The course covers the impact/effect of journalism on American society, with an introduction to the history, freedom, technologies, ethics, and functions of the news media. Students will learn how to assess news value, develop news judgment, and analyze news stories.

Opinion Media teaches students how to craft persuasive personal essays, commentary and op-eds, and get them published on news sites, in trade magazines, in newspapers and on influencer blogs. By drawing upon the ethical deployment of evidence, including argument, anecdote and statistical data, student authors will learn how to become influencers and thought leaders through the deployment of the written word and multimedia texts, including writing scripts, and producing video, for their own social media channels. This course is ideally suited for those seeking to sharpen their persuasive writing skills to sell their ideas, vision, expertise and life experience to a targeted media audience.

This course focuses on the relationships between law and other social institutions, and examines the values and interests that are expressed in law and shaped by legal structures and processes. Consensus and conflict perspectives of the law are compared and contrasted, and applied to understanding the law's impact on everyday life. This course takes an explicit interdisciplinary approach to understanding law.

This course will provide a mechanism for teaching topics within the field of humanities and/or social sciences on an ad-hoc basis. This course will serve as a shell to allow the College of Liberal Arts flexibility to allow faculty across the college to teach a short-term course in their area of expertise. These short-term courses can take the form of • a course surrounding a professional opportunity, such as a conference or field study; • a short-term course developed to teach students skills not ordinarily offered in the curriculum, which may lead to a skills-based certification • a pop-up course developed to address a current event. Faculty who wish to stand up this course must have the permission of the department chair as well as the dean’s office.