Experimental College courses announced for fall 2019

Tufts’ Experimental College (ExCollege) announced the new courses for the fall of 2019 in a March 7 email to the Tufts community. According to ExCollege Board Member and Mechanical Engineering Professor of the Practice James Intriligator, the focus of this year's programming will be research and problem-based instruction.

The ExCollege offers courses outside the range of normal Tufts classes. Undergraduate students, graduate students and other experts teach the courses. The ExCollege Board selected the courses from an initial list of more than 700 potential courses, Intriligator said.

Efforts to include students extend to the selection of classes, with students and faculty equally represented on the board, according to Director of the ExCollege Howard Woolf.

The shared responsibility for selecting ExCollege courses allows for input from both experienced professors and students in the Tufts community, according to Woolf. One student on the board, May Hong, believes ExCollege courses challenge students to think differently within the classroom.

“They’re interested in pushing beyond the conventional classroom structure and challenging students to creatively pursue their academic interests,” Hong, a junior, said. “Classes reflect the world we live in.”

The ExCollege has expanded the academic opportunities for Tufts students, according to Woolf. He explained that the courses offered by the ExCollege represent students' interests and current events.

“By design, the ExCollege does not want to look for specific courses," Woolf said. "We want to see what comes in as a barometer for what's really out there in student culture.”

Woolf noted that the search for faculty often includes reaching out to faculty of color.

Woolf told the Daily that in this past round of applications, the board reviewed many proposals for courses on the topic of immigration. Maggie Morgan, an immigration law attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services and a graduate of Harvard Law School will teach a course entitled Seeking Refuge: Central American Asylum Seekers in the U.S. The class will explore the topic of seeking asylum in the United States with a particular focus on immigrants coming from Central America, according to Intriligator.

“It is an important class in this particular moment in time ... [and an] important skill for students to get or be exposed to,” Intriligator explained.

Hong echoed Intriligator's sentiments.

“[ExCollege courses] reflect the world we live in in such an immediate way that it often makes them seem novel and unexpected against the backdrop of traditional higher education,” Hong said.

ExCollege curators take into account that professors have individual sets of guidelines and expectations for each course, according to Intriligator.

The course selection and rotation every semester allows for the curriculum to shift along with Tufts students' interests in art, politics and life skills. As an example, Personal Career Development, a lecture series taught for athletes by Greg Victory, executive director of career services, is tailored to Tufts sophomores and juniors and examines the transition to the professional world for student-athletes, according to the fall course list.

Intriligator and Woolf both expect the repeat class Argentine Tango: Culture, Music, and the Dance, taught by Harvard Ph.D. candidate in comparative literature Thomas Wisniewski, to be among the most popular as it combines analysis, history and practice, according to Woolf.

Hong is looking forward to #outfitoftheday: Clothing, Culture and the Global Implications of Getting Dressed, which will discuss the implications between culture of the global fashion industry and sustainability.