OHP Curricular Experiences
HC 2400
Intro to OHIO Honors
This was a one-credit class meant to introduce us to the OHIO Honors Program. We learned what would be expected of us in the years to come and about the pillars that the program was founded on: community engagement, research and creative activity, and leadership. We reflected on interesting guest lectures and out-of-class experiences and were encouraged to help shape the program for years to come, as we were the pilot cohort.
CAS 1110
Classical World
This class was part of the College of Arts and Sciences Scholars Program. We read literature involving science and science fiction in order to study how the world of science and the world of art collide. We studied topics such as the importance and pitfalls of obsession and attempted to answer questions such as "what makes us human?"
HC 2410
OHIO Honors Engagement Lab
In this OHP class we learned more about project planning and implementation. In groups, were expected to identify a problem in our community and brainstorm ways to solve it. We had to identify our constituents, do some research, and formulate a plan. After proposing the project to a panel, we would re-work it and start trying to implement our idea.
HC 2600
Intro to Ethical Com. Engagement
Learning how to asset map when starting a project within a community was a huge part of this class. We also learned how to create mutually beneficial partnerships between ourselves and stakeholders and how to avoid perpetuating hierarchical relationships. Through this class, I completed a CITI Training: Community Engagement Learning.
HC 2610
Intro to Ethical Research
In this class, we learned how to do research ethically and without accidental plagiarism. We conducted case studies (mine was on Genie, the feral child), questioned a panel of OU researchers from different fields, and performed interviews with professors from our individual areas of study to discover how they go about research.
HC 2620
Intro to Ethical Leadership
This class involved an in-depth look into leadership styles and the effectiveness of each in different settings. We were asked to analyze our own leadership styles and which ones we respond well to. We also learned the difference between "ethical" leadership and "good" leadership. A little factoid that had a pretty big impact on me is that leadership is often gendered, which can be beneficial to some but can also have negative impacts on individuals and communities.
HC 2930
21st Century Diseases
In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, this class was especially beneficial to how I perceived the world's state of affairs. I learned about past pandemics (even those that happened way before the 21st century) and how humanity responded to them. Unsurprisingly, there tends to be a familiar cycle before, during, and after each health crisis. For my final project in this class, I read three fictional books (Journals of the Plague Years by Norman Spinrad, Black Hole by Charles Burns, and The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell) that were inspired by the HIV/AIDS pandemic and compared them, trying to infer why the authors made the choices that they did. My most interesting finding was this:
"While the voices of these authors are vastly different from each other in style and storytelling (one of them is a graphic novel, for goodness sake), they all tell tales of hardship spurred by Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, otherwise known as AIDS. The authors use extremely graphic language as they boldly describe the ugly truths that come with such an illness, which makes the fact that none of these novels have the word “AIDS” in print all the more astounding. Sex is described—even illustrated—with careful detail and in a multitude of ways. Even some of the science behind AIDS is included in these works of fiction, but for some reason these authors draw the line at naming the disease that torments their characters. It is known as the Plague in Plague Years, the bug in Black Hole, and The Virus in The Old Drift. Perhaps this is to highlight the negative stigma surrounding such a disease, or maybe it is simply a decree from their publishing houses. Either way, the lack of “AIDS” catches the reader’s attention and has them ponder the reasoning for this censorship."
ENG 3850
Writing About Culture
The content of this class was a pleasant surprise to me; I was unaware that we would be focusing on comic books and graphic novels until I received the syllabus a few days before our first class. This is an area of literature that I have been deeply interested in since I was in high school, and the fact that a class on the subject had found its way into my schedule seemed like a miracle. We learned how to examine comics through a feminist perspective, through racial lenses, and using queer theory. For our final project, we had to choose a comic book character, research them, and create a multimodal project using one of these three perspectives. I chose to use a feminist perspective on Gwen Stacy, comparing and contrasting her role in The Amazing Spider-Man #121 and Edge of Spider-Verse #2. I found sources, created an annotated bibliography, synthesized my sources to come up with a thesis, and finally created my project:
Thesis: Gwen Stacy, even as Spider-Gwen, cannot escape becoming a plot device that serves to assist the main hero in his journey because of the fact that she is a woman in a comic book.
HC 2905
Things That Go Bump in the Night and Day
This honors class covered the effects of mental health on sleep and vice versa. We covered sleep disorders like REM sleep disorder, narcolepsy, and sleep apnea and the effects of getting a good night of sleep on our physical and mental health. We went over the basics of neurology in reference to sleep cycles, circadian rhythm, brain waves, and what is considered "normal" for each age group and between the biological sexes. We then discovered the difficulties specific mental health disorders can cause regarding our sleep. We ended the class with a final group project in which my group focused on de-stigmatizing discussion about depression and how everyone's experience with the disorder is different.