Putting together navigation plans, learning more about the Roanoke Valley, touring with a children’s theatre production, producing comic books and graphic novels, researching the history of Hollins University, and even identifying and avoiding BS are some of the distinctive course offerings engaging Hollins students during the school’s January 2015 Short Term session.
Throughout the month, while many students participate in travel/study programs (the Caribbean, France, Greece, Japan, Spain, and Turkey are among this year’s destinations), internships, and independent study projects, others are choosing from a creative mix of on-campus seminars that are unlike anything they experience during the rest of the academic year.
This year’s highlights include:
- Learning Navigation Skills. Associate Professor of Chemistry and licensed pilot Daniel Derringer leads this class in which students learn to navigate using a compass, sextant, and GPS technology.
- Getting to Know the Roanoke Valley: A January Term Primer. This course is part of a broader project intended to educate students about the entertainment, cultural, recreational, and culinary scenes within the greater Roanoke Valley. Students will work throughout the semester designing and publishing a new website designed for Hollins students focused on the Roanoke Valley. Students will go into the community, meet and speak with local business owners and groups, and write reviews about their experiences.
- Touring Theatre Production for Children. Taught by Associate Professor of Theatre Ernie Zulia and Theatre Technical Director John Forsman, this class will mount a production of The Adventures of Iris and Walter, based on the award-winning children’s storybooks by Elisa Haden Guest and adapted by Nicole B. Adkins. Both Guest and Adkins received their Master of Fine Arts degrees from Hollins in 2012. The production will be staged at Hollins Theatre, February 5 – 6, and on Mill Mountain Theatre’s Trinkle Stage, February 7.
- Think It, Ink It, Bind It. Students will learn how to make prints that will be incorporated into book formats. They will explore the mechanics and terminology of books and how to design and bind them. Students will also be introduced to three different printmaking processes that will be used for the imagery in their books. Students will make their own comic books, graphic novels, and zines.
- History of Hollins and Its Social Movements. After reviewing the fundamentals of public history and strategies of social change, this class will create a smart technology application based on research of the Hollins campus. Possible objects of study include campus artifacts, buildings, and artistic representations. Students will use resources at Hollins’ Wyndham Robertson Library to investigate social change movements at the university. Groups will create a museum-quality feature display at the library based on their study.
- On BS. The aim of this class is to recognize BS in all of its many forms and then prevent it in one’s own thinking.
Other on-campus courses at Hollins in January cover such diverse topics as jazz cinema, snakes, female scientists in film, women’s travel writing, and wilderness survival for the modern world.
Hollins’ Short Term began January 5 and continues through January 30. It has been a valuable component of the Hollins curriculum since 1968 and serves as an avenue for Hollins to inject fresh courses, programs, and approaches to education into the curriculum.
