Courses

Honors 101

A series of weekly, one-hour classes and peer coaching on how to excel in the Honors College. Taught by Honors College Dean and Academic Counselors. Each section has the same curriculum and instructors. Classes in the A section are offered during the first 8 weeks of the semester while B section classes are offered in the second 8 weeks. This is a 0 SCH course. Honors 101 is required and at no cost. Sign up on ASAP just as you would for any other course.

CITYMSTER: City Solutions

This interdisciplinary seminar delves into a wide range of social and behavioral science topics, critically examining the root causes of social issues. In this hands-on course, students will engage in service learning and community service projects that lead to significant service initiatives. These projects will explore our roles in the Active Citizen Continuum and are expected to demonstrate substantial skill and effort, aiming to create a measurable and impactful social change beyond mere volunteerism.

HON Sem: Migration & Human Dev

This course will examine the relationship between international migration and human development. With a foreign-born population of almost 50 million, the United States is the country with the largest immigrant population in the world. Recent political events have brought a great deal of anti-immigrant rhetoric and attention to the negative impacts of immigration on the quality of life in this country. At the end of this course, the student will be knowledgeable of the historical context of U.S. immigration, understand the importance of human development as a concept and policy tool, and critically review empirical studies on the impact of immigration on the welfare of U.S. society. Students will learn from readings, lectures, documentaries, and class discussions.

HON Sem: Japan

This field-based course aims at helping students deepen their understanding of Japanese society, business, politics, religions, philosophy, educational system through lectures, visits to various world heritage sites and Kyoto University of Foreign Studies, and experiential learning on a team farm. The field experience will cover Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan, and Osaka, 3rd largest city in Japan, to experience the contrasts of modernism and traditions that co-exist seamlessly in the Land of the Rising Sun. UTSA Honors Program in Japan video Disclaimer: Program content varies from one year to another and should only be used as a reference Contact lead faculty Professor Mimi Yu at mimi.yu@utsa.edu should you have any questions.

HON Sem: The Dresden Exper Study Abroad

This 30-day program in Dresden, a city that made Lonely Planet's 2023 list of Best Places to Travel, will give students an introduction to living in Germany, with experiential components related to living, studying, working, and culture. The UTSA course combines excursions, reflection, and an individual project tailored to students' field of study.

CITYMSTER: City Skills

City Skills is the internship component of Citymester. Placements are based on student career interests with current partners. Through the internships, students and community partners work together to strengthen our local businesses and institutions. https://honors.utsa.edu/programs/utsa-citymester/

Health and Art Field School

If you believe in the power of art to influence wellbeing and if you want to conduct research that benefits arts non-profits, this is the course for you! Our UTSA students will work with students from the University of Memphis in Tennessee, a San Antonio arts nonprofit, and a Memphis nonprofit to execute two program evaluation research projects. We will travel to Memphis to collect data for one week (fully funded) and then host UMemphis students in San Antonio to collect data here for another week. Interested? Contact Dr. Fleuriet (jill.fleuriet@utsa.edu) to learn about modalities and time commitments - and for instructor permission to enroll. Only 5 seats!

HonEngLvg: Cost Rica

Meet a red-eyed tree frog, a blue morpho butterfly, and a blooming a bird of paradise. Learn and practice sustainable farming and yoga in the tropical rainforest! Our ten-day international experience (August 11-20) gives students the opportunity to learn and practice intentional and sustainable living on a working agro-ecological ranch on Lake Arenal, Costa Rica. Our destination is Rancho Margot: www.ranchomargot.com, where students will be hands-on with the biodiversity of the rainforest, renewable energy systems in practice, and mind-body experiential learning. The goal of the course is to immerse students in different approaches of what it means to live intentionally and sustainably in local and global communities. We will return to San Antonio just in time for the start of Fall classes, reconvening for the first Saturday afternoon each month of the semester to explore sustainability, mindfulness, and other kinds of intentional living in San Antonio. These afternoons have taken us to events, organizations, and places like Siclovia, Compassionate San Antonio, Confluence park, Gardopia Gardens, and Yoga in the Park. Subsidy by Honors College and the Alvarez International Study Fund means that the program cost of just $500 is inclusive of air fare, in-country travel, lodging, and meals.

CITYMSTER: San Antonio Seminar

Explore San Antonio and new urbanism is new and exciting ways. Learn directly from city leaders in various industries, critically examine some of the major issues facing the region, and explore several of the area’s most engaging sites. Become San Antonio savvy; learn the area, network with local officials, and develop urban living skills. See: https://honors.utsa.edu/programs/utsa-citymester/

Honors 101

A series of weekly, one-hour classes and peer coaching on how to excel in the Honors College. Taught by Honors College Dean and Academic Counselors. Each section has the same curriculum and instructors. Classes in the A section are offered during the first 8 weeks of the semester while B section classes are offered in the second 8 weeks. This is a 0 SCH course. Honors 101 is required and at no cost. Sign up on ASAP just as you would for any other course.

Honors 101

A series of weekly, one-hour classes and peer coaching on how to excel in the Honors College. Taught by Honors College Dean and Academic Counselors. Each section has the same curriculum and instructors. Classes in the A section are offered during the first 8 weeks of the semester while B section classes are offered in the second 8 weeks. This is a 0 SCH course. Honors 101 is required and at no cost. Sign up on ASAP just as you would for any other course.

Special Scholars Seminar F'25

Civic Ethos

A weekly, one-hour course that covers different approaches, philosophies and ethics to civic engagement. This course introduces the primary ethos of the UTSA Honors College curriculum. Classes in the A section are offered during the first 8 weeks of the semester while B section classes are offered in the second 8 weeks. This is a 1 SCH course. This course counts as the Civic Ethos requirement in the Honors College curriculum.

Civic Ethos

A weekly, one-hour course that covers different approaches, philosophies and ethics to civic engagement. This course introduces the primary ethos of the UTSA Honors College curriculum. Classes in the A section are offered during the first 8 weeks of the semester while B section classes are offered in the second 8 weeks. This is a 1 SCH course. This course counts as the Civic Ethos requirement in the Honors College curriculum.

Socially Sustainable Public Spaces

In Socially Sustainable Public Spaces adapts an interdisciplinary lens to explore the creation of socially-sustainable urban public spaces around the globe. We begin by questioning whether the concern for the social sustainability of cities is anything new. Through a critical historical and contemporary review of the ways in which the concept of social sustainability has been developed and practiced in international contexts, we identify and appreciate various relations to making socially-sustainable cities and community-powered public spaces. We experience public spaces first hand – in San Antonio, San Marcos, and Austin. Relying on our own lived-experiences and the theoretical framework learned in this class, together, we explore, examine, and evaluate the fundamental elements that bring such places to life and equip people to fuel lasting change.

Power, Identity & Naming

Have you ever wondered how and why parents decide on particular names? Do you know the story behind your own name? Selecting a name for a child represents an important symbolic and cultural decision. Naming babies is a social practice that occurs regardless of parents’ class, ethnic, racial, gender, and religious background, or where they live in the world. However, how names are chosen, and the meaning of names are deeply informed by social and cultural norms. Names also have consequences. As social labels, names serve as identity markers that influence how their bearers are perceived and treated. In this course, we will explore core topics in sociology - power, culture, gender, class, race/ethnicity, family, politics, and inequality – through the lens of naming.

HON Sem: Peace & Justice

How can peace and justice be most effectively pursued both personally and communally? Is peace primarily the absence of conflict or something more? To what extent is justice a process, an outcome, or an objective standard? By studying approaches to conflict transformation, restorative justice, and transformative justice, students will explore models for pursuing peace and justice in situations of conflict and in the aftermath of severe harms. Students will participate in a learning exchange with students at Dominguez State Jail as part of the UTSA Philosophy and Literature Circle. This course counts as an Interdisciplinary Seminar Experience in the Honors College curriculum.

The Courage of Truth

How do writers tell stories about experiences and phenomena that defy explanation, and seem impossible? Stories of personal experiences, apparitions, encounters with ghostly presences or non-human entities, sightings of anomalous aerial phenomena abound in every cultural tradition. How do we prepare to write about such things? Using literature, history, media, and weekly writing practice, this seminar will develop strategies for creating narratives that confront the impossible.

Media and Media Theory

Beginning with the inception of cave painting 64,000 years ago, and earliest forms of writing, humanity’s evolution has been coeval with the development of ever-evolving forms of inscription and transmission, all aimed at telling stories of who we are and the world we find ourselves in. This seminar will trace the historical emergences of ever more complex technologies and platforms of alphabetic writing and pictorial communication, along with theoretical understandings of our increasingly myriad media tools and the mass culture they can help us to see and fathom.

HonSem: Medical Gross Anatomy

Imagine caressing a human femur in your hand and examining the delicate bony prominences where human flesh once anchored a human being’s movements. Gross Anatomy examines the form and function of the human body at a macroscopic level. This course offers a uniquely immersive opportunity for students to appreciate the human body, replete with state-of-the-art technologies, including virtual reality that offers a fascinating 3D perspective of the human body’s anatomical architecture. The gross anatomy lessons will be buttressed with guest practicing physicians who will assess the anatomical skill level of the students, nephrology nurses, who will humanize the growing chronic kidney disease epidemic, which will reinforce the lessons in renal anatomy, mortuary science professionals, that will present a unique embalming perspective that will highlight the different tissues of the human body, and medical ethicists that will discuss the timeless value of the altruistic acts of those who have donated their bodies for the furtherance of medical knowledge to truly appreciate the meaning of the words Mortui Vivos Docent. Enrollment requires faculty approval. Email Dr. Hernandez (hector.hernandez@utsa.edu) to request approval

Mind and Matter

Have you ever wondered about the nature of consciousness? Exactly what is it? Is it something only humans possess? Or do all living beings have it? Perhaps just some? Maybe you believe your dog is just a ‘little conscious’. (After all, he knows what you’re thinking). If this is true then maybe consciousness is a sort of graded phenomenon, as on a continuum rather than all-or-none. Whatever it is and whoever has it, there remains the mystery as to how it arises. Western biology assumes that consciousness is an emergent property arising from a sufficiently evolved central nervous system. It ‘resides’ in your brain. Matter gives rise to mind. But this is not at all a foregone conclusion in much of the rest of the world which holds quite the contrary view, that consciousness is primary. That is, consciousness exists prior to the material world. In this view, consciousness is the ground state from which all matter arises. Even within Western science, such an idea was debated following the bizzare observations made from within a newly developed physics of the quantum realm. In fact, this debate persists. Such questions and ideas are explored in this course. While it will not offer up many definitive answers, it promises to be an exciting journey into this ultimate of mysteries.

HonSem: Intro To Clinical Med

Mankind has endured human diseases for thousands of year. However, the past 100 years have brought on an explosion in our understanding of the mechanisms of human diseases fostered by revolutionary techniques such as molecular biology, clinical imaging, and gene therapy, and we have found many new ways to treat them. This honors course is designed as an introduction for students interested in human health into the world of clinical medicine and the pathology of important human diseases. Participants will have the opportunity to learn about basic pathological mechanisms of human diseases at the level of the cells, organs, and organ systems, and how to recognize these diseases and current treatments. Requirements for this course are a sharp mind, compassion, and willingness for active participation. It may just happen that after this course you may want to become a health care worker or a clinical researcher.

Learning to Lead

In this 1 SCH discussion-based course of 15 students, students learn with HCaP Dean Cossman, Vice Provost for Honors Education Fleuriet, and university and city leaders about leading through crisis. We use the case study of San Antonio’s mayor and Bexar County’s judge leading our city through COVID, and guest speakers who are leaders from across our university and city talk about their own leadership through COVID and other massive change in their industries. With feedback from these leaders, students develop their own leadership philosophies about leading during crisis and change.

Making The Leap

Students develop a career portfolio, do a Group Mock Interview, attend career events, and complete informational interviews with professionals in their field. A portion of the course would be devoted to skill building for success once they've been hired: research, writing, communications, workplace conflict resolution, etc. I would likely develop a community based research option for the experiential component.

HONIntAch: Storytelling For Life

We are utterly shaped by the stories we hear, and the stories we tell. It has been said that while there have been great societies that did not use the wheel, there have been no societies that did not tell stories. During the semester we will explore stories at UTSA from students, faculty and staff as way to study the human experience, cultivate empathy, actualize identity, preserve history, provide social testimony, encourage social responsibility, and generate knowledge through engaging and sharing narrative. Special emphasis will be given to cultivating the skills of interviewing, transcription, script writing/creative writing, editing, and storytelling in the oral tradition. The final project for this course will be live performances of the students’ original creative work, engaging with a local elementary school. No prior experience necessary.

HonCultExpl: Sex, Gender & Repr

What is culture? Who "belongs" in U.S. culture? Who does not? How do you know? In No Shame, students will examine how cultural attitudes toward sex, gender and race are made visible through advertisement, comic books, television and film, and other mediums. We will also investigate how those manifestations create and affirm social expectations of behavior and identity and how groups outside of those expectations historically create cultures of their own. Topics include, but are not limited to consent, Hip-Hop, ideas of God, the "Cult of Domesticity", Drag, and intersections in between.

US Work Culture & Meaning

Did early humans work? Do all societies have a hustle culture like the US? What will future jobs look like? Why are certain forms of work valued more highly than others? By the end of our working lives, many of us will have spent more time at work than anywhere else, but the definition, meaning, and purpose of work varies widely over time and across cultures. This class is a rigorous interrogation of the concept of work in contemporary America in which we will explore what work means, why it exists, and what it will look like in the future using classic and contemporary social scientific texts. As we consider the meaty issues about work and humanity, we will also delve into the practical dimensions of work–the unspoken rules, hidden codes, and implicit norms of the workplace–so that students can have more fulfilling experiences in the workforce.

HonEngLvg : Day of the Dead

Dia De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is not Halloween. It’s a lavish multi-day celebration of remembrance to honor loved ones who have passed. This course will use the study of Dia de Los Muertos/Dia de Muertos to explore cultural and psychological themes of grieving and remembrance customs as well as the commodification and commercialization of tradition. Interactive course materials include videos, movies, online courses and readings, site visits, guest speakers, and a class creation of an exhibit for the university and San Antonio community. This course does not have prerequisites, and is open to all majors.