You can learn a lot about what MacEwan has to offer at our Open House this Saturday, November 4, including some of the university’s coolest courses.
Though some change from year to year, you can always find interesting, unusual and fun courses in the Academic Calendar. Here are just a few of our coolest courses offered in the 2023/24 academic year.
Capitalizing on childhood memories
You might not expect Economics 101: Introduction to Microeconomics to make an appearance on a cool courses list, but Dr. Junaid Jahangir’s sections take an interesting approach. The associate professor teaches concepts like the Top 1% and policies to address economic inequality using clips from Disney classics – everything from The Princess and The Frog to Snow White to Winnie the Pooh to The Little Mermaid.
Read more about Dr. Jahangir’s take on Econ 101 here.
Getting up close and personal with an apex predator
Students in Dr. Lynne Honey’s PSYC 381: Animal Learning Field School spent a week observing expert animal trainers at Discovery Wildlife Park in Innisfail. Working closely with wolves and grizzly bears, they learned about classical and operant conditioning, environmental enrichment and health and wellness requirements for animals living in captivity.
See a photo of the class teaching a grizzly bear to touch his head here.
Ready, player one
In another common course with a unique spin on delivery, Dr. Ross Shaw combines the smallest unit of life with big-time gaming in BIOL 107: Introduction to Cell Biology. Students in this class use Life on the Edge, a single-player educational video game created by a multidisciplinary team right here at MacEwan, to learn about the cell and its needs and defenses.
Read more about Life on the Edge here.
Creating album art and book covers
For years, Constanza Pacher has partnered with Bent River Records, MacEwan’s in-house record label, on a project that has her design students working directly with musicians to develop an album cover. Each year, one student design from her DESN 231: Typography II class is selected for commercial production and distribution. The same class also works with a renowned Canadian author in connection with the Book of the Year committee on creative works centred on the university’s annual book selection.
The deeper meaning of mealtime
Dr. Franca Boag leads students in an examination of the role of food across cultures in political, symbolic, economic and other historical and contemporary social processes in ANTH 497: Anthropology of Food. Food often plays a role in larger issues such as social inequalities – hierarchies of status, race, class and power. It also speaks to cultural identity, memory, gender and ritual, nationalism, globalization, and the political economy of food and protest.
Finding the depth in children’s stories
Revisit your favourite childhood stories with Dr. William Thompson and explore British children’s fantasy from the 19th century to the present. Learn about the Fantasy tradition in Britain in ENGL 389: Topics in Chidren's Lit – British Children's Fantasy, from Alice’s Adventures to Harry Potter, and from the Psammead trilogy to the Narnia chronicles. Analyze the growth of the genre over time, and learn about tropes and themes present in the classics you grew up with.
More than just flower power
Dr. Tami Bereska knows that the word “hippie” likely brings to mind a specific image. However, the youth counterculture of the mid-1960s included a wide variety of people and causes: student rights movements, workers’ rights movements, anti-racist movements in the form of Red Power and Black Power, environmental movements, anti-war movements and more. Less than a decade later, the youth counterculture had vanished, and many of the issues they fought against have endured. Learn about the rise, fall and aftermath of the youth counterculture of the 1960s, and its relevance for young people’s lives today in SOCI 477: Advanced Topics in Youth – What Happened to the Hippies? The Rise and Fall of the 1960s Youth Counterculture.
What is evil?
What is evil, and how do we define people, behaviour and actions as evil? Explore the topic in SOCI 302: Current Issues In Sociology – Demons, Dictators and Serial Killers: Understanding Evil in Society. Dr. Susan Raine investigates the ways in which scholars have looked at this question, starting with religious perspectives and branching out into applied and theoretical approaches in philosophy, sociology, media studies and psychology. Look at historical and comparative case studies and examples to explore different iterations of evil, including demonic possession, mass atrocities, serial killers and capitalism.
What happens to the searchers?
Consider a story in the news involving a missing person: an elderly person who wanders away from their family’s campsite, the child who vanishes from a playground, or the snowmobiler buried in an avalanche. Searches for these people occur across countries and terrains, and often with limited amounts of time. These searches were once limited to people walking and driving around, calling out the person’s name, but available search methods have improved. What effects do search parties suffer? What emotions do the searchers feel? Dr. Dean Verger analyzes both volunteer and professional search and rescue operations, including emergency workers and the stresses they face, in PSYC 405: How Psychology Informs Search and Rescue.
Paving the way for the next generation of university students
Dr. Emily Milne and Dr. Kaitlyn Towle have launched COSL 300: Community Service Learning – Building Local Community, a new community-service learning course for the Winter 2023 term. Working with MacEwan Child and Youth University, students craft interactive workshops aimed at engaging junior high school students to explore promising practices in pedagogical design, principles of community engagement, and the art of knowledge translation and communication. This course helps students to develop a well-rounded skill set that goes beyond traditional classroom learning, gain real-world experiences in creating meaningful educational resources and engage with local communities.
Read more about their work here.