Why are you in college? What do you want to learn? How will being a university Honors student be different from ‘going to school’? This course aims to help students grapple with these questions through shared readings, expert presentations, and on-site visits. Texts and discussions encourage students to articulate their own assumptions about the purpose of education, the nature of effective teaching, and how their individual learning may relate to social benefits. Students are urged to consider how they understand themselves, the broader world, and their engagement with the learning process in order to prepare for a lifetime of learning and leading. (1.5 credits; offered in fall and spring semesters)
Learning Objectives
Analyze own past experiences of schooling and education
Identify competing educational ideals, their underlying premises and assumptions
Assess others’ writings, ideas, and arguments in an analytic and rational manner
Discover the range of educational opportunities available at IU
Formulate intentional intellectual goals for the next four years
Recognize the purpose of reflection and critical thinking as life-long learners
“This course promoted critical thinking in everything that we did. Never have I been so required to dive into a discussion and connect my learning with the world around me.”
HHC-H 202 Knowledge Production and the University
Universities collect, preserve, and produce knowledge to address the universe of problems. Students in this seminar explore one such problem to learn how new knowledge is produced, research findings are disseminated, and research is conducted.
Students will gain further insights into the breadth and depth of expertise available at Indiana University but also learn to consider how knowledge is generated: how does each discipline frame questions? What kinds of evidence does it draw on, and what is its standard of proof? Given the variety of disciplinary norms, how should we distinguish truth from fiction? (1.5 credits; offered both semesters)
Learning objectives. Students who successfully complete this course will:
demonstrate intellectual curiosity
examine issues from multiple perspectives
collaborate to devise effective research strategies and conduct necessary inquiry
locate and evaluate data and informational sources
formulate their own, evidence-informed opinions about matters of fact
communicate their findings in multiple formats to an array of audiences
manage their own work
Faculty Fellows/Instructors
Mark Baildon (Visiting Associate Professor, School of Education) is a specialist in international education and curriculum design. He has taught in Israel, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates.
Britt Currie, PhD, studied Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has also earned a Masters of Science in Philosophy from University of Edinburgh, a Masters of Arts in Critical Theory from King's College, London, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Literature. Her main research is in the philosophy of psychology. She has accomplished interdisciplinary empirical work in the field of moral decision making. Currently, she researches on the topic of empathy and also, the Ethics of AI. Over the years, she has won several teaching awards. She very much enjoys supporting her students in realizing their individual goals as learners.
Janine Giordano Drake (Clinical Associate Professor of History) researches and writes about American religious, social, and political history. Her first book, The Gospel of Church was recently published by Oxford University Press. In addition to her own teaching and scholarship, she works closely with high-school history teachers across Indiana as part of the Advanced College Program.
Dr. Frohardt-Lane (Senior Lecturer, Hutton Honors College) - is an environmental historian of the USA in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She has written on urban environmental history (especially in the context of Detroit and Birmingham, Alabama) and on lead poisoning, and has taught classes on the homefront in World War II, the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, and Prisons and Punishment in US History. A former park ranger, she is a keen hiker and cyclist.
Polly A. Graham, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer and Course Coordinator in the Communication and Professional Skills area at the Kelley School of Business. Dr. Graham earned her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Higher Education with a minor in Philosophy of Education from Indiana University in 2020. Her research is broadly centered on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), with published work focusing on relational pedagogy and student success.
While Dr. Graham primarily teaches writing-intensive courses, she has extensive expertise in first-year experiences in higher education. She has led multiple living-learning communities and taught several types of transition-to-college courses. She believes higher education experiences are more than the sum of their parts, as they foster meaningful habits of the mind and heart.
Dr. Jamie Hook earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Communication & Culture here at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he researched media adaptation practices across film, literature, and theatre during the sexual revolution. He has taught courses spanning the disciplines of communication; media literacy; business and professional writing; public speaking; and film history. He currently serves as a Lecturer in Communication & Professional Skills in the Kelley School of Business.
Rob Kunzman (Professor of Curriculum Studies and Philosophy of Education) teaches several different classes in Hutton. His scholarship explores the purposes of education, alternative forms of schooling, and how we can learn from failure.
Gabrielle Stecher (Lecturer, English) is a Victorianist by training who wrote her PhD (University of Georgia, 2022) on nineteenth-century "encounters" with the Ancient Near East in the British Museum. She is a keen advocate for and practitioner of digital literacy and multimedia scholarship and retains a strong interest in women's creative activity of all kinds. Much more on her website!
Jim Shanahan (Professor, IU Media School) studies the effects of mass media and science journalism on public opinion. Before coming to Bloomington as the Founding Dean of the Media School in 2015, he had faculty appointments at Cornell and Boston University. He is also a keen photographer and pianist.
Adam Singh (Academic Advisor, Hutton Honors College) is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University. He studies the literature of Catalan exiles in Mexico, with his dissertation focusing on the exiles' adaptation of the postconquest indigenous myth of Quetzalcoatl.
Dr. Candis Driver Smith is a lecturer and language researcher whose work centers on sociolinguistics and ethnic studies, with a focus on the intersections of language and identity within African Diaspora communities. She earned her Ph.D. in English with a Certificate in African Studies from Michigan State University. Before joining AAADS, she taught English language and composition to international students at Michigan State and served as an English Language Fellow with the U.S. Department of State in Namibia. Her recent research examines the maintenance and revitalization of Swahili in the United States within East African religious communities and the role of language attitudes and identity in these contexts.
Dr. Shannon Winston (Lecturer, CPS, Kelley School of Business) is a poet and comparatist by training. She holds an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers and a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. She is the author of The Worry Dolls (Glass Lyre Press, 2025) and The Girl Who Talked to Paintings (Glass Lyre Press, 2021). She is interested in visual culture, especially the intersections of poetry and photography. For more, go here: https://shannonkwinston.com/.
Patrick Dove, Ph.D., is a scholar whose research explores the intersections of literature, philosophy, and political thought in Spanish America. His work examines how literary texts both reflect historical experiences and challenge existing social and political orders. He is currently examining contemporary forms of conflict and violence in Central America, focusing on how legacies of revolution, war, and colonialism shape present-day realities.
Matthew Ely is a PhD candidate in the Higher Education program at Indiana University's School of Education. His scholarly interest in in experimental American colleges and their curricular history. He enjoys reading, watching baseball, and trying to keep up with his toddler daughter.
"Truly, this was my favorite class this semester. I looked forward to it each week and I wouldn't change a thing."
