Honors College

Honors Courses

Spring 2027 Courses

HONS 106: Community Connections 1 credit

Friday 10-10:50 a.m.
Instructor: Dr. Jennifer Cavalli

In this course, students explore critical issues such as literacy, affordable housing, food security, environmental sustainability, and equity identified by affected communities in the local community using an asset-based approach. It seeks to raise awareness of these critical issues through sustained research into community organizations serving the St. Cloud area and beyond, uniting action and academic exploration. Required as part of the Honors first-year experience.

HONS 160: Hip Hop Cultural Studies 4 credits | Goals 1

Monday and Wednesday: 11 a.m. to 12:50 p.m.
Instructor: Dr. Michael Dando

This course provides an in-depth exploration of hip-hop culture from its historic roots in the US to its global impact today. Students will critically examine the aesthetic, cultural, and political components of hip-hop, including its elements—DJing, MCing, breakdancing, and graffiti—as well as its broader cultural practices like fashion, language, and activism. Through a combination of readings, multimedia, and hands-on projects, students will explore the connections between hip-hop and larger socio-political movements, identity formation, and cultural resistance.

Students will engage in discussions and analysis about key figures, historical contexts, and significant movements within hip-hop culture. Additionally, students will develop their own projects—ranging from mixtapes to multimedia presentations—that apply theoretical and analytic frameworks to contemporary issues within hip-hop culture. By the end of the course, students will be equipped with a deeper understanding of hip-hop’s role as a powerful tool for storytelling, expression, and social change.

HONS 200: Introduction to Community Leadership 1 credit

Friday 11-11:50 a.m.
Instructor: Dr. Mic Brunner

This course provides the basics of effective leadership, including leadership theories and assessment of leadership styles. Lecturers and guest presenters from the local community will provide various viewpoints regarding different leadership styles. Students will identify and describe leadership concepts and styles and apply strategies of leadership to various situations and contexts with a local focus.

HONS 211: Ethics and AI 3 credits | Goal 9

Tuesday and Thursday: 12:30-1:45 p.m.
Instructor: Dr. Mary Clifford

AI Ethics invites students to critically analyze artificial intelligence not as an abstract technical subject of study, but as a force already reshaping the world — from the small-business owner and the mid-level manager to the police officer, the nurse, and the working writer or creative. Building on equal parts accessible technical grounding and the philosophical underpinnings of ethics and interdisciplinary ethical framing, students will learn how AI systems actually work through a blend of case studies and hands-on exercises, with particular attention to algorithmic bias, social and cultural infrastructures and diversity of impacts, and AI as an identified threat to human flourishing. Students will explore how the ethical weight of AI shifts depending on where they stand — in a hospital, an international trade negotiation, a squad car, a corporate office, or their own home. No technical background is required. Students will leave equipped to think critically about AI's implications in whatever field they enter and will complete original projects examining AI's influence on a profession or system of their choosing.

HONS 220: Planet in Peril 3 credits | Goals 3 & 10

Tuesday and Thursday: 9:30-10:45 a.m.
Instructor: Dr. Balsy Kasi

Humans’ overarching role in our planet’s environmental problems and successes. This course will offer a fresh, forward-looking approach to sustainable solutions in a changing world.

HONS 230: Artificial Creativity: Exploring AI's Role in Human Expression 3 credits | Goal 6

Tuesday and Thursday 3-4:45 p.m.
Instructor: Dr. Rosemary Williams

This course investigates the nature of generative artificial intelligence models in relation to human creative activity. How does the way AI works shine a light on our own creative practices? What is the nature of our creativity and is there a place for artificial intelligence in our development as thinkers and makers? How can we build new frameworks for using these unprecedented tools that center our own agency, curiosity and discovery? This course will lead students through ethical and philosophical investigations into these questions, as well as collaborative and individual projects where students can assess the utility of using these systems in creative work.

HONS 250: Critical Thinking and Academic Research 3 credits | Goals 2 & 6

Monday and Wednesday: 9:30-10:45 a.m.
Instructor: Prof. Jennifer Quinlan

This course will examine and evaluate critical reasoning in academic discourse and discussions, the construction of arguments, and the management of academic research. Required for all Honors College students.

HONS 395: Readings in U.S. Environmental History 3 credits

Tuesday and Thursday 2-3:15 p.m.

This class is designed to explore the environmental history of the United States from the times of Native sovereignty over the land to the present. With such a broad overview, we will read a variety of authors and sources including national bestsellers, academic historians, memoirs, and other sources. The goal is to explore a variety of regional, social, and political connections to environmental history. The course will complicate perspectives on U.S. history, debunk problematic myths about the land, consider varied approaches to land management, and provide a deeper context for understanding the challenges we face in an era of undeniable climate change.

HONS 395: Stupidity 3 credits

Monday and Wednesday 2-3:15 p.m.
Instructor: Dr. King Banaian

“The fastest way to get smart is to avoid the pitfalls of the stupid. But you need to learn them first.” — Ted Gioia

What is stupidity? Is it simply ignorance or error, or something more? Why do intelligent people, groups, and institutions repeatedly make decisions that appear foolish in retrospect?

This course is a multidisciplinary investigation of stupidity as an individual and collective phenomenon. From Thucydides to Forrest Gump, from financial manias to ideological delusions, we will examine how writers, historians, economists, and social thinkers have tried to identify, explain, and sometimes defend human folly. Along the way, students will ask how hubris, incentives, conformity, institutions, ideology, and moral judgment contribute to bad decisions—and whether studying stupidity can make us wiser.

Past Honors Course Offerings

Honors 101: Honors Foundations
Honors 160: Hip Hop Cultural Studies
Honors 195: AI for Everyone: An Interdisciplinary Introduction
Honors 195: Ballroom Dance Practice and Analysis
Honors 260: Ethics and Artificial Intelligence: Navigating the Intersection of Technology and Morality
Honors 206: Approaches to Community-Engaged Learning
Honors 395: Stupidity
Honors 395: Environmental Art Sound
Honors 395: Who Gets to Live Where? Housing Justice and Inequality in the U.S.