IDIS Course Descriptions

Helps students to develop the academic tools and personal habits of mind required to persist and succeed in their academic goals and to develop positive attitudes toward academic achievement. Students become intentional learners. They develop the habits of mind needed to reflect on their learning and learning styles preferences, to honestly assess their academic strengths and weaknesses and to set goals for the improvement needed to meet goals. Learners master core skills that will help them to be efficient and effective in increasingly complex academic, social and working environments.

Critical thinking is the ability to be both systematic and creative in analyzing and synthesizing information to solve problems, and multicultural awareness includes the knowledge, skills and personal attributes college graduates need to live and work in a diverse world. Students explore critical thinking from both a systematic “left brain” and creative “right brain” perspective and then apply that understanding to develop an awareness of multicultural competency issues. prerequisite: IDIS 101

Being able to find, assess and use information effectively is a fundamental skill needed in any career as well as in day-to-day life. This course teaches students how to define their information needs, search for information effectively, make logical arguments, understand the different forms information can take, critically assess information they find and pre sent data in an appropriate way. In addition, it provides students with the skills necessary to evaluate the kinds of opinion and argumentation they encounter outside the University.

Advanced study of strategies applicable to writing both within and beyond the University. Stresses the interrelationships of careful reading, critical thinking and effective writing. Building on skills mastered in lower-division composition courses, students develop the ability to analyze the contexts within which they write, to define their purposes clearly and to employ appropriate strategies for accomplishing those purposes. Assigned readings illustrate a variety of writing strategies and promote serious consideration of important ideas and concepts. Students are required to take the placement test for this course prior to their second semester of registration at UB. prerequisite: adequate score on placement test or completion of WRIT 200 with a grade of pass

An interdisciplinary study of different cultures including economic, political, social and cultural systems and structures and their interrelationships. Provides an opportunity for students to compare their own culture with others through study and research.

Provides a structured experience in which students from the School of Business and the College of Arts and Sciences explore together the interrelationships between business and various other sectors of society, e.g., the individual, government and international environment. Emphasis is placed on values and on the ethical issues implicit in those interrelationships.

An interdisciplinary study of enduring works of imagination and intellect that have contributed to the making of contemporary civilization. Examples of art, architecture and music are used to illuminate central themes in literature, philosophy and history. The cultural resources of the Baltimore area are used wherever appropriate. [ART]

In this capstone course, students examine the process of interdisciplinary problem-solving through a review of epistemological theory; visual and verbal rhetoric; the psychology of creativity, cognition and learning; and interpersonal and small-group communication. Each student creates an interdisciplinary project and prepares a learning portfolio that contains a personal mission statement, a revised version of the student's original program plan with narrative commentary and a reflective journal.