Lower-Division

Teaches foundational concepts for intellectual exploration and personal development within an academic community: analysis, critical thinking, metacognition, engagement with others across difference, and self-efficacy. Texts in varied media reflect individuals' and communities' struggles to represent, constitute, and empower themselves in the United States.

KRSG 1A explores opportunities, expectations, and responsibilities in university life. Topics include: academic planning; general education requirements; majors and minors; campus policy; and preparation for Kresge's core course: Power & Representation. Students gain familiarity with resources for health, well-being, time management, academic success, cultivating just communities, sexual harassment and violence prevention, reflection on UCSC's principles of community, and an introduction to the living and learning tradition of KRSG College. This course can be taken for Pass/No Pass grading only.

Orientation to and exploration of principles of liberal arts, and learning at research universities. Topics include: academic planning for upper-division coursework; enrollment processes at UCSC; understanding pathways to degree completion (and the major and general-education coursework required in those pathways). Students also learn about UCSC's principles of community, and engage in preliminary reflection on reading and critical thinking. This course is for entering transfer students. This course can be taken for Pass/No Pass grading only.

Introduction to media representations and their consequences for individuals and communities. Assignments emphasize dialogic and collaborative processes of critical reflection on media materials. Materials in a variety of media address struggles for representation, justice, and agency--especially relative to race, gender, citizenship/documentation, and communities of diaspora--in terms of media frameworks and the dialogues they foment.

Develop practical skills and knowledge in naturalist observation. Acquire an overview of the field of natural history, particularly applied to the UCSC campus. Document an evolving and multidimensional personal experience of natural spaces, including, but not limited to, wilderness. (Formerly KRSG 18.)

Students find a volunteer position with the instructor's assistance and perform community service in non-profit organizations, schools, unions, or local government agencies. Students meet weekly, keep a journal, and write a social action witnessing report of their experience.

Students find a volunteer position with the instructor's assistance and perform community service in non-profit organizations, schools, unions, or local government agencies. Students meet weekly, keep a journal, and write a social action witnessing report of their experience.

A fast-paced and academically rigorous exercise in four main sections. First and foremost, participants must locate and support a community-service site for three hours each week. Each student's service commitment requires the student to attend class regularly and share community-service experience with classmates. Students are introduced to the basic requirements of a variety of national service agencies including AmeriCorp, the Peace Corp, City Year, Teach for America, and City Service. Students are required to do community-service work with a member of one of these agencies locally for four hours during the quarter. The last major section of this course teaches students the basics of grant writing and research.

Students are involved in a community service project to produce a portfolio of social-action writing that situates the writer as witness in the community.

Students are involved in a community-service project to produce a portfolio of social-action writing that situates the writer as witness in the community.

Explores the rise and consequences of capitalism. How has capitalism affected how humans understand and act in the world? How do oppressions along lines of race, gender, sexuality, and nation intersect with capitalism? Is resistance desirable and/or possible?

Explores possible futures by studying several utopian visions, projects, and manifestos. Students imagine a future by writing a manifesto and other creative non-fiction pieces that embrace a utopian imagination.

Provides community college transfers, during their first year at UC Santa Cruz, with an understanding of the workings of a research university with emphasis on advanced academic expectations, creating purposeful education and career goals, and navigating opportunities and challenges. Guides refinement of goals, development of an action plan to meet desired academic, career and civic-oriented outcomes, and encourages developing essential and enriching relationships to enrich UC Santa Cruz experience.

Explores critical engagement in education in the context of a research university. Introduces first-year issues and success strategies and ways to participate in the institution's academic life. Investigates strategies for clarifying education goals and devising a plan for success. Students cannot receive credit for this course and PRTR 26 or STEV 26.

Defines consensus in terms of inclusive decision-making and explores depth-psychology approaches to facilitating social agreement in culturally diverse settings. Readings include Totem and Taboo, Diversity Calling, and selected articles related to issues of cultural literacy. Recommended for, but not limited to, social science majors.

Students work collaboratively on City on a Hill Press, the student-run, campus newspaper of record, gaining practice in news production. Students engage in analysis and critical reflection regarding both the form and content of news, and its critical relationship to a healthy democracy. Course outcomes include the development of media literacy, and experience addressing issues such as intent, fairness, accuracy, and impact. Areas of focus include, but are not limited to, graphic design, illustration, photojournalism, visual composition, copy editing, fact-checking, and media literacy. Prerequisite(s): satisfaction of the Entry Level Writing and Composition requirements. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor in consultation with City on a Hill Press co-editors-in-chief.

Students work collaboratively on City on a Hill Press, the student-run, campus newspaper of record, gaining practice in investigative journalism and news editing. Students engage in analysis and critical reflection regarding both the form and content of news, and its critical relationship to a healthy democracy. Course outcomes include the development of media literacy, and experience addressing issues such as intent, fairness, accuracy, and impact. Areas of focus include, but are not limited to, story production, story assignment and management, and staff editorial composition. Prerequisite(s): satisfaction of the Entry Level Writing and Composition requirements. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor, in consultation with City on a Hill Press co-editors-in-chief.

Survey of narratives of prison experience, supporting inquiry into the role of prisons in U.S. society. Addresses themes including, but not limited to, prison abolition, re-entry, the school-to-prison pipeline, capital punishment, sentencing of minors, and political prisoners. Emphasis on voices of the imprisoned, and their advocates. Students engage in collaborative projects throughout the class, and learn effective strategies for group work and interpersonal communication.

Students attend weekly creative writing readings by fiction writers and poets, read excerpts from the writers' works, participate in question and answer sessions, and write short, creative and/or analytical responses to the readings and writings.

Introduces key skills for effective transformation agents including: creativity and innovation; transformative communication; servant leadership; optimism and resilience, risk taking, initiative; luck; failure; and relationship building. Students create their own portfolio and commit to weekly civic engagement projects.

Addresses the most effective methods of social change. Examines principles and strategies of transformative action and case studies of leaders solving world problems. Empowers students to be innovators in real-life community projects. Integrates nonviolence, psychology, sustainability, and social justice.

For students who enrolled in the winter quarter Transformative Action course, to further investigate, research, and refine their Big Idea. Opportunity given to deepen and integrate Transformative Action principles into projects. Enrollment by instructor permission only.

Hands-on practice with basic ecological horticulture skills through work at the Kresge Garden, including soil cultivation. Enrollment by instructor approval through application (available in the Kresge College office). Enrollment limited to college members.

Develops life skills that support you and help you support others. Implement effective methods for personal productivity (managing your to-dos, calendar, and inbox), interpersonal communication, meeting facilitation, event hosting, collaboration, and regenerative community design.

Explores core themes of power and representation through the mediums of food, nature awareness, community, personal empowerment and sustainable living. Students will develop meaningful final projects in collaboration with Kresge Food Co-op, Kresge Garden Co-op, Kresge World Cafe, and projects of their own design.

A course of practical guidance in developing skills and creative approaches in photography; also a group setting for critique and feedback. Students do in-class and out-of-class assignments in photography and development, discuss examples of photographic art in various communities and subgenera, and apply principles to their own work in a final portfolio.

Students pursue collaborative or individual projects in the relationship between text, music, and performance, in pairs or groups. Areas explored include practical introductions to prosody and poetics, musical forms, text-setting, and theories of performance and reception.

A course of guidance and exercises to assist in developing independent writing projects, and a group setting for critique and feedback. Students do in-class and out-of-class writing assignments; read and discuss texts; and work to develop a final project.

Examines the principles and processes of restorative justice juxtaposed to current practices in the judicial and educational systems of contemporary society. Students study leading restorative justice practices and their implication for individual and community transformation. Students learn to facilitate the restorative justice process restorative circles, and have the opportunity to practice them in real time. Enrollment is by instructor consent and is restricted to frosh, sophomores, and juniors.

Based on Nonviolent Communication (NVC), this experiential course offers skills in intra- and inter-personal conflict transformation by aligning with core values; understanding what motivates self and others; cultivating compassion, even under difficult circumstances; and bringing greater peace into our world.

This second seminar supports students in deepening and fine-tuning their Restorative Circle facilitation along with exploring the question What are the components of a restorative life? Students participate in the Kresge College Restorative Justice Initiative, and, during the fall quarter, offer Restorative Circles to student groups in conflict.

Examines the principles, practices, and art of hosting conversations derived from the work of Juanita Brown, David Isaacs, and the World Cafe community. Students gain experience with group facilitation, meeting design, strategic questioning, harvesting collective intelligence, graphic recording, intergenerational collaboration, and participatory action-research.

Collaborative learning in service of transitioning from an industrial growth society to a participatory, democratic, and sustainable society. Students engage with ongoing sustainability and justice projects and develop leadership skills in personal productivity, project management, communications, and facilitation. (Formerly Collaborative Learning: The Great Turning.)

Collaborative learning in service of building thriving, just, and sustainable communities locally and globally. Students engage with ongoing sustainability and justice projects and develop skills in leadership, personal productivity, project management, communications, and facilitation.

Collaborative learning in service of fostering community resilience in response to environmental and social crisis. Students engage with ongoing sustainability and justice projects and develop advanced skills in leadership, personal productivity, project management, communications, and facilitation.

Introduces students to fundamental food-system issues and opportunities. Topics include: hunger, environmental sustainability, race and gender, food and agricultural policy, local food systems, gardening and farming models, social movements, and approaches for analysis and change.

History of social documentary photography with its practice. Includes analysis of historical and contemporary images from social documentary work; camera, darkroom, and digital skill development; an individual student documentary project; and collective project discussion.

Workshop in writing memoir that connects to issues of multiculturalism, gender, and environment. Designed to hone skills in creative writing through stories that students will unify into a larger memoir.

Introduces contemporary activism on environmentalism and human rights, emphasizing the work of Laureates of the Right Livelihood Award (known internationally as the Alternative Nobel Prize) and the Right Livelihood College, whose North American campus is Kresge College.

Writing practicum on the philosophy of social systems and their implications for power. Students investigate social epistemology and ontology—the "how do we know" and "what do we mean" questions—in relation to texts on social systems and their subjects. Questions addressed may concern what systems in society enact "systemic" racism, or other systemic bias; how our knowledge and views of society may privilege some systems and structures over others. Students consider these concepts and questions as broad starting points for weekly reading responses, and 2-3 longer explorations of analytical texts, with a concentration on research-driven non-fiction writing.

Critical engagement of current research methodology in the humanities and arts. Coursework consists primarily of a collaborative research project that requires each student to synthesize information and sources in topics both familiar and unfamiliar. The specific methodologies presented vary by instructor across two to three disciplines, possibly including literature, history, the arts, and cultural studies. Enrollment is restricted to first-year Challenge Program participants from Stevenson College, Merrill College, Porter College, and Kresge College.

A program of directed study arranged between a first-year or sophomore student and a Kresge faculty member. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

A program of directed study arranged between a student and a Kresge faculty member. Class time is less proportional to credit given. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

A program of directed study arranged between a student and a Kresge faculty member. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.