Instructor: Bill Fagan
How should we prioritize among all the species at risk of extinction? This course will grapple with the complex and consequential process of extinction from biological, geographical, and mathematical perspectives. Core themes will include the 1) nature(s) of extinction risks, 2) potential consequences of different kinds of extinction, and 3) considerations involved in setting priorities. Students will explore, handle, and analyze relevant data (e.g., evolutionary trees, species occurrence records, population censuses) to better understand extinction processes. With the aid of AI-generated hypothetical species, we will investigate hidden biases, debate the consequences of our choices, and explore possible prioritization strategies.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Fall 2025, Spring 2026, Fall 2026, Spring 2027
Required/Optional: Required
Instructor: Jim LaChance
There are a lot of ways food is harvested from land and sea before it reaches your dinner plate – not all of them are savory. In this course, we’ll explore how the many livelihoods that provide us with food can also work to incorporate and rely on biodiversity conservation. What does biodiversity conservation look like in a working landscape or seascape? How do social movements align or contrast with different food production and conservation practices? And finally, how are these environments – and the people and cultures embedded in them – increasingly under threat? Through complementary aspects of social science and conservation practice, this course emphasizes not only the threats posed to unique localities and livelihoods, but also the hope of a just and sustainable dinner table. Students will leave with knowledge of the practices and skills needed to participate in transforming our food system for improved environmental and community outcomes.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Fall 2025, Spring 2026, Fall 2026, Spring 2027
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Angela Stoltz / Amy Green
Eastern oysters, Yellow Eels, and Diamondback Terrapins…these are a few species native to the Chesapeake Region at risk due to the impacts of climate change. In this project-based course, students will explore the Chesapeake Region’s biodiversity while identifying threats and conservation solutions to vulnerable and endangered species. Readings and place-based learning experiences will provide a deeper understanding of how Indigenous Knowledges support a more inclusive and accurate understanding of ecological science. By the end of the course, students will be equipped to apply these insights in educational and environmental contexts, promoting a more holistic and socially just approach to science and conservation efforts.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Spring 2026, Spring 2027
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Tiara Thomas
In this unique semester-long learning experience, students will explore the history, culture, traditions, and contemporary issues faced by the Piscataway from the perspective of Piscataway course instructors. The experiential work of the course asks students to consider how the past matters, particularly when it is embodied in the land they live on, and their present obligations to it. On-campus and place-based learning, focused on Piscataway precolonial and colonial histories, and contemporary Piscataway issues create opportunities for students to reflect upon and interrogate their understanding of Maryland’s past, present, and future. Students will emerge from this course with a greater understanding of the Piscataway and an increased capacity to challenge colonial and postcolonial paradigms that marginalize the Piscataway as well as other Indigenous people in our region, nation, and across the globe
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Fall 2025
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Perla Guerrero
What is the “American Dream” under threat of deportation? The United States proclaims to be welcoming but ideas about sovereignty, the nation, the border, good and bad immigrants, and crime in the United States coalesce to support the retention of some people and the displacement of others from its territory. Who the US deports is related to why it deports and on whose behalf such policies are made. This course acquaints students with current theories, methodologies, and debates in the field of the Humanities to grapple with the most pressing domestic questions about immigration and deportation. A variety of frameworks and approaches including critical ethnic studies, history, social movements, and geography, will challenge students to take a position on immigration law and deportation, and their effects on different communities – on all of us.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Fall 2025, Spring 2026, Fall 2026, Spring 2027
Required/Optional: Required
Instructor: Vasfiye Betül Toprak
We live in a world of contested lands. The University of Maryland itself stands on the ancestral land of the Piscataway People. Around the globe, we witness conflicts over land, such as the ongoing war in the Middle East over Israel-Palestine. We hear daily about the refugee crises in Syria and the complex debates surrounding the U.S.-Mexico border. These situations raise important questions: What does it mean to truly belong to a place? How does a migrant come to see their new country as home? This course explores the histories, cultures, memories, and stories of lands left behind to understand how places become homelands. Students will examine the politics behind the making of territories and the deep connections people form with land. Through this exploration, we will center the experiences of migration and displacement, questioning how these journeys reshape our understanding of belonging and the places we call home.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Fall 2025, Spring 2026, Fall 2026, Spring 2027
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Valérie Orlando
“You can always get off the boat: but off the Ocean, that’s something else again”, notes Alesandro Barrico in his novel Ocean Sea (1993). For decades, the phrase “Drinking the Sea” has been used as a metaphor to describe clandestine immigration from Africa to Europe and the dangerous risks that migrants undertake in the effort to improve their lives. Today, over 70 million people are displaced from their homelands. Using films as well as readings by leading African scholars, students will consider the depth and scope of migration and displacement. Among the key questions we will explore are: How does migration affect the storytelling of African filmmakers? Is film an effective artistic medium for influencing sociopolitical policy in countries dealing with migrant crises? Students will emerge from the course with the skills to understand clandestine migration in terms of the world’s geopolitical and economic systems in which we live.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Fall 2025, Spring 2026
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Binod Paudyal
Refugee, undocumented, alien, enemy, criminal… These words have been used in American political and popular discourses to conjure images of difference, foreignness, and danger for those who identify as citizens. Using the Asian American context as a case study, this course examines narratives of displacement, forced migration, cultural erasure, and the struggles for visibility and belonging. We will explore how political conflicts, globalization, imperialism, and war have shaped Asian American experiences and identities, considering how traumatic dispersal, interconnectedness, and diasporic citizenship have transformed in fundamental ways our national identity. Students will analyze how immigrants are transformed from ordinary human beings to trespassers and how, through literatures of resistance, they reclaim humanity and agency. Students will also consider their own roles and responsibilities in current debates on immigration, citizenship, and belonging in the U.S.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Spring 2026, Spring 2027
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Chinyere Osuji
How does culture construct our knowledge of the world and ourselves? Using Korean dramas, aka Kdramas, as a case study, this course will explore how various media negotiate blackness for global audiences. As a viral, billion-dollar art form, Kdramas provide an ideal window through which to explore recent trends in our global culture, including colorism, “Black as cool,” travel as consumption, and immigration. They illuminate the politics of culture. We will examine how moral panics and social dilemmas are presented in the fictitious world of “Kdramaland,” and how they inform our understandings of South Korean society, our own societies, and the world. Drawing on social science research by Koreans and non-Koreans alike, students will debate the ways the culture of the Korean wave reflects, reproduces, and challenges social inequities of marginalized and minoritized groups, as well as how those groups respond, to illuminate the larger global forces at work in intercultural exchange.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Fall 2025, Spring 2026, Fall 2026, Spring 2027
Required/Optional: Required
Instructor: Max Barnewitz
In 2023, Maia Kobabe’s graphic memoir, Gender Queer, was the most challenged book in the U.S. Often restricted due to spurious claims about corrupting children, comics have a long history of upsetting the status quo with their unique use of words and pictures. Artists from historically marginalized communities continue to shape this medium. This class examines comics, from glossy horror comics to grungy punk zines, that reject the conventional and subvert suppression. Learning experientially through DMV resources like the D.C. Punk and Indie Fanzine Archive and local comics fests, students will generate their own comics and investigate censorship and resistance.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Fall 2025, Spring 2026, Fall 2026, Spring 2027
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: DeNeen Brown
Social justice journalists are “watchdogs” of strong democracies that work in pursuit of truth by holding the powerful accountable. These news stories often impact local, national and international communities that are crying out for justice. This class, which is taught by an award-winning journalist who has covered social justice issues for more than 35 years, will introduce students to how journalists work to uncover issues of injustice, including systemic racism, discrimination, gender bias, environmental racism, war and regional conflict that impacts African and indigenous people in the Diaspora. Students will study how reporters cover injustice and protest movements, and the ethical practices used to cover race and social justice issues. Through research and readings, students will gain deeper analytical skills, collaboration skills and critical-thinking skills by researching, reporting, and creating written, audio and visual story-telling projects covering social justice issues.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Fall 2026, Spring 2027
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Katie Coogan / Margaret Walker
Climate change, poverty, natural disasters, racism… Luckily for humanity, no topic is too intense for the artworld to tackle. When artists direct their energies not simply at rendering problems but also toward working with communities, the arts have the power to heal, unite, and transform. This class invites students to think about how art, particularly public visual arts like murals and street art, can help us collectively discuss and even solve our most pressing issues. Students will collaborate with local artists, contemporary and diverse art collections at UMD, other local galleries, and recent community-based art projects to understand the real-world impact the arts can have on social transformation. The main engagement of this course will be to co-design and implement a community-based art project together with the community it will impact. Students will emerge from this collaborative practice empowered to use the arts to connect communities and make lasting social change.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Spring 2026, Spring 2027
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Julia Steinberg
How do and can we talk about abortion in contemporary society? Civil discussion around the topic of abortion is almost non-existent between people with extremely different views in the U.S. It is such a taboo topic that an exchange of ideas can even be difficult for those with slightly different views—i.e., those who believe abortion should not be regulated by the government (more than any other health care is) and those who believe abortion should be legal and regulated by governments. Although it is an issue about which Americans care deeply, the very people who need most to talk about it seem unable to find any common ground upon which to begin. This course provides students with a solid base of knowledge needed to form opinions and engage in civil debate. Through an exploration of the different ways we talk about abortion in the U.S. and the sources of those strategies, students will learn to find their voice in the controversial topic.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Fall 2025, Spring 2026, Fall 2026, Spring 2027
Required/Optional: Required
Instructor: Nicole McConico
Cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, asthma… Not only are Black Americans at higher risk for developing these life-threatening conditions, but they are also at higher risk of dying from them. In fact, Black race, unlike other racial identities, has been so consistently associated with poor health outcomes that “Black” is considered a risk factor—a characteristic that increases the likelihood of developing a disease—for many diseases. Can one’s race alone determine their health trajectory? If race is socially constructed, how can race be a risk factor for health outcomes? This class will take up the tensions, contradictions, and seemingly illogical public health practices related to health outcomes for Black Americans and the impact of these practices on the broader community. Students will make sense of our present by examining our past—race science, eugenics, medical apartheid—and learn to disrupt the social reproduction of inequities to create a healthier society for the future.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Fall 2025, Spring 2026, Fall 2026, Spring 2027
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Ariana Nash
From the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918–1920 to the Covid-19 pandemic, and from the appearance of HIV/AIDS in queer communities to its spread in Africa, the world’s disease crises have been inflamed by colonialism, imperialism, and other structural forms of exploitation and dispossession. This course asks: What is the connection between seemingly interruptive global health crises and our everyday normal? By engaging with novels, long-form journalism, and other stories of global crises, we will grapple with the possibility that, far from averting disaster, capitalism and the legal structures that support it create the conditions for crises to thrive. We will investigate the failures of public response but also the heroic actions of individuals fighting for life. Students will learn to connect individual experience to broad structural explanations and to analyze historical moments to better understand our present and the shared forces that shape our lives.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Spring 2026, Fall 2026, Spring 2027
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Marisa Franco
Society has become more and more disconnected, with 61% of Americans reporting being lonely. The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community reports that “The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and even greater than that associated with obesity and physical inactivity.” Disconnection is devastating for health and for society. Particularly in a democracy predicated on the health of civic life, which requires interpersonal and community relationships, where does this predicament leave us as a society? This course illuminates the potential root causes of disconnection: early familial relationships, attachment styles, and broader technological trends. Students will leave the course with a toolkit of evidence-based strategies they can use – and share – to help heal these divides and repair our core social connections.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Fall 2025
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Roland Rust
How will AI change society? AI is changing not only business, but the nature of society itself. This course investigates the nature of those changes and forecasts their future development. Through the exploration of the unprecedented pitfalls and opportunities that AI represents, students will learn how best to cope with a world that is dependent on AI.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Fall 2025, Spring 2026
Required/Optional: Required
Instructor: Rebecca Jones
AI permeates our world, but science fiction (SF) told stories about it for centuries before AI became a reality in the 1950s, shaping our understanding and expectations through words and images. In this course, students will critically examine how SF has shaped how we think about intelligence, and what the evolution of fictional and real AI means for technology and humanity.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Fall 2025, Spring 2026
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Cody Buntain
Artificial intelligence (AI) has had profound impacts on the modern political landscape, in the US and abroad. This course encourages the critical evaluation of how AI has impacted political behavior and opened new threats like foreign electoral inference, disinformation, and manipulation through deep-fakes and generative language models. Students will debate ethical, fair, transparent, and accountable AI.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Fall 2024, Fall 2025
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Kenneth Frauwirth
How do we define the boundaries between “natural” and “artificial”? Modern biology has blurred this distinction, yet humans have grappled with fears and innovation through speculative fiction for far longer than they have had practical applications. Through an exploration of biomedical research and its treatment in science fiction, students will develop tools for grappling with Frankenscience.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Fall 2024, Fall 2025
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Richard Bell
How is the American Revolution a creation story of our multi-cultural and interconnected world? Consider the diverse people mobilized by the Declaration of Independence: Creek farmers, Spanish soldiers, Canadian fugitives, and African statesmen. In this globe-trotting class, students will debate the familiar story of the American Revolution in transnational context.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Fall 2025, Spring 2026
Required/Optional: Required
Instructor: Daniel Yoder Zipp
Street names and museum exhibits are being renamed in Europe to erase the ghosts of their colonial history. Yet, this speaks of the colonial “era” as the past when it is very much our present. This course surveys colonial capitalism and its global legacies to explore how history informs the present, as well as pathways towards resistance and reconciliation.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Fall 2025, Spring 2026
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Todd Cooke
Although seldom mentioned in the grand narratives of war, culture, and technology, plants have profoundly influenced the course of human history. Students will learn historical human-plant dynamics and apply them to such contemporary challenges as global climate change, genetic engineering, biodiversity, industrial agriculture vs. sustainable stewardship, and the use of indigenous medicinals in modern cultures.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Spring 2025, Spring 2026
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Kimberly Coles
What is a fact? Science is often viewed as an unbiased, fact-based, analytical discipline, but has sometimes been a potent weapon for creating and supporting political fictions and social hierarchies. Through a range of materials—from fiction and film to scientific and political theses—this course will explore one of the most potent cases of “scientific” storytelling: the case of race.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Fall 2025, Spring 2026
Required/Optional: Required
Instructor: Brynne McBryde
From prehistoric carvings to the Lincoln Memorial, images have long been used to communicate what people can and should be. Do pictures reveal the truth about our bodies? In this class, students will develop their own theory of how science continues to shape who we think we can be, and how we might resist those limitations.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Fall 2025, Spring 2026
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Luz Martinez-Miranda
From Superman’s Kryptonite to the Star Trek crew traversing the universe, space travel has occupied science fiction for ages. To understand how real life can catch up with fiction, we look at liquid crystals: the secret of life itself. Students will learn to address such pressing concerns as why extremes of temperature and pressure affect life, and what we can do about it.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Fall 2024, Fall 2025
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Mitchell Pavao-Zuckerman
What will the world look like in 2070? This course explores how science fiction can inform future visioning by expressing and challenging ideas about nature, culture, society, and politics. It challenges students to think about how ‘smart’, ‘just’, ‘green’ and ‘resilient’ visions can be integrated into sustainability transitions informed by collaborations between science and fiction.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Spring 2025, Spring 2026
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Brian Connor
Do the social and individual benefits of surveillance outweigh its risks? Surveillance is a ubiquitous practice in contemporary society. Governments surveil populations; corporations surveil customers and users; individuals surveil themselves and others. Students will debate the role of surveillance in society today, and what, if anything, should be done to change it.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Fall 2025, Spring 2026
Required/Optional: Required
Instructor: Jessica Vitak
In 1949, when George Orwell published “1984,” few imagined how much the future would resemble the fictional surveillance state he depicted in his novel. Yet, 75 years later, surveillance technologies have not ceased to expand thanks to advances in computing and big data. We are at a point where many decry the “end of privacy,” a world sketched with frightening detail in the popular Netflix series “Black Mirror.” Are we destined to live in a dystopia like those described in popular science fiction books and films, or can we take steps now to ensure that privacy does not fall into oblivion? This course traces the rise of surveillance technologies used in homes, schools, workplaces, and everywhere in between to understand how we got here and where we are headed. Students will explore various framings of surveillance in Western culture, critically assess the challenges surveillance technology raises for vulnerable populations, and explore ways to stop the seemingly inevitable push toward a society without privacy.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Spring 2025, Spring 2026
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Leigha McReynolds
Course Description Coming Soon.
GenEd: TBA
Offered in: Spring 2026
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Marisa Franco
In 2017, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy deemed loneliness an “epidemic.” Despite the rise of social media that is meant to foster connection, over 23% of adults report being lonely and social networks have been shrinking for decades. Despite increasing rates of loneliness, it is still possible to overcome these trends and find connection. We tend to assume that we should know how to connect with others intuitively, but, as rising rates of loneliness indicate, this is not the case; connection is something we must learn and practice. In this applied course, students will learn the science of connection and engage in practical activities designed to help them make and keep friends. They will leave the course better able to foster meaningful connections. This course is self-contained but paired with HNUH269T in the Building Community track, where you will learn the social value of showing up, for the world and for yourself.
GenEd: Pending
Offered: Annually
Required/Optional: Required
Instructor: James Stilwell
A neighbor in an area without a supermarket plants a public vegetable garden at their curb. A group of activists comes together to support each other’s mental health. What do these initiatives have in common? They are instances of showing up for change and helping yourself in the process. In this course, you will delve into a social issue you care about and be empowered to make change. We will take up thorny questions – When individuals work to restore social ties, how do we know our efforts are welcome? How does helping ourselves actually help others, and vice versa? – to understand why individuals must forge community to catalyze real change. Through discussions and hands-on activities, you will learn the social value of showing up, for the world and for yourself. This course is self-contained but paired with HNUH269P in the Building Community track, where you will learn the science of connection and apply these skills to build more meaningful relationships in your life.
GenEd: Pending
Offered: Annually
Required/Optional: Required
Instructor: Margaret Palmer
With a focus on why a socio-environmental systems approach can help illuminate the intersectional dimensions of sustainability, this course will explore what different disciplines bring to this complex topic and use qualitative and quantitative approaches to grapple with problems of sustainability.
GenEd: TBA
Offered: Every Fall semester
Required/Optional: Required
Instructor: Tyson Slocum
This theory and practice track examines theoretical frameworks for understanding climate change and concrete cases that shed light on the complexity of managing it. In this, the practical component of the Climate in Crisis track, we explore several domestic energy and climate policy case studies, examining the competing roles played by various interest groups that influence legislative and regulatory outcomes, with a focus on differing organizational advocacy strategies. Once we have mastered organizational advocacy strategies, students bring those tools to bear on the most recent US Federal policy mandates and legislation. In 229T, students will complement this work with a deep dive into the nature of public goods and climate change policy, among other crucial considerations.
GenEd: DSSP
Offered: Every Spring semester
Required/Optional: Required
Instructor: Hooman Koliji
Spaces, materials, objects, structures – the building-blocks of cities – index the values of the societies that produce them. By their very nature cities are memory devices. Yet, in an increasingly transient and virtual world, with access to a seemingly infinite amount of memory, what is the status of the spaces we inhabit? This course will explore the relationship among memory, the body, and the built environment. Beginning with the role cities play in our individual lives and the construction of personal memories, we will take account of what we forget by remembering and what experiences are missing. Through lectures, seminars and discussions, students will produce short experimental books and pamphlets remapping Washington D.C. and the many invisible – personal – cities it contains. No previous art or design experience required. This course is self-contained but paired with HNUH 259T in the Drawn to D.C. track, which explores the created spaces we inhabit, and how they inhabit us.
GenEd: DSSP
Offered: Every Fall semester
Required/Optional: Required
Instructor: Ingrid Satelmajer
A movement known as the Metropolitan Revolution has recognized cities as sites of concentrated economic growth and political power. What does that movement have to do with you? Not only does the city change who you are, but the ambitions and fears that you bring to it also alter what is already there. With Washington, D.C. as a case study, this course considers cities in the context of the ambitious plans that developed them and the unbuilt spaces that open us to imagining them anew. From the ideological tensions and competing policies that politicize urban space, to the construction challenges and social implications of choices made, why we build is as important as what we build. We will experience Washington through its history of spaces, stories, music, art; and learn to see ourselves as co-designers of its present. This course is self-contained but paired with HNUH259P in the Drawn to D.C.
GenEd: DSHU
Offered: Every Spring semester
Required/Optional: Required
Instructor: Gerald Suarez
In this course, we explore the recent confluence of new technological, environmental, and geopolitical developments that has fundamentally altered the global operating environment. Students will learn the major pressures facing the global economy: rising nationalism and protectionism, diverging growth paths of emerging markets, and accelerated digital integration. They will meet advocates of globalization who applaud the increased flow of goods, services, and capital across borders, and critics heralding threats to trade, migration, job security, etc. Students take on this thorny debate to prepare for leadership roles in a century brought about by current trends in the global economy. This course is self-contained but paired with HNUH239P in the Geopolitics of Finance Theory & Practice Track, which explores how globalization has brought about fundamental changes to our daily lives by making the world more interdependent.
GenEd: TBA
Offered: Every Fall semester
Required/Optional: Required
Instructor: Jon Crocker
We live in an increasingly interconnected world. This course explores the fundamentals of international trade that form the basis for the complex modern network of global value chains and how these relationships can be adapted to address their vulnerability while also transformed to build a more equitable and sustainable future. This course is self-contained but paired with HNUH239T in the Geopolitics of Finance track, which explores how globalization has brought about fundamental changes to our daily lives by making the world more interdependent.
GenEd: TBA
Offered: Every Spring semester
Required/Optional: Required
Instructor: Daniel Rosenthal
The police detain a man thought to be plotting a terrorist attack the next day in a U.S. city that would kill or injure thousands. They want to subject him to “enhanced interrogation,” which some consider to be torture. Should the police be permitted to use enhanced interrogation techniques? Who decides? This course will ask key questions raised during the efforts of our national security apparatus to protect the nation. Given the tension between the powers of the government to protect citizens, and the necessary limits on that power, what are the fundamental principles that should govern our efforts to protect the nation while preserving our values? Students will try their hand at finding the delicate balance of these principles in difficult national security dilemmas. This course is self-contained but paired with HNUH249P in the National Security track, which explores post-9/11 policy decisions around the U.S. effort to create a sustainable democracy in Afghanistan.
GenEd: TBD
Offered: Every Fall semester
Required/Optional: Required
Instructor: Temim Nusraty
Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the U.S. launched a major effort to dismantle the Taliban and create a sustainable democracy in Afghanistan. In 2021, the Taliban took control of the country. Was the U.S. effort doomed to fail? To answer this question, UH students will partner with peers at the American University of Afghanistan through a virtual global classroom to examine the lessons learned from the U.S. and international presence in Afghanistan over the past 20 years. Through reading assignments and virtual meetings with former senior U.S. and Afghan officials, students will examine the reasons behind the downfall of the country and analyze whether the outcome could have been changed. Students are not expected to have any prior knowledge about the conflict in Afghanistan. This course is self-contained but paired with HNUH249T in the National Security track, which explores debates around efforts to protect the nation from terrorism while preserving our values.
GenEd: TBD
Offered: Every Spring semester
Required/Optional: Required
University Honors partners with the UMD Fellows Program to offer a range of sequential theory and practice track opportunities. These tracks pair a fall-semester theory course, taught by expert practitioners and leaders in their field, with a spring-semester internship in the DC-area. Students benefit from professional development workshops and one-on-one advising throughout the year.
Through the Fellows program, University Honors students have engaged in internships in the White House, Federal agencies, congressional offices, the Maryland General Assembly, non-governmental organizations, non-profits, foreign embassies, think tanks, and more.
For more information, including course descriptions and professor bios, see UMD Fellows Program. For in-person consultations and fellowship, please drop by the Fellows Office, Marie Mount Hall 2407, 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.
UH Students should make sure to register for the HNUH section of their chosen UMD Fellows courses.
Fall Seminars (choose one)
Spring Internship
Please Note: Students who wish to count this theory and practice track toward their citation
requirements in their junior year must request an extension of the citation timeline from
the Assistant Director for Academic Life, Dario Middleton.
Current UH sophomores are eligible to apply. Students from all academic degree programs are welcome. Must be in good academic standing. Minimum GPA: 3.5.
Students interested in applying for the Maryland Honors in Oxford program should complete the application on the Education Abroad website here. The application window opens on November 1, 2024 and closes on December 1, 2024. Applicants will be invited for a brief Zoom interview with members of the UH review team in January 2025. All applicants will be notified of their application status by February 1, 2025.
Once Summer 2026 information becomes available, further details about both the courses from which students may select and the independent research tutorial option may be found here.
For all students but particularly for those with unmet financial need, University Honors strives to close the gap between the cost of participation in this program and the cost of attending UMD for an equivalent number of summer credit hours. Need- and merit-based support is available. Please visit the Education Abroad office’s scholarships webpage and/or contact Mr. Middleton (University Honors, dario@umd.edu) for further information.
Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. Today, the city is bursting with beautiful architecture and buzzing with lively cafés, restaurants, and bars, and Exeter College is right at the heart of it.
Exeter has two campuses: the ancient Turl Street site, home since 1315 with buildings ranging in age from the 15th- to the 20th-centuries, beautiful gardens, a historic chapel, a Jacobean dining hall, and an extensive library; and the Cohen Quadrangle, completed in 2016 with its inspired architecture, en suite accommodation, state-of-the-art teaching rooms, and social-study spaces designed to encourage social and intellectual engagement. Turl Street and Cohen Quadrangle offer ancient and modern interpretations of the collegiate model of communal living and cross-disciplinary learning.
Students will be welcomed onto both campuses to enjoy the best of both worlds and an immersive experience of Oxford’s academic and cultural life.
Additional information is available through Exeter College, Oxford. Advising inquiries should be directed to Mr. Dario Middleton (University Honors, dario@umd.edu) and/or Ms. Julia Xia (Education Abroad, jxia123@umd.edu), as appropriate.