Program Outline
CODES students take 22 credit hours that take the place of the Lincoln Program.
CODES Summer Seminars
Students participate in two-day, non-credit bearing research seminars in the summer preceding each year of the pathway where they will choose community partners, learn from peer mentoring and share their research outcomes.
CODES Research Teams (9 hours)
Students meet in intensive research teams of 8-10 students, a faculty mentor and a community partner. Teams focus on a “wicked” or seemingly unsolvable problem such as nutrition and food access, the challenges of intergenerational communication, and poverty’s manifestations across rural and urban environments. The level of difficulty the research teams undertake grows with students, and the curriculum is intentionally organic, transforming each year based on student and faculty interest and community need. Students and faculty work together to structure a series of readings from diverse fields such as history, literature, anthropology, biology and sociology that supports their work, and study their problem using critical thinking, writing and qualitative research methods. In final projects each semester, research teams apply a variety of digital methods to communicate the results of their research.
CODES Core (13 credit-hours)
CODES students are required to take CODE121 and CODE123 during their first year. These courses are designed to help student research, map, conceptualize and communicate about global problems and their impact on our region. Students will learn how to write and speak using interdisciplinary, multi-modal forms of communication. In their second year of instruction, students will take CODE220, in which students will learn how scientific modes of inquiry can apply to their problem. Their work culminates in CODE320, a summer research experience before the third year, in which students complete a public-facing digital collaborative project to explain their problem and propose solutions, incorporating creative non-fiction, graphic design and data visualization. In their final year, students enroll in CODE420 to reflect on their work and prepare for careers and continuing studies.
|
Year |
Summer | Fall | Spring | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | Two-Day Orientation |
CODE120: Research Team I (3 hours) CODE121: Transdisciplinary Communication (3 hours) |
CODE122: Research Team II (3 hours) CODE123: Research and Systems Thinking (3 hours) | Multimodal essays, digital storytelling, and public speeches communicating the problem |
| Year 2 | Two-Day Mentorship of New Students |
CODE220: Community Engagement with Science (3 hours) CODE221: Research Team III (3 hours) |
CODE320: Digital Collaborations (3 hours) |
Digital problem visualization integrating previous research; Culminating digital project |
| Year 4 | CODE420: CODES Capstone (1 hour) | Resumes, graduate school application materials, portfolios |
- Lab course in the physical sciences
- Mathematics, statistics or quantitative reasoning course
