Courses  

 

Revolving around the Power of Water, all courses are seminars with substantial fieldwork that interconnect content, projects, and site-specific learning experiences.

Participants earn 16 advanced honors credits. 

Choose two out of the following three courses:

HON 344: Environmental Policy of Grand Canyon and Colorado Plateau

3 credit hours in Political Science or Environmental Sciences

Instructor: Dr. Tom Sisk

The Colorado Plateau is rich in diverse human cultures and amazing places, environments, and natural resources.  It is also rich in conflicts among cultures and between those cultures and the natural world. This course will introduce students to some of the major environmental and political issues of the region, including water, forests, fire, restoration, development, tourism, and sites sacred to indigenous populations. Students will interact with primary stakeholders, such as federal agency land managers, non-profits, environmentalists, and indigenous people to understand the complexity of preserving one of the world’s most valuable treasures.

HON 341: Peoples of the Southwest: Past and Present

3 credit hours in Anthropology, Native American Studies, or Humanities

Instructor: Dr. Kelley Hays-Gilpin

For at least 12,000 years, peoples of the Southwest have developed diverse and flexible adaptations to scarcity and unpredictability of water and other critical resources. Their human-land-water relationships are expressed in art and ritual as well as technology and social organization. Emphasizing writings and media by Native American authors and filmmakers together with scientific research, this course explores the relationships among past and present human communities in the Southwest and their unique environments. Students will be immersed into southwestern cultural traditions by visiting tribal reservations and interacting with indigenous people (i.e., Hopi, Zuni, Navajo, and Hualapai) and behind-the-scenes explorations of archaeological sites and museums.

ENV 399H  Ecology of the Grand Canyon Region

3 credit hours in Ecology, Environmental Science, or Biology

Instructor: Dr. Angie Moline

The Grand Canyon Ecoregion is the perfect context for understanding ecological principles. The lack of water in this region reduces primary production and strips ecological associations down to a few key species. The Grand Canyon, therefore, is an excellent place to learn about the abundance of organisms, population dynamics, community organization, energy flow, and nutrient cycling. There are few places on earth where ecological relationships are more starkly apparent than in the Grand Canyon Ecoregion. A short, field-based research project will help you learn about population dynamics of native species, such as California Condors, Colorado River fish, Kaibab Deer, or Mexican Wolves as well as the interactions among these species and their adaptations to floods, fires, and droughts.

Choose one out of the following two courses:

HON 340  Writing the Canyon: Grand Canyon Aesthetics and Humanities

3 credit hours in Humanities, Art, or English

Instructor: Robyn Martin

Water: the word alone is enough to conjure magic in the high deserts and plateaus of the Grand Canyon, where precipitation varies dramatically from rim to river. Water reveals places unseen, providing entry into new experiences and facilitating encounters in a multitude of ways. Using water as a metaphor, we will examine this critical resource and consider how it inspired and continues to inspire art and literature as well as shaping the unique history and future of the Grand Canyon. Our hands-on field experiences into and around the Canyon with renowned, local, and indigenous artists and writers allow us to explore, face to face, how water sculpted the inspiration of Canyon writers, artists, and its early explorers. Our explorations will allow us to mold our own personal interpretations of the Canyon as other artists, writers, and explorers have done. Using creative and non-fiction writing, journaling, art, and multi-media we will document our own Grand Canyon intimate encounters.

HON 343: Geology of the Grand Canyon

3 credit hours in Geology, Earth Sciences, or Natural History

Instructor: Wayne Ranney

The rich geologic history and landscape evolution of the Grand Canyon and its Colorado River provide a stimulating arena for understanding geologic processes. Utilizing in-depth classroom discussions and numerous hands-on field trips, we focus on understanding the mechanisms and timing of canyon cutting, the ancient environments that left the colorful rock strata, the power of water to slice through solid rock and create canyons, and how scientists have interacted with this geologic marvel through the last 150 years. Students will explore and hike at the canyon and will become immersed in the most recent ideas regarding its development. Geologic wonders abound in this world-class landform, and this seminar is geared to make each student an active, working member of this most fortunate community of scientists.

The following two courses are required by all participants: 

HON 399: Integrative Seminar: Grand Canyon and the Colorado Plateau as Text

3 credit hours in Anthropology, English, Environmental Science, Humanities

Instructors: Dr. Angie Moline and Robyn Martin

The Integrative Seminar, is a series of field explorations and seminars on selected literary and scientific readings. It provides a focused and systematic approach to discovering the power of water within the Grand Canyon region. Taking an interdisciplinary approach that weaves together science and humanities, students will build a complex understanding of water’s economic, political, artistic, ecological, social, and spiritual forces. The integrative seminar is a venue in which students can pull together the learning of their other courses to create a three-dimensional “map” of their Grand Canyon experience.

HON 485: Directed Study: Undergraduate Independent Research Project

4 credit hours in the field of the research topic or Independent Study

Instructor: Dr. George Gumerman

Students are guided as they undertake a research paper or other creative project (i.e., film) that incorporates course work, their interests, and fieldwork. Faculty mentors assist in formulating appropriate topics, identifying available resources, and engaging students in productive writing strategies.  Students interested in creative projects are also expected to produce an analytical written document. The culmination of this course is a public symposium in which the research projects are presented and discussed