In this combined reading-writing class, readings will include Geoffrey Canada's Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America and related readings from psychology and prison literature. Reading and writing assignments will be coordinated across the two classes.

This is a Service Learning/Learning Community.  Students will be presenting lessons on healthy living to elementary school students at P.S.46 in Bayside. QCC students will be reading picture books to elementary grades students (oral interpretation), performing "commercials" for students using Monroe's Motivated Sequence to encourage eating healthy snacks, and creating presentations to encourage healthy living habits.

This course will examine the historical, philosophical and sociological foundations of American education.  Students will study the evolution of educational theory and research-based practices that promote social, emotional and cognitive development and enhance learning. Attention will be paid to comparative analysis of past and contemporary political, philosophical and sociological factors that have influenced and shaped educational decision-making. The course introduces students to the reflective decision-making model through readings, in-class activities and discussions.  Students will be actively involved in their own learning process. They will learn how to use a variety of learning strategies as they flex from the role of current student learning Physics 101 content material to the perspective of future teacher studying underlying pedagogical principles for effective physics instruction.

What is crime? Why and how does it happen? And why does crime appear as a topic or event in so many stories, poems and plays? In this Learning Community, students will study literary works that portray crime as they learn about the theories and perspectives that seek to understand crime. We will explore questions about how crime is represented in literature and how actual crime is comprehended and dealt with in modern society.

The course will provide a forum for students to individually and in groups express and demonstrate their knowledge across a broad survey of legal concepts in a business setting.  Students would read and discuss actual legal cases that reflect key concepts. Using legal concepts, students will simulate a courtroom environment, analyzing hypothetical cases addressing both sides of disputes and controversies.

This learning community aims to clarify the role of fundamental and abstract principles of economics as applied to practical business situations.  Stress will be placed on markets and their adjustment via policies, both fiscal and monetary. Their relevance for domestic and international business decision-making will be explored via lecture, assignments and tests.

This course will examine America’s role in globalization, as well as globalization’s impact on American society.  It will focus on the export of American culture and the integration of “foreign” cultures into all aspects of American life.  It will also attend to the economic flows that ground globalization and the social categories (i.e., race, class, gender) through which globalization is experienced.  Course texts will include social-scientific readings and popular culture analyses, both for their content and as models for the students’ research-based and argumentative writings.

This LC will focus on the way that structured patterns of power and culture shape the life chances of individuals in society.

This Learning Community focuses on ethnography, which is the study and writing about human cultures from the insider's perspective. You will be asked to write various types of ethnographic papers in both classes, with the ultimate goal of learning about sociology, honing your research skills and improving both scholarly and creative writing skills.  Cultures that students have written about in past semesters include immigrant neighborhoods, youth scenes, aspects of daily life in Queens, and online communities. If you're interested in culture--how different groups of people experience and give meaning to life--then this LC is for you!

Tony Tanner, a literary critic, states: “If we don’t know ourselves, we don’t know the world.”  In this learning community, we will explore human behavior and consider the following questions:  In what way do genetics as well as cultural practices and beliefs influence our behavior?  How do family values, peer relationships, or technology shape the choices we make? Are memories of past events always accurate or does the input of others influence recall?  Are dreams reflections of lived experiences or windows into the future?  This learning community is perfect for anyone seeking more fully to understand what motivates human behavior.  Classes will correlate specific assignments and have joint class meetings.  One of our learning community projects will be developing a digital narrative that will involve an online exchange between classes.  This project will also introduce students to e-portfolio, an online academic environment which can be used to showcase student work from all disciplines throughout their Queensborough career and beyond.

“Get Active, Be Healthy” provides students with the opportunity to learn the key concepts in health, including exercise and nutrition, along with the experience of engaging in a variety of group fitness exercises.  Through this LC, students will develop the health education and physical activity skills needed to make healthy lifestyle decisions.   This LC fulfills both the HE 102 requirement for most majors and one of the PE requirements.