Summer 2026 New & Trending Online Courses

Instructor: Fan Fan

This introductory Chinese course aims at achieving both linguistic accuracy and conversational competence to thrive in professional domains, including business, law, medicine, and technology. Students will focus on acquiring language proficiency relevant to professional communication, basic exchanges, profession-related inquiries, and patient and client communications. Chinese pronunciation and tones will be emphasized throughout the semester. Students will also be introduced to elements of the Chinese culture in these professional fields. By the end of the course, participants will not only have enhanced their Mandarin proficiency but will also possess an understanding of the cultural nuances within each professional sector, facilitating successful communication and collaboration in business, legal, medical, or technical contexts.

What does this course count for in CGS: Liberal Studies BA

Instructor: Dana Nowlin-Russell

This course is designed for students who are interested in learning about ways of navigating anxiety and apprehension about writing and for those who expect to teach or support other writers in business, education, and other nonprofit, public health and service institutions. Writing can be an anxiety-provoking process for many people who nevertheless have to write because of academic or professional responsibilities. The course will explore ways of theorizing the writing process and will identify and share strategies for navigating roadblocks (such as writing apprehension, writing anxiety, and blocking) as they arise. Students can expect to learn essential terms from the rhetorical tradition in order to become more aware of the choices they make as thinkers and writers, and they will analyze the rhetoric of a variety of texts from a disability studies perspective. In addition to learning about writing theory, students can expect to read and write about anxiety and about how the idea of disability functions in our culture

What does this course count for in CGS: General Education Requirement: Writing Intensive Course, Disability Studies Certificate; Liberal Studies BA

Instructor: John Boonstra

With uniformity and diversity in the Mediterranean world as its overarching theme, this course examines the singularly important role of the sea between the lands" from the fall of Rome to the present day. Concentrating on the lands and people of the Northern shore from Gibraltar to Anatolia, the focus alternates between thematic approaches to the Mediterranean region as a whole and specific attention to the sub-regional histories of Iberia, Italy, and the Balkans.

What does this course count for in CGS:   General Education Requirement(s): Cross-Cultural Awareness, Historical Analysis, Specific Geographic Region; Liberal Studies BA

Instructor: Marcelle Pierson

A prerequisite for the music major curriculum, this course trains the student to recognize intervals, modes, and harmonic motion, and provides the critical keyboard skills needed to comprehend the roles of melody and harmony in European-American music. The course will emphasize keyboard-based training as a preparation for further study in music.

What does this course count for in CGS: General Education The Arts Requirement; Liberal Studies BA

Interested in Music?  Visit the Department of Music »

Instructor: Jonathan Weinkle

The American culture of the 20th and 21st centuries has been called, not death-defying, but death-denying. It is often said that America is the only place in the world that treats death as optional. Once upon a time, we couldn’t have open, public conversations about breast cancer, because the word could not be uttered aloud. In many places, it is just as hard today to have an open, public conversation about death and dying. This phenomenon is not just a social more; it affects the practice of many professions and entire segments of our economy and society. This course will explore our individual and cultural reactions to mortality, the ways in which dying in today’s America is different from dying throughout history or elsewhere in the world, and the responses of a variety of professions, both within the field of healthcare and beyond, to their encounters with people in the various stages of dying. Students will be asked, at turns, to be scientific, philosophical, clinical, analytical, and emotional in encountering the concepts and material presented here. This should be a true interdisciplinary experience.

What does this course count for in CGS: Health Services majors and Community Health Assessment certificate; Liberal Studies BA; Certificate in Conceptual Foundations of Medicine in DSAS