Catalog 2007-2008
Graduate School of Education and Counseling
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Core Program
The graduate Core Program brings together students and faculty from the educational and counseling psychology professions in interdisciplinary exploration of fundamental issues affecting personal development and professional life. This blurring of disciplinary borders encourages participants to consider new ways of researching, learning, and solving real-world problems. Core seminars and courses are designed to inspire competent, responsive service to diverse populations and to help shape a more just, inclusive, and compassionate regional and global culture.
Core studies begin with a fall convocation focusing inquiry on an important topic. Work continues with a series of 1- and 2-semester-hour courses reflecting the topic and addressing questions raised by it. This year's Core theme is The Power of Hope.
The graduate school community selects a book, to be read in common, that supports and extends conversation about the Core topic. Our book for 2007-08 is Paul Rogat Loeb's The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, a collection of essays and poems by political leaders and activists from around the world.
Students fulfill Core Program requirements by participating in the fall convocation and completing 2 semester hours of courses selected from among the Core offerings.
Core Curriculum
CORE 501 - Graduate Seminars
Conceived with the Core theme in mind and designed to include students' suggestions for readings, topics, and projects. Topics have included The Healing Power of Story; Spirituality, Religious Diversity, and professional Practice; Bearing Witness: Writing and Social Justice; and Between Here and There: Borders, Boundaries, Edges, and Overlap in Professional Practice. Offered in varied formats--meeting weekends, monthly over two terms, or in a traditional structure--to meet the needs of adult learners.
Prerequisite: None.
Credit: 1 or 2 semester hours.
CORE 504 - Journey Through Change
Application of Joseph Campbell's cross-cultural writings on mythology and William Bridges' book The Way of Transition: Life's Most Difficult Moments to understanding the change process. Includes discussion of educational and therapeutic change, as well as topics related to popular culture.
Prerequisite: None.
Credit: 1 semester hour.
CORE 506 - Displacement: Living and Learning in Native America
Participants learn from the historic and contemporary experiences of the people indigenous to the United States. Drawing from essays, poetry, and short fiction, considers the implications of Native American experience for professionals in counseling and education.
Prerequisite: None.
Credit: 1 semester hour.
CORE 507 - Maps of Return and Recovery: Native American Resilience
With particular attention to the experiences of contemporary Native American people, supports exploration of the paths of resilience. Ways taken for returning and recovering are evident in the use of maps as a theme in contemporary Native American literature. Following this theme, involves imaginative and actual investigation of recovery and its maps--maps that are sometimes testimony, sometimes instruction, sometimes prophecy.
Prerequisite: None.
Credit: 1 semester hour.
CORE 511, 534 - The Informed Life: The Path of Creativity
Exploration of the integral role of creativity in our personal and professional lives, investigating questions like: What is creativity? What is the role of creativity in human survival? How can we energize our existence through new paths of creative development? Students explore many aspects of creativity, including its sources, the value of risk taking and failure, the necessity of creativity in organizations, the cultural contexts of creativity, the key role of humor, and ways to include a creative lens in everyday endeavors. Readings are selected by students from a wide range of disciplines.
Prerequisite: None.
Credit: CORE 511, 1 semester hour. CORE 534, 2-3 semester hours.
CORE 513 - The Work of Paulo Freire
Same as ED 556 (see Teacher Education).
CORE 519 - Amish/Las Vegas: Polarities in American Lifestyles
Two communities as symbols of the polarities within ourselves and our society. Las Vegas represents instant gratification, materialism, risk, impulse, excitement, and individualism. The Amish symbolize simplicity, plainness, selflessness, community, slow change, and humility. Explores both subcultures and reflects on the everyday societal, family, educational, and personal tensions that mirror these polarities. Uses interdisciplinary-focused lectures, directed discussions, and videos to illustrate the need to understand how culture affects our daily life.
Prerequisite: None.
Credit: 1 semester hour.
CORE 526 - Narrative and Voice: Themes of Gender and Culture
Examines the central need to make meaning from the predicaments and possibilities of human life through story. Readings draw from different cultural traditions in psychology, anthropology, literature, and biography. Participants explore gender and culture as meaning systems that affect individual responses in cognitive, social, and moral realms, drawing connections among their own biographies, individuals they serve, and lives addressed in selected narratives.
Prerequisite: None.
Credit: 1-2 semester hours.
CORE 534 - The Informed Life: The Path of Creativity
See CORE 511.
CORE 538 - Race, Culture, and Power
Same as SS 547 (see Teacher Education), ED 547.
CORE 540 - Envisioning a Sustainable Society
Same as SS 591 (see Teacher Education), LA 591.
CORE 542 - Drama for Learning and Social Action
Interactive exploration introduces teachers, counselors, and other professionals to ways of using drama in their work. No theatre background required. Through workshops, readings, and discussion, participants experience drama as both art form and tool for learning and for addressing issues. Reflects a pluralistic drama education perspective that prompts engagement with issues of diversity, examines how cultural knowledge is constructed, critiques the dominant culture, and confronts questions of equity and social justice. Also listed as LA 515, THED 515 (see Teacher Education).
Prerequisite: None.
Credit: 1-2 semester hours.