ASPIRE Academics
Course Selection
Applicants will be asked to rank their top four courses, but will be admitted into and enrolled in only one course. Each course requires three hours of instruction per day (Monday to Friday). It is not possible for students to enroll in multiple courses.
If an applicant’s preferred course is full or canceled for any reason and they are a qualified applicant, they will be admitted into and enrolled in their second or third choice course. Applicants will be contacted via email if a space in their preferred course becomes available.
Course Tracks
Transistors to Transformers: Hands-on Computing Projects
Professor Zach Dodds
Computing is sometimes considered the “science of software.” In practice, however, it is closer to the “science of control.” This course will practice creating and understanding controlled systems, especially controlled creative systems. It will familiarize students with hardware, software, and the conceptual space in which both of them describe the same thing!
This is a course in which students understand systems by building and controlling them. The ethics and societal impacts of the systems are woven throughout, e.g., from measuring the power used in their transistor-based NOT gate, and the number of logical operations needed to maintain current LLMS, they will be able to estimate the power consumption — and brainstorm approaches to mitigating it! Or, by AI-generating a game, the students will grapple first-hand with the continuum between inspiration from vs. imitation of external work.
Thus, the key skills are (1) systems thinking, (2) understanding through implementation, and (3) hands-on control of widespread technologies.
The Chemistry of Cooking
Professor Katherine Van Heuvelen
This delicious and fun class will help students understand the “why” behind our daily meals. We will learn practical skills including the roles of different ingredients in cooking and how to work effectively in the kitchen while preparing tasty foods. Throughout the course, we’ll connect foundational chemical principles to what we see in the cooking lab.
Students will learn about the four major food chemicals (water, protein, fats, and carbohydrates/sugars) and the purpose of various ingredients in cooking, which we will use to evaluate and understand recipes. We will also explore the physiology of taste and smell.
Mathematics of Voting
Professor Michael Orrison
We use voting to make all sorts of decisions, but there are many ways to vote and they do not always agree. In this course, we will study the mathematics behind a range of voting procedures. Along the way, we will use simple ideas from algebra, combinatorics and graph theory to compare well-known voting methods and to better understand the structural reasons for their behavior and the paradoxes they can sometimes produce.
Students will engage in design thinking for decision rules, identifying goals like fairness or simplicity, and testing and tweaking voting procedures to see the different effects they can produce.
Ethics of Biotechnology
Sarena Tran
This mini course aims to explore popular topics of biotechnology such as gene editing, medical biotechnology, synthetic biology and environmental biology through an ethical approach. The lessons will engage students in respectful discussions viewed through multiple perspectives, some hands-on laboratory techniques, and a mini lecture series before culminating with a final presentation.
Students will be able to learn about the need for interdisciplinary perspectives to guide policy-development and ethical uses for our advancing knowledge in biotechnology. They will understand the importance of ethical decision-making as scientists.