Freshman Honors Seminar


ABOUT THE COURSE

Overall, this class should be viewed as "breather" from life, though not in the sense that there will be less work than usual. (There will be more work than usual!) Instead, this is an opportunity for you, wherever you are in your academic careers and pursuits, to pause... reflect... think... to learn about various things beyond what you usually learn... to consider where you are, where you might be going in life, and how you might get there.

In short, a principal objective here is to learn more about yourself.

With this in mind, what we will be doing is "experimenting"... trying out different kinds of thinking and learning, different kinds of topics and ideas. These different kinds of topics should require you to make use of different parts of your brain. They are diverse ways of thinking. These ways of thinking could very well come up again in your college studies, and they will almost certainly come up in life - not the specific content, but the general modes of thinking required by those tasks.

In short, this course is about learning new ways of thinking... not really about learning new "things."

Please take some time to look over the syllabus for Dr. John RowanĄ¯s Freshman Honors Seminar course.

Freshman Honors Seminar Course Professors for Spring 2008

Dr. John Rowan, Honors Program Advisor, Professor of Philosophy and Philosophy Program Coordinator

Dr. John Rowan has taught the Freshman Honors Seminar since the creation of the Honors Program at PUC in 2006. Dr. Rowan is also the Honors Program Advisor for all Honors students at PUC.

Dr. Rowan coordinates the philosophy program within the Department of English and Philosophy. He is the contact person for questions and information related to the philosophy major and minor, events, courses, advising, and the philosophy email distribution list.

Dr. Rowan has published articles and books on a variety of topics in political and social philosophy and applied ethics. He is author of Conflicts of Rights and co-editor (with Samuel Zinaich) of Ethics for the Professions. John is also editor of Social Philosophy Today and has edited several books in that series, including: War and Terrorism; Human Rights, Religion, and Democracy; Science, Technology, and Social Justice; and International Law and Justice (forthcoming).  His articles have been published in such journals as the Australian Journal of Practical and Professional Ethics, Journal of Social Philosophy, Journal of Business Ethics, Business Ethics Quarterly, Social Justice Research, and Economics and Philosophy, among others.  He is currently researching and writing two book-length manuscripts: The Autonomy Approach to Business Ethics; and The Theory and Practice of Privacy.In 2004, John won the university's award as most outstanding teacher.

Education:

Ph.D Philosophy, University of Virginia
B.A. Philosophy, Economics, University of Virginia

Dr. Lisa Goodnight, Distance Learning Faculty Mentor, Associate Professor of Communication

Dr. Lisa Goodnight will be teaching the Freshman Honors Seminar for the first time this Fall 2008. Dr. Goodnight is an Associate Professor of Communication and the Basic Course Director. In addition, Dr. Goodnight teaches Com 114: Fundamentals of Communication and Com 325: Interviewing. Dr. Goodnight also teaches several graduate courses in political communication and communication education.

Dr. Goodnight co-authored Communication: Embracing Differences (2008), second edition with Dan Dunn.

Education:

Ph.D. Rhetorical Theory and Criticism, Purdue University
M.A. Rhetorical Theory and Criticism, Northern Illinois University
B.A. Communication with an emphasis in Public Relations, Purdue University Calumet