Honors Courses

Course Description: These courses make up the John Martinson Honors College (JMHC) First-Year Experience. They are a set of specialty courses all honors students take during the first eight (8) weeks of their arrival at Purdue, and again in the first eight (8) weeks of the spring semester of their first year. FYE courses are designed to introduce students to college-level honors education. In the JMHC, this means preparing you with a “world-ready” education based in learning across difference and across different disciplines of knowledge. 

These courses use innovative pedagogical techniques and engaged learning practices to develop students’ critical thinking ability, interdisciplinary awareness, collaborative skills, and global awareness. The intentional course design is to build interdisciplinary community and to develop both independent and lateral learning practices.

This course is for new beginners to Purdue and the Honors College only.

3 sections 

This course meets the university core requirement for Written Communication (FLO 1) and Information Literacy (FLO 2).

Section Instructor(s): 

J. Peter Moore, Honors College (IN-PERSON)

Kathryn Dilworth, Honors College (IN-PERSON)

Melissa DeFrench, Honors College (SYNC ONLINE)

Credit Hours: 3 

Course Description: This course is a writing-intensive course in which students learn how to find, evaluate, and use credible information, how to express themselves well in a variety of different written genres, and how to write for different audiences.

2 sections

Section Instructor(s):  

Ashima Krishna, Honors College

Kristen Bellisario, Honors College 

Credit Hours: 2 

Course Description: This course is for new members of the Honors College community, who entered as continuing Purdue students or transferred to Purdue. It, being your first or one of your first courses in the Honors College, is designed to help you hone some of the fundamental learning outcomes of an honors education: interdisciplinary thinking, critical thinking, problem solving, research thinking, collaboration, and global awareness. You will also engage with the pillars of the Honors College and develop community within the Honors College. 

To accomplish these objectives, the course is simultaneously project-based and experiential. You will work in multi-disciplinary teams on applied research that emphasizes critical and multi-dimensional thinking about real-world problems. Through project-based learning, you will move your skills beyond identifying and understanding a problem to identifying and formulating solutions to that problem. The problem addressed in the course is local or global in scope and has social, economic, political, and/or environmental implications for our local and/or global community as well as begs a multi-disciplinary, innovative solution. 

This course meets asynchronously online. 

This course meets the university core requirement for Human Cultures: Behavioral and Social Sciences (FLO 8). 

Instructor(s): 

Nathan Swanson, Honors College  

Credit Hours: 2 

Course Description: “Exploring Place” is an examination of the cultural, social, and historical dynamics that influence communities and relationships of a site. Blending independent study and distance learning, in this experiential learning course, the student and the instructor work together to design an individualized, in-depth study of the place in which the student is located. This study will be attentive to the social, cultural, political, economic, and other forces that have shaped this place historically and today, while also focusing on community life and the relationships between residents, institutions, organizations, and others. Exploring Place offers students the opportunity to better understand the people and places around them, expand their worldviews, and increase their self-awareness as they engage within these spaces and understand their place in them. 

This course meets asynchronously online. 

This course meets the university core requirement for Human Cultures: Behavioral and Social Sciences (FLO 8). 

Students may combine their internship experience with this one-credit course to fulfill the scholarly project requirement.  

Instructor(s):  

Megha Anwer, Honors College

Chaonan Liu, Honors College 

Credit Hours: 1 

Course Description: Exploring Place: Internships examines the cultural, social, and historical dynamics that influence communities and relationships of a site where a student is completing their internship. This experiential learning opportunity encourages students to analyze and reflect on their internship experience through by focusing on interactions among people, institutions, and the broader community, and thus exploring the unique characteristics of their internship location. Working closely with the instructor, students design an individualized study plan that connects their internship experiences to a deeper understanding of place. Topics of exploration may include community interactions, historical influences, and the social structures shaping the site. This course provides an opportunity for students to integrate academic inquiry with real-world experiences, fostering professional development, and cultivating world readiness.  

To prepare students to undertake the expectations of this course, enrolled students must participate in the accompanying pre-experience workshop in the spring semester immediately preceding their internship experience. In Spring 2025, the workshop will take place on Saturday, 26 April 2025 from 10-12PM. Registered students will receive communication from the instructor with more details about the workshop. 

This course meets synchronously online.

Instructor(s):   

Nathan Swanson, Honors College 

Credit Hours: 2 
 
Course Description: In this course, students from Purdue University, Unisinos (Porto Alegre, Brazil), and Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco (Cuzco, Peru) collaborate virtually in interdisciplinary teams to identify solutions to a global or trans-local challenge. At the start of the course, students from all three universities will meet together to learn about a pressing global topic from a range of disciplinary perspectives through guest lectures, assigned readings, and class discussions. Students will then be divided into interdisciplinary teams with members from all three universities to focus on researching, developing, and packaging solutions to the problem. In addition to increasing knowledge of the topic and improving teamwork skills, students in this course will advance in intercultural knowledge, skills, and attitudes through their international collaborative experience.  

Solutions Lab Global: Brazil & Peru is the companion course to the JMHC-sponsored study abroad program to Porto Alegre, Brazil, over Spring Break 2026. Students can earn a total of 4 credits by enrolling in the fall semester course and the accompanying 2-credt spring break program. While the study abroad program is not required for enrollment in the fall course, the JMHC has subsidized costs of the study abroad program to make it more accessible to all our students. The program fee is estimated at $600, excluding international airfare. 

Instructor(s):  

Shaunta Scroggins, Honors College

Credits Hours: 2 

This course has arranged hours. 

Course Description: This course is intended for JMHC students who have been awarded the Lead Forward Fellowship Grant. The course provides Lead Forward Fellows a space to receive further instruction on social impact leadership, to share their experience with enacting social impact projects, and to support each other's success and learning. Depending on availability, students who are undertaking social impact projects but are not Lead Forward Fellows may also enroll in the course, per approval from the course instructor.  

This course meets during the second 8-weeks, October 22 – December 13, 2025

Instructor: Shaunta Scroggins, Honors College

Credit Hours: 1

Course Description: Lead for Social Impact provides students with a framework for understanding social impact leadership that will foster valuable insights about personal commitments and how to work effectively with others to make a meaningful change in the world. Students will explore captivating case studies that allow them to see different leadership principles in context and in action. Students will also have opportunities to explore their own relationship with this leadership framework through dynamic class conversations and exciting activities outside the classroom. In this way, the course will help students clarify the causes that matter most to them and begin building a network for enacting social impact leadership. Note: this course can be used for completing the Lead Forward credential program and applying for the Lead Forward Fellowship Grant.

This course meets asynchronously online. 

Instructor(s): 

Shaunta Scroggins, Honors College

Credit Hours: 3 

Course Description: This course acts as an asynchronous, curricular companion to students’ extracurricular leadership experience. Students will choose from a menu of course modules, allowing them to tailor the instruction they receive to their own leadership context. A portion of the course is designated as a leadership lab, which makes time devoted to the leadership role part of the course. Ultimately, the course will enhance students' performance in their leadership roles, promote deeper learning about leadership best practices, and help students cultivate a research-based leadership approach that is suited to their strengths and values.  

This course meets asynchronously online. 

Instructor(s): 

Kathryn Dilworth, Honors College

Credit Hours: 3 

Course Description: This course will cover the history and motivation behind philanthropy, nonprofit organizations, the US non-profit sector as well as the role of ethics in private action taken for the public good. Students will also learn the fundamentals of nonprofit leadership and fundraising.  

Instructor(s):  

Andrew Brightman, Biomedical Engineering 

Holly Jaycox, Visual & Performing ArtA

Credit Hours: 3 

Course Description:

Every moment, our nervous system is engaging with the world, but often we are not aware of how this is happening and how those interactions affect our health and performance. In this course, we will study the underlying neuroscience that explains how the system functions, while at the same time provide an entrance into ways of experiencing our own nervous systems with guided activities from many disciplines. Understanding the science of neurophysiology, including the intricate connections between mind and body and the physical and mental practices that support deepening awareness, is essential for many fields of professional practice, especially those involving human bodies. Through guided practices and study of human neurophysiology, students will learn how they can shape their nervous system responses toward healthier relationships to stress, trauma, and high intensity professional activities. The course will be of interest to students in fields from health sciences to engineering and from communication to design, art and performance. Students at all levels and from all disciplines are invited to enroll. No previous experience with the practices or understanding of neurophysiology is needed. 

This course meets during Fall Break, October 13-14, 2025

Instructor(s): 

Adam Watkins, Honors College 

Credit Hours: 1 

Course Description: Honors Leadership Retreat is for Honors students who want to take meaningful steps on the path to becoming an exceptional leader. The retreat consists of a highly interactive two-day, one-night stay at Camp Tecumseh over Fall Break. Here, students can explore principles of leadership excellence in a fun, supportive, low-stakes environment, while also making connections with other Honors leaders.  

*There is an additional fee for this course. Students can apply for need-based support.

This course meets during Fall Break, October 13-14, 2025

Instructor(s):  

Muiris MacGiollabhui, Honors College 

Credit Hours: 1 

Course Description: This fall break course will bring students back to the nineteenth century in Chicago at a time of steam engines, robber-barons, and railway strikes. In Chicago, we will explore the lives of laborers, who were often migrants newly arrived in the United States, as they navigated the crushing economic inequality of the Gilded Age. We will explore the rise of labor unions and radical agitators who faced off with men like Rockefeller and Carnegie. The first day will be spent exploring the Driehaus Museum, where students will be tasked with thinking through the cultural and societal forces that brought on the Gilded Age. The second day will be spent in the Pullman Neighborhood investigating how laborers, suffocated by their working conditions, elected to strike, leading to the largest railway strike in US history. On the final day, we will explore the site of the Haymarket Affair, a bombing blamed on European anarchists, and the legal trials that followed. Students will be asked to think about their current historical moment and the commonalities between the present day and the Gilded Age.   

*There is an additional fee for this course. Students can apply for need-based support.

This course meets during Fall Break, October 13-14, 2025

Instructor(s): 

J. Peter Moore, Honors College 

Credit Hours: 1 

Course Description: This four-day course offers students a hands-on introduction to the Honors College Print Bay, a fully-equipped center for the experiential study of letterpress printing. This vintage method, once the dominant form of industrial printing, has over the past several decades experienced a dramatic revival. At a time when the campus is overwhelmed with posters and flyers that all look the same—with the usual fonts, preset templates and stock images—letterpress introduces into the visual landscape an unmistakably warm and vibrant alternative. A synthesis of art and machine, letterpress is an analog process that allows the user to physically compose layouts, and work within a completely unique set of visual constraints. The resulting prints testify to the beauty of irregularity, the joy of a meditative tactile practice, and the benefits of collaboration. By the end of our course, students will receive instruction in the following skills: grid layout, typesetting, form lock-up, make-ready, press operation, plate etching, press maintenance, and all relevant safety precautions. While no previous experience is necessary, students with an interest visual design, mechanical technology and/or creative expression are encouraged to enroll. 

This course meets during Fall Break, October 13-14, 2025

Instructor(s): 

Dwaine Jengelley, Honors College 

Credit Hours: 1 

Course Description: This experiential learning course explores the role of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in shaping the sports economy, including infrastructure development, event attraction, sports tourism, and industry growth, with Indianapolis as a case study. Through on-site visits to key sports venues and discussions with government officials, industry stakeholders, and policymakers, students will gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of sports-driven development. This course provides a hands-on opportunity to examine how public-private collaborations shape the sports ecosystem, drive investment, and position Indianapolis as a leading sports capital. 

This course has a program fee. Students can apply for need-based support.

This course fulfills the university core requirement for Science, Technology, and Society (FLO 5).  

Instructor(s): 

Maren Linett, Department of English 

Credit Hours: 3 

Course Description: This course engages students in learning, from multiple disciplinary perspectives, about eugenics during the early 20th century and the "new liberal eugenics" today. Reading scientific, sociological, popular, and literary texts to understand eugenics, students will do a variety of types of assignments, from serving on a mock board of approval for a particular genetic enhancement to analyzing poetry about an early twentieth-century eugenics institution. For their final assignment, students will conduct a group research project in Purdue's Special Collections. There, students will find an "old" eugenic text (our library even has notes from a professor's course on marriage!) to compare to a "new" eugenic object (such as a questionnaire from a sperm bank), exploring their similarities and differences. This course combines history, literature, and bioethics to invite students to consider what it might mean to try to "improve" human beings, and at what cost.     

This course fulfills the university core requirement for Science, Technology, and Society (FLO 5).  

Instructor(s): 

Lindsay Weinberg, Honors College 

Credit Hours: 3 

Course Description: Artificial Intelligence (AI) involves the use of data and computer systems to perform tasks, make decisions, or solve problems. But what does it mean to call this “intelligence”? Who gets to decide what problems AI should be used to solve, and how to solve them? How can we evaluate whether AI is fair, good, or just, not only for us as individuals, but also as members of societies? In this course, you will investigate the social and ethical implications of AI, from whether machines can think, to the design of AI-enabled tools, to the datasets and labor underpinning AI’s development, to its impacts on how rights, resources, and opportunities get distributed. Together, we’ll cut through AI hype and hysteria to demystify what AI is and what it can do so that we can develop a critical understanding of AI and its relationship to society.  

This course meets the university core requirement for Human Cultures: Behavioral and Social Sciences (FLO 8). 

Instructor(s):  

Elizabeth Brite, Honors College 

Credit Hours: 3 

Course Description: At the turn of the new millennium, Nobel Prize Laureate Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stormer proposed that we had entered a new geologic epoch - the Anthropocene – a time when humans had become the dominant force on planet Earth. Anthropocene means “the human age,” and it is a concept that has become widely popular in scientific communities as a way to denote the extreme impacts humans are now having on the climate, the environment, and virtually all living things on Earth. Despite its popularity, however, the Anthropocene remains a hypothetical and hotly debated idea. The International Committee on Stratigraphy has yet to recognize it as a true geologic epoch (one that can be empirically observed in the layers of the Earth) and arguments persist over exactly when it may have begun, or the ways that the concept may mask the inequalities of environmental harm. In this course, students will explore the entangled relations between humanity and the environment from multiple social contexts and time periods. 

This course meets the university core requirement for Human Cultures: Behavioral and Social Sciences (FLO 8).

Instructor(s):  

Katie Jarriel, Honors College

Credit Hours: 3 
 
Course Description: Living on the coast has profoundly affected humanity: nearly half the world’s population lives within 200 km of a seashore. Conversely, humans have a huge impact on maritime environments, having altered 85% of all coastlines from their natural state. This course explores the complex relationships between people, the sea, and coastal environments. In this course, you will explore human-coastal interactions from the perspectives of anthropology, history, environmental and climate studies, and political science to contextualize past maritime culture and better understand precarious coastal futures. A typical day in this class will emphasize discussion and peer education through team-based projects. 

This course meets the university core requirement for Human Cultures: Humanities (FLO 7).  

Instructor(s):  

Muiris MacGiollabhui, Honors College 

Credit Hours: 3 
 
Course Description: This course offers students an opportunity to focus on cultural landscapes/contexts, to learn how race and ethnicity permeate cultural texts, genres, and industries. Specifically, “Exile” introduces students to the role of banishment and exile in the making of the modern world. Seen as a less cruel form of punishment, and an alternative to public execution, governments around the world have used banishment and exile as a method to control their populations, creating diasporic communities as a result. Those forced into exile left embittered communities behind, scarred by the expulsion of their compatriots. In the communities that received them, they were met with skepticism, and at times, resistance. For the exiles themselves, the trauma of forced removal changed them in important ways. Some became radicalized as a result. Others yearned for home and put their hand to artistic pursuits to work through their grief. At other times, the bringing together of disaffected populations created networks of solidarity. Students will explore the psychological impacts of exile on those affected, how it has affected populations intergenerationally, the art that has blossomed in exiled communities, and the efforts to bring reconciliation and justice. Students will be exposed to exiled communities trans-historically, including the Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka, Irish exiles, the Jamaican Maroons, and the French Acadians. 

This course meets the university core requirement for Human Cultures: Humanities (FLO 7).  

Instructor(s):  

Jessica Sturm, School of Languages & Cultures

Credit Hours: 3 
 
Course Description: When the French national soccer team won the FIFA Men’s World Cup in 2018, comedian Trevor Noah remarked that “Africa won the World Cup,” setting off a public conflict with the then-Ambassador from France to the United States, Gerard Araud, and indeed the French people in general. Their conflict demonstrated two very different viewpoints on diversity in France. This course will explore how national identity is played out in sports teams, focusing primarily on the French national soccer teams; we will use our observations about French soccer to explore sports culture and identity in the U.S. and other societies.  This course offers students an opportunity to focus on cultural landscapes/contexts, to learn how race and ethnicity permeate cultural texts, genres, and industries. 

Instructor(s): 

Jose Rabi, Visiting Scholar, Honors College and Agricultural & Biological Engineering 

Credit Hours: 3 

Course Description: With an aim toward preserving humanity’s well being and our planet’s precious resources, the member states of the United Nations adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDGs put forward specific targets – 169 overall – that may guide thinkers and leaders through decision-making towards sustainability. This experiential course will take students through the fascinating art of data-driven decision-making using quantitative tools for managing and optimizing limited resources. The first component of the course focuses on understanding sustainable development problems conceptually and translating them into a decision-making framework. The other component comprises an applied lab in which you will apply quantitative methods to the problems studied in the first part of the course. In this component, students will learn how to organize raw data into elements that go into a quantitative decision-making framework, namely: objective-function, decision variables, scenario parameters, and extant restrictions. Through step-by-step instruction, students will implement those elements into Excel spreadsheets as means for executing “what-if” quantitative decisions across different SDGs. For example, for SDG 1 (No Poverty), we may address the question of if a diet should comprise specific foodstuff at assorted prices, what is the lowest cost blend fulfilling minimal nutritional demands? For SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), we may analyze the problem of if both raw materials and workforce are limited, how many different items must be produced to maximize growth. 

In completing all aspects of this course, students fulfill the requirements for an Honors College Scholarly Project. This course is only open to 3rd and 4th year students. 

Instructor(s): 

Dr. Jason Ware, Honors College  

Credit Hours: 3 

Course Description: Tokyo, Berlin, Vienna, Copenhagen, and Munich are the five most livable cities in the world when using metrics to measure crime, emergency services’ response time, transportation networks, cycling culture, food, drink, retail, and the number of independent bookshops. Many surveys exist to rank the world’s best cities, but wealth is one theme that emerges from among the varying indices and their respective results. The metrics—indeed, the participants responding to the metrics—represent populations of people with high levels of discretionary income. How might the metrics reflect different values if these indices include a different kind of participant, such as the urban poor? Our goal in this course is to investigate indicators of community well-being related to quality of life within urban poor communities. The underlying premise is that urban poor communities across the globe have negligible influence in determining the criteria for measuring a city’s livability. We’ll imagine that material realities of poverty manifest in issues of failing infrastructure and poor living conditions that compromise healthy living, and that social realities manifest in decreased educational attainment and outcomes. All of which suggests that urban poor communities may produce collectively a set of indicators that create a different picture of what it looks like to live within urban environments. We’ll plan to work with urban poor communities within the Greater Lafayette area to create and capture these indicators, the result of which will be a set of inclusive indicators for influencing policy and producing enhanced local future outcomes and community wellbeing. 

This course meets synchronously online.

In completing all aspects of this course, students fulfill the requirements for an Honors College Scholarly Project. This course is only open to 3rd and 4th year students. 

Instructor(s):  

Kathryn Dilworth, Honors College  

Credit Hours: 2 

Course Description: This course establishes a new pathway for Honors completion through a critical reflection of a student’s engagement with the Undergraduate Research pillar of the college. This course empowers Honors College students to leverage their research, scholarly, and creative experiences in curricular as well as co- and extra-curricular experiences toward completing the scholarly project requirement. The major assignment of the course is a reflective portfolio, which will serve not only as a record and reflection of past experiences, but also will be an opportunity to undertake self-reflection about how your time as an Honors College student has shaped your research thinking and helped prepare you for life beyond the university.  

In completing all aspects of this course, students fulfill the requirements for an Honors College Scholarly Project. This course is only open to 3rd and 4th year students. 

Instructor(s):  

Aparajita Jaiswal, CILMAR 

Credit Hours: 3 

Course Description: CILMAR is the Center for Intercultural Learning, Mentorship, Assessment and Research at Purdue. CILMAR designs curriculum and assessments to measure the intercultural development competence of students on Purdue Campus. If you’ve taken a study abroad course or engaged in projects that involved cross-cultural understanding, odds are that you’ve benefitted from CILMAR’s work. Now, CILMAR needs your help. 

In this scholarly project course, students will work in teams on research projects with existing data sets collected by the instructor.  Teams will be assessing the effectiveness of educational initiatives such as study abroad programs, classroom interventions, etc. The goal of each project will be to understand participant perceptions and assess their growth. Research teams will learn to navigate academic databases, critically evaluate sources, synthesize information and write succinct literature reviews. Beyond just research skills development, this course is dedicated to the practical application of research methods, including quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods analysis of data sets, setting the stage for students to emerge as researchers and active participants in scholarly dialogues on intercultural competence. The end goal of the course is to help students write a scholarly research report and present their findings in the Undergraduate Research Symposium to a broader audience. 

In completing all aspects of this course, students fulfill the requirements for an Honors College Scholarly Project. This course is only open to 3rd and 4th year students.  

Instructor(s):  

Monte Taylor, Visual & Performing Arts

Credit Hours: 3 

Course Description: In this course, students will use the Supercollider programming language to learn the fundamentals behind digital sound synthesis, create algorithmically-generated music and sound, learn how coding can foster new avenues for musical creativity, and address how technology can help artists create art that better reflects contemporary society. Students will then demonstrate the practical application of concepts learned in class through the creation of original works of music and/or sound art, culminating in a public performance/exhibition.