UT - Spartan Studies

This course is the first in a two-semester sequence that is required for all entering first-year students. This course helps students achieve academic and personal goals by introducing them to campus resources, policies, and processes. The course also introduces students to the University's Spartan Ready® competencies. Additionally, students will receive training in campus systems, a variety of software packages, online collaboration, and on-line security. 

This course is the second in a two-semester sequence that is required for all first-year students. It is taken the semester immediately following successful completion of UTAMPA 101. It is delivered in a hybrid format with a significant amount of content delivered in on-line modules. This course will continue students’ development of Spartan Ready® competencies. Students will work in teams to explore and cultivate an intentional on-line presence. Additionally, students will complete a financial literacy tutorial designed to develop a basic understanding of personal financial management tools.

This is a required course for transfer students. Delivered in a hybrid format with a significant amount of content delivered in on-line modules. This course helps students achieve academic and personal goals by introducing them to campus resources, policies, and processes. The course also introduces students to the University’s Spartan Ready® competencies. Students will receive training in campus systems, and a variety of software packages; including internet infrastructure. Students will work in teams to explore and cultivate an intentional on-line presence Students will also complete a financial literacy tutorial designed to develop a basic understanding of personal financial management tools.

This is a required course for military veterans. Delivered in a hybrid format with a significant amount of content delivered in on-line modules. This course helps students achieve academic and personal goals by introducing them to campus resources, policies, and processes. The course also introduces students to the University’s Spartan Ready® competencies. Students will receive training in campus systems, and a variety of software packages; including internet infrastructure. Students will work in teams to explore and cultivate an intentional on-line presence. Students will also complete a financial literacy tutorial designed to develop a basic understanding of personal financial management tools. 

This digital literacy course introduces students to the fundamentals of computer programming through rudimentary instruction in a computer language such as Python. By the end of the course, students should be able to demonstrate a basic understanding of and competency in computer programming.

This online course will introduce students to resources that will help them determine their career goals, identify strategies for developing and articulating Spartan Ready(R) Competencies, and  develop a professional portfolio. It is recommended that the course be completed during their second year at The University of Tampa but must be completed before enrolling in their Spartan Studies Culminating Experience Course(s).

This course is designed for students interested in obtaining peer leadership roles and is open to any student with an interest in leadership. Over the course of the semester, Spartan Ready® components will be infused with peer leadership. Students will also learn how to build their professional brand as leaders on campus. This course fulfills an elective credit toward the leadership minor. This course is graded Satisfactory/ Unsatisfactory (S/U.) 

No matter where or when, humans share a common impulse for self-expression through visual imagery despite vast differences among their creative choices. This course explores the significances of visual art for humanity as well as how its study can foster deep cross-cultural connections and individual self-discovery. We investigate the interpretive frames and types of evidence used to “answer” big questions, using objects such as paintings, sculptures, and architectural monuments as primary evidence, in combination with other sources (such as scholarly readings and historical texts) as inductive analysis tools and as modes for exploring art history as a humanistic discipline.

Global Media Cultures explores how people living in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and beyond produce and consume media in both immediate (local) and distributed (global) contexts. Drawing from a global range of written texts that reckon with the political, economic, and technological constraints and affordance of media, communication, and culture around the world, students will watch complimentary popular forms of entertainment in order to understand how these artifacts process and document the human experience. Engaging with and writing about these materials, the class will radiate outward, from media-specific to nationally-specific considerations and beyond to transnational media convergence.

An examination of non-Western dance forms, including classical, ceremonial and folk/traditional, in their historical and cultural contexts. This course is enhanced by observing video and live performances.

This course looks at the lens and screen arts (photography, film, video, animation, and new media). Students will learn how these creative image practices build real and imagined communities transnationally by exploring creative, lens-based image practices from around the world. Addressing images through photographic genres and modes such as portraiture, landscape, documentary, and more, the course will take a comparative approach that allows us to look at a range of cultures outside the US. Within this comparative framework, certain units may focus on one specific region of the world and its diasporic communities.

This course examines the history of selected cities in relation to transnational, intercontinental, and global connections. Students examine evidence revealing how patterns of social relationships, norms, institutions, and civil society and civic engagement in these cities have shaped locally, how they have changed over time, and how they have been connected to global patterns such as trade, empire, migration, and the exchange of ideas and practices such as race, class, gender, and technology.

This course examines the history of wars and revolutions in modern times, including political, cultural, economic, and social clashes and upheavals. Investigating the interconnections between local events and global transformations, students examine evidence revealing how wars and revolutions have shaped, and been shaped by social relationships, norms, and institutions, including civil society and civic engagement. The course explores how wars and revolutions have changed over time, and how they have been connected to global patterns such as trade, empire, migration, and the exchange of ideas and practices such as race, class, gender, and technology.

This course examines the ways that practitioners and patients from around the world narrativize medical conditions, health treatments, and the body. Our emphasis on medicine and the body not as static and known entities but as things that require “understanding,” in the senses that they both necessitate interpretation and should be approached compassionately. Our texts will include everything from medical memoirs, to ethnographies, to fiction. We will consider such questions as: How do public and personal interpretations of health impact wellbeing? How do understandings of health differ globally? And, how are health practices nationalized, gendered, and racialized?

This course will introduce students to narratives of immigrants to major cities as the foundation of our investigation into how ever-shifting local urban cultures inform and are informed by inter- and intra-continental networks of people, businesses, organizations, and political bodies. Through writing about migrant literature, films, plays, music, and/or other cultural artifacts, students will trace how “local” experiences from around the world influence the ever-shifting cultural milieux of the contemporary “global” city. Students will closely read and watch stories of immigrants to a city chosen for the focus of the class using critical texts drawn from several humanities disciplines such as history, literary studies, cultural studies, philosophy, and film studies to gain an understanding of what makes a “global” city.

In this humanities course, students will study the role music plays in shaping and responding to social movements on a local, national, and global scale, considering what the function, potential, and limits of musical protests were in transforming civic life over the course of the twentieth century.

This course introduces students to moral thinking and to local and global ethical controversies across the world, predominantly outside of the United States. Students will learn the basics of critical thinking and moral reasoning in a cross-cultural context, and use African, Anglo-European, Chinese, Indigenous, and Islamic moral frameworks to critically and respectfully examine global and local moral debates.

We will explore questions about metaphysics, epistemology, and value/ethics by engaging with philosophical texts and ideas from parts of the world outside the United States. We will examine a foundational text from ancient Greek, Hellenistic, and/or Roman philosophy (e.g., Plato, Aristotle, the ancient Stoics) and one from early modern philosophy by a French or German philosopher (i.e., Descartes or Kant). We will have additional readings and activities that support, challenge, or complement the foundational philosophical texts from geographically distant parts of the ancient and early modern world by bringing them into conversation with our own lives in our local communities.

This course explores three traditions of philosophy, religion, and contemplative mind-body practice from parts of the world outside the United States: Indian Vedic philosophy, Chinese Daoism, and Zen Buddhism. Students will explore connections between these global traditions and their own actions as individuals within specific local communities, critically examine philosophical/religious texts, learn through writing while cultivating knowledge and skills distinctive of the humanities and the discipline of philosophy, experience contemplative practices (i.e., hatha yoga, qigong, and/or meditation) outside of the class, and engage in respectful discussion in which they compare/contrast and critically assess these global traditions and their associated contemplative practices.

This course examines selected topics in politics and society. Topics may include, but are not limited to, the intersection of politics and globalization, ideologies, pop culture, gender, race, law, justice, and sustainability.

Is memory like a camera? Can happiness be learned? Students will examine how psychologists use the scientific method to study a range of everyday human experiences. The course is structured around Dinner Table Conversations that reflect psychology’s broad scope, including human development, biopsychology, cognition, social behavior, and psychological health and distress. Writing is a substantial part of the course, and students will address issues in civic engagement in both writing and other activities.

This course explores sociological insights, using the Tampa Bay area as a living laboratory. Students apply classic and contemporary theory and use empirical research methods to generate space- and place-based sociological insights.

This course examines the relationship between contemporary society, the natural environment, and sustainability. It will explore the cultural, institutional, organizational, and interpersonal domains of environmental problems and sustainable solutions with an emphasis on social relations. Topics will include topics such as global climate change, species loss, sea-level rise, food insecurity, and environmental justice. This course will also examine the everyday lived experience of sustainability and environmental issues.

A growing number of people in the US and around the world are rejecting traditional religions. Some are turning to New Age religions or Wicca. Others have created organizations like The Satanic Temple to challenge traditional religions. Many others are now nonreligious. This course examines why traditional religion is declining and explores what comes next, connecting secularization in Tampa, with that in the US, and declining religion internationally.

The aim of this social science course is to provide an overview of major concepts and research areas related to the negative communication behaviors often experienced in the context of personal relationships. The course will cover relevant dark side communication topics such as secret keeping, jealousy, infidelity, bullying, relational intrusion (snooping), stalking, aggression, conflict, and hurtful communication at the local and larger societal contexts.