, scientists, policymakers, and more to engage in this space for the benefit of others around the world. After giving a basic overview of the political processes and multilateral institutions for global health, this course will transition to focus on leadership preparedness and student collaboration, as the student cohort learns how to strongly exemplify a youth delegation to the WHA. As a result of the past three years, academic and professional institutions around the world are increasingly interested in preventing disease, promoting health, and advancing scientific discoveries to limit the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic and other public health emergencies. Humanitarian crises of great complexity and public health emergencies of international concern, among other interdisciplinary issues in these fields, necessitate a multifaceted and cross-collaborative diplomatic response that extends outside traditional medical or political intervention. Youth engagement with the global health diplomacy infrastructure has the capacity to realign health inequities exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This initiative will put our university at the forefront for health relief and social justice in the international health setting as we head into one of the most crucial times for international cooperation across the planet and students will be the integral part of this delegation.

Global Career Accelerator is a four-credit, virtual, asynchronous experiential learning program that offers students a unique combination of intercultural skills and technical industry skills aligned to the changing nature of work. This course is offered in partnership with the Cawley Center which will provide continuous and dedicated support to Georgetown students enrolled in this experience. For more information about this program and to register for this course, please visit globaltech.georgetown.edu. This course is open with application-based enrollment to all GU students who are rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors. For more information about this program and to register for this course, please stay tuned and fill out the 'Reserve Your Spot' form at globaltech.georgetown.edu. If you experience trouble or have any questions, please contact Red House Academic Manager Cristina Benitez (scb32@georgetown.edu) or the GU instructor, Professor Beth Harlan (eam227@georgetown.edu).

This innovative course is designed to deepen students' understanding of human learning, machine learning, and the interplay between the two. Students will explore how AI can enhance learning processes through structured readings, hands-on exploration of AI tools, reflective journaling, and a culminating project of their own design2. The course spans 14 weeks and includes weekly in-person synchronous sessions, significant independent work, and collaborative feedback activities. Students will acquire practical skills with AI while also engaging in metacognitive reflection, fostering both technical proficiency and a deeper understanding of learning methodologies.

This zero-credit elective option for graduate students is designed to cultivate essential AI fluency and critical literacy, supporting both graduate and undergraduate students in thoughtfully integrating generative AI into their university experience. The course develops AI literacy through technical proficiency and fosters AI fluency as a component of modern academic life and responsible digital citizenship at Georgetown. The course is structured across two complementary layers totaling approximately 12.5 contact hours. Students complete the Applied AI Microcredential (approximately 7 hours, asynchronous), which establishes a shared conceptual foundation. They also attend five synchronous sessions (approximately one hour each), offered both in person and online, organized around three thematic areas: the technical layer, the ethical and social layer, and applied practice and judgment. Activities focus on practical educational applications, such as leveraging AI for research ideation, study techniques, and academic writing, while also examining the ethical, privacy, and contextual limitations of these tools. Foundations of AI sets the curricular foundation for more advanced AI courses at Georgetown, whether approached from a critical, technical, or applied perspective.

The Georgetown Startup Internship (GSI) Seminar is designed to offer students from across the university access to real-world skills building while working part-time as an intern at a startup, growth-stage company, or international social enterprise where they can apply those skills. The GSI program encourages whole-person learning through our holistic pedagogy combining formal, experiential, and developmental learning. Students will have access to asynchronous training modules to build core professional skills such as emails, meetings, and working remotely, as well as training on networking, informational interviews, sales, presentations, managing up, and more. The seminar includes a leadership coaching element that can bridge the gap between what students learn and apply in their internship and academic life and what they can carry forward into the rest of their lives, professional and personal. Students must apply to internships and receive an offer before the semester begins to be eligible to register for this class. Students must visit https://linktr.ee/georgetownstartupinterns to see a list of internship options and complete step 4 to finalize their internship to enroll in this class.

Students will learn about startup funding stages, the venture capital industry, frameworks for evaluating investment opportunities and negotiating deals, and how to manage a venture portfolio. The class consists of a core learning component (readings and live classroom sessions), experiential/immersion where students have project based venture capital deliverables, and a capstone project. Students will also be exposed to engaging online guest lectures with leading industry executives, and peer-to-peer learning and exploration of practical case studies. The core objective of the class is to offer the ability for students to apply classroom learnings to real venture deals and experience what it takes to work in venture capital.

In a moment of particularly intense division within an already highly ideologically, socially, and politically polarized era, we find ourselves experiencing what we might call a "conversation emergency" in which meaningful, productive conversation itself is increasingly elusive. Yet so many of us yearn for alternatives that cut against the prevailing grain of silos and slogans, “us and them” thinking, retreat and avoidance, rigidity and the circling of wagons. In order to meet this moment with wisdom, these times call on us to nurture our resilience, fortify our empathy, double down on our search for unity of purpose while at the same time honoring our real differences, and build diverse communities equipped to forge new ways forward together. In this course we will cultivate the conditions - in terms of our own capacities, skills and connection among participants - for productive engagement across differences in ways that are both substantive and innovative. The course will feature a creative and supportive exploration of our own experiences of today's “conversation emergency” through the In Your Shoes performance technique-based process (https://globallab.georgetown.edu/projects/iys). We will also survey the diverse landscape of dialogic definitions and methodologies, and learn concrete dialogue skills derived from a range of different dialogic approaches.

In collaboration with Washington metropolitan area mediation programs, this course for Georgetown University graduate students across degree programs develops the skills needed to serve as a neutral mediator in collaborative dispute resolution. Skills are transferrable in a wide range of sectors and careers. The interactive classroom training component will focus on managing emotions, active listening, helping parties draft agreements, and mediator ethics. Students will be paired with mentors to co-mediate 3-5 court-based sessions in the remainder of the semester.

Students in the Entrepreneurship Immersion Lab will learn by experiencing first-hand the vortex of a startup company. A cadre of undergrad and graduate students from multiple disciplines will have exclusive access to the day-to-day activities of a real-life early-stage startup so they may experience first-hand the many challenges, difficulties, decisions, and issues faced by an entrepreneur. Note: MBA students may not be eligible to enroll. For more information, contact Professor Jeffrey Reid, jeff.reid@georgetown.edu.

Work in Digital Humanities is changing the nature of scholarly editing. In Medieval Studies, the changes have been particularly striking because the textual and visual contents of manuscripts held in libraries around the world can be made accessible and become integral parts of new editions that are useful not only to expert researchers, but also to students in and out of the classroom. One of the signal strengths of digital editions is their capacity to be more than one kind of edition, that is, to offer different modalities of reading and interaction geared toward varied audiences. Moreover, digital editions are never “finished” in the traditional sense of book editing. Rather, they are open to indefinite collaboration, expansion, and refinement as the state of scholarship and digital tools evolve. This course introduces basic issues of textual editing, and the theories and methods of digital editing, with a focus on editing medieval texts. Students will engage in hands-on editing projects.

The Georgetown Startup Internship (GSI) Seminar is designed to offer students access to real-world skills building while working as an intern at a startup, growth-stage company, or international social enterprise where they can apply those skills. The GSI program encourages whole-person learning through our holistic pedagogy, which combines formal, experiential, and developmental learning. Students will have access to asynchronous training modules to build core professional skills such as emails, meetings, and working remotely, as well as training on networking, informational interviews, sales, presentations, and more. The seminar includes a leadership coaching element that can bridge the gap between what students learn and apply in their internship and academic life and what they can carry forward into the rest of their lives, professional and personal. Students can self-enroll in the course today before securing an internship. Students must apply to internships and receive an offer before the add/drop period ends to be eligible for this class. Students can visit https://linktr.ee/georgetownstartupinterns to see a list of internship options and complete step 4 to finalize their internship. If you want to bring your own internship for the course, please email Prof Mike Malloy at mike.malloy@georgetown.edu for approval.

The Graduate Internship and Professional Development course offers graduate students from across the university access to real-world skills building while interning at an established company, non-profit, or government agency where they can apply those skills. The course encourages whole person learning through our holistic pedagogy combining experiential, formal, and program specific learning. Students set professional SMART goals at the start of their internship. They complete weekly asynchronous training modules and skills workshops to build core professional skills such as cross-cultural communication, working remotely, networking, emotional intelligence, sales, presentations, navigating bureaucracy, and more. Students produce bi-weekly written reflections on how they have and/or will apply what they learn in the course to their graduate program specific professional development, internship, and future career pathways. This facilitates cross-discipline learning with their classmates from diverse graduate programs. Each graduate program assigns a liaison who will deepen the grad program specific professional development experiences for students, including student attendance at in-person professional development mentoring, training, and networking events specifically as they relate to their graduate program’s career pathways. Students join LinkedIn groups with alumni from their program and direct message them to conduct informational interviews. At the end of the course, students design an Individual Career Development Plan to direct their career trajectory after completing the graduate program.