Previous Summer Session Courses
ART179R HM – Outdoor Watercolor and Mixed Media
Instructor: Suzanne Fontaine
This is a hands-on studio course that will introduce you to basic watercolor materials and techniques useful for painting any subject matter. It will also provide a sampling of other media you can mix into your watercolor compositions. Geared to students with limited to no painting/watercolor experience, the course will develop your skill in observation, drawing, and watercolor painting, using a range of processes. Assignments will develop students’ technical and conceptual skills in visual media. You will paint from observation. The course will emphasize exploring the conversation between media and paper. You will be encouraged to experiment, play, creatively problem solve, push your thinking, and challenge your understanding of art. By the end of the course you will have produced many compositions and learned some basic design vocabulary, applicable to all art making. We will have a classroom home base but will do much of our actual painting outside. The course will include demos, critiques, reading and visual materials, and sketchbook practice
Prerequisite: None.
ASAM125 AA – Introduction to Asian American History, 1850-Present
Instructor: Alfred Flores
This survey course examines the history of Asian immigrant groups and their American-born descendants as they have settled and adjusted to life in the United States since 1850. We will explore issues such as the experience of immigration, daily life in urban ethnic enclaves, and racist campaigns against Asian immigrants. In addition, this course utilizes an ethnic studies framework that requires students to critically explore other themes such as class, community, empire, gender, labor, race, sexuality, settler colonialism, and war from the perspective of Asian Americans.
Prerequisite: Course not open to high school students.
CSCI005 HM – Introduction to Computer Science
Instructor: Zach Dodds
Introduction to elements of computer science. Students learn computational problem-solving techniques and gain experience with the design, implementation, testing, and documentation of programs in a high-level language. In addition, students learn to design digital devices, understand how computers operate, and learn to program in a small machine language. Students are also exposed to ideas in computability theory. The course also integrates societal and ethical issues related to computer science.
Prerequisite: None
Note to 5C and HS students: Students hoping to take additional CS courses or pursue a CS at Mudd are encouraged to review the relevant information on the computer science webpage for off-campus students.
CSCI035 HM – Computer Science for Insight
Instructor: Zach Dodds
This course extends CSCI005 HM in developing software-composition skills. Pairing lectures and lab sessions, the experience will deepen foundations in algorithms and data structures, introduce machine learning and its mindset, weigh tradeoffs between human- and machine-efficiency, and build sophistication in software, both assembling existing software packages and from-scratch design. Students will deploy and assess computing projects of their own design – with substantive application beyond CS itself – as the course’s final capstone. The course continues in the language of CSCI005 HM and especially encourages computing efforts which contribute to fields of interest beyond CS, whether academic or extracurricular.
Prerequisite: CSCI005 HM or CSCI005GR HM or equivalent background
ENGR086 HM – Materials Engineering
Instructor: Albert Dato
Introduction to the structure, properties, and processing of materials used in engineering applications. Topics include: material structure (bonding, crystalline and non-crystalline structures, imperfections); equilibrium microstructures; diffusion, nucleation, growth, kinetics, non-equilibrium processing; microstructure, properties and processing of: steel, ceramics, polymers and composites; creep and yield; fracture mechanics; and the selection of materials and appropriate performance indices.
Prerequisites: CHEM023A HM, CHEM023B HM, MATH019 HM, MATH073 HM, and PHYS024 HM, or equivalents (one year of general chemistry and one semester each of calculus, linear algebra, and mechanics, respectively.) High school students interested in taking the course should have completed AP-level coursework in chemistry, calculus, and physics (mechanics).
GEOG105 HM – Place, Power and Difference
Instructor: David Seitz
This course introduces students to key concepts in social and cultural geography, including space, place and scale, as well as the “cultural turn” that led human geographers to re-think their understanding of what power is and how it operates. The course investigates the difference that thinking geographically makes to the study of race, class, gender, sexuality, and other relations of difference and power.
Prerequisite: None.
GEOG125 HM – Geographies of Disease and Health Justice
Instructor: David Seitz
This course examines the uneven geographical distribution of disease and health, the spatial, social, and political processes that shape that uneven distribution, and some of the ways in which differently marginalized people contest health inequalities and the power relations that generate them. The course introduces a set of core concepts and theories around economic, racial, environmental and reproductive (in)justice, which help to put disease and health into geographical, historical, and political-economic context. It also introduces some of the health justice movements that have sought to address these concerns.
Prerequisite: None.
HIST150 HM – Technology and Medicine
Instructor: Vivien Hamilton
This course explores the increasingly technological nature of medicine in the 19th and 20th centuries, investigating the impact of new technologies on diagnostic practices, categories of disease, doctors’ professional identities, and patients’ understanding of their own bodies. Technologies studied include the stethoscope, electrotherapy devices, X-rays, ultrasound, and MRI.
Satisfies HMC HSA writing-intensive requirement.
Prerequisite: HSA010 or equivalent. Course not open to high school students.
MATH055 HM – Discrete Mathematics
Instructors: Dagan Karp (3 week remote course, May 22–June 9) and Francis Su (6 week remote course, May 22–June 30)
Topics include combinatorics (clever ways of counting things), number theory, and graph theory with an emphasis on creative problem solving and learning to read and write rigorous proofs. Possible applications include probability, analysis of algorithms, and cryptography.
Corequisites: MATH073 HM or equivalent. Course not open to high school students unless approved by the instructor.
MATH062 HM – Introduction to Probability and Statistics
Instructor: Susan Martonosi
Sample spaces, events, axioms for probabilities; conditional probabilities and Bayes’ theorem; random variables and their distributions, discrete and continuous; expected values, means and variances; covariance and correlation; law of large numbers and central limit theorem; point and interval estimation; hypothesis testing; simple linear regression; applications to analyzing real data sets. Possible additional topics include ANOVA, multiple regression, and logistic regression.
Prerequisites: MATH019 HM or equivalent.
Corequisites: MATH073 HM or equivalent.
MATH082 HM – Differential Equations
Instructors: Darryl Yong and Jon Jacobsen
Modeling physical systems, first-order ordinary differential equations, existence, uniqueness, and long-term behavior of solutions; bifurcations; approximate solutions; second-order ordinary differential equations and their properties, applications; first-order systems of ordinary differential equations. Applications to linear systems of ordinary differential equations, matrix exponential; nonlinear systems of differential equations; equilibrium points and their stability. Additional topics.
Prerequisites: (MATH019 HM and MATH073 HM) or equivalent. Course not open to high school students unless approved by the instructor.
MATH189AF HM – Mathematics for Human Flourishing
Instructor: Francis Su
What is the purpose of mathematics or a math education? How does society’s view of the nature of mathematics change our perceptions of who it’s for or why we do it? Why are the most rewarding parts of doing mathematics often not part of our educational experiences? Through a variety of readings, discussion, and reflection on historical, philosophical and mathematical sources, students will consider questions like these and develop a coherent view of how mathematics might connect to what it means to be a human being.
Prerequisite: None
MUS118 HM – Music in the United States
Instructor: Charles Kamm
A survey of the history and development of music in the United States, this course will examine the diverse musical cultures and traditions, including European, African, Latin American, Native American, Asian, and others that have come to this country and have influenced the works of musicians and composers in the United States. Musical examples from American popular culture (jazz, rock, country, and pop), from religious services and practices of various denominations and sects, from ethnic groups and folk cultures within the United States and from art music in the United States will be studied as expressions of important concerns and values in our society, and as influences on music in other countries as well.
Prerequisite: None. Course not open to high school students unless approved by the instructor.
PHIL179E HM – Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence
Instructor: Kyle Thompson
Artificial intelligence is a hot topic. It is depicted in sci-fi films and fiction, in worries and excitement about self-driving cars and chatbots, and in discussion about rights for future robotic systems. In this course, students explore the philosophical ideas that give life to AI debates. First, the course examines the nature of AI itself. What is the difference between learning and programming, or between genuine understanding and its counterfeits? Can consciousness arise in human-made machines? Second, the course interrogates the looming ethical concerns: what do we owe to AI systems? Do AI systems undermine or enhance human social life?
Prerequisite: None
POST188 HM – Political Innovation
Instructor: Paul Steinberg
Under what conditions do novel political ideas become realities? This course explores the origins and impacts of political innovations large and small—from the framing of the Constitution to the development of major social policies, the creation and reform of government agencies and non-profit organizations, and experimentation with new forms of social protest and political mobilization.
Satisfies HMC HSA writing-intensive requirement.
Prerequisite: None.
PSYC108 HM –Introduction to Social Psychology
Instructor: Anup Gampa
Social psychology is the scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and behaviors are influenced by other people, imagined or real, and the world around them. We will begin the course by covering the basics of scientific methodology and proceed to topics such as the self-concept, stereotyping and prejudice, close relationships, aggression, persuasion, conformity and liberation psychology. In general, this course will introduce you to the theories and research methodologies of social psychology and how these are used to understand, predict, and even control social behavior, with special attention paid to connecting social psychology to liberation.
Prerequisite: None.
RLST113 HM – God, Darwin, Design in America: A Historical Survey of Religion and Science
Instructor: Erika Dyson
Course examines the relationships between science and religion in the United States from the early 19th century to the present. Starting with the Natural Theologians, who made science the “handmaid of theology” in the early Republic, we will move forward in time through the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and Andrew Dickson White’s subsequent declaration of a war between science and religion, into the 20th century with the Scopes trial and the rise of Creationism, the evolutionary synthesis, and finally the recent debates over the teaching of Intelligent Design in public schools.
Satisfies HMC HSA writing-intensive requirement.
Prerequisite: Course not open to high school students unless approved by the instructor.