Open season for course scheduling has begun again, so why not slip a less traditional course into the regular schedule of major requirement after major requirement this year? Check out the true variety of what Ball State has to offer.
OPEN WATER SCUBA
CREDITS: 2
PRE-REQUISITES: successful completion of entry-level skills test
AVAILABILITY: Summer and Fall 2014
Just ten minutes off campus, students strapped with SCUBA gear learn to dive unassisted at Philips Outdoor Center’s sand and gravel quarry..
Carol Reed, instructor of physical education, leads the students enrolled in her AQUA 220 course.
In the class, students listen to lectures and apply their knowledge of diving to the quarry or the Lewellen Aquatic Center.
No only do students come away with two credit hours and a life long license to solo dive anywhere with deep enough water.
Reed estimates 1,000 students have glided through the course since it began.
She said the cost of taking the class can run into the $500 range, but the high price is worth it.
“It’s a recreational activity you can pursue your whole life and also have something to do on vacation,” Reed said. “Vacation for me is to go to a beautiful, warm place in the ocean and go diving.”
INTRODUCTION TO SPORT IN AMERICAN LIFE
CREDITS: 3
PRE-REQUISITES: none
AVAILABILITY: Fall, online only
With March comes debates about brackets and how someone’s favorite basketball team will surely beat another’s. But Ball State sports fans do not have to limit themselves to mundane “water cooler” talk.
Anthony Edmonds, a retired distinguished professor of history, teaches HIST 205, an online class on the relationship between America and its beloved sports.
Edmonds said the class is not just for history majors, but anyone who enjoys watching sports live and within their homes or, perhaps, actually participates in one.
He’s even had a student who took the class just so she could understand her boyfriend.
“I don’t think that’s intellectually primarily the reason you should take a sports course, but if it improved the relationship because of increased communication, then that’s fine with me,” he said.
Edmonds begins his class with a discussion of sports in colonial times and slowly makes his way into the 20th century, where he said many Americans consider sports a crucial aspect of their lives.
So crucial, he said, that having a basic knowledge of its influence could be essential to being a truly educated person.
“You can learn a lot about stuff like racisim, sexism, challenges, mobility and so on by studying sports,” he said.
FIELD OBSERVATION OF SEVERE LOCAL STORMS
CREDITS: 6
PRE-REQUISITES: Instructor’s permission
AVAILABILITY: Summer 2014
Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska.
Senior meteorology major Casey Symons rode in a van for about 450 miles each day throughout the Great Plains last summer. He pursued masses of glowering dark clouds and braved torrential rain and hail — all for six credits and the right to brag about being part of a small student group that participated in GEOG 490, Ball State’s storm chasing course.
David Call, an associate professor of geology, will take 12 students out of the classroom and into the storm this summer.
A few weeks during May and sometimes June are spent learning the nature of storms and forecasting basics of weather related observation and field work.
Call said every year varies. The location of the field study and the time spent training rely on the weather and the number of groups Call plans on leading.
He recommends students take a basic level geography or meteorology class before deciding to sign up, but the only official prerequisite for the course is Call’s permission.
He wants the help of students with an intense interest in severe weather.
“The people on the trip will tell you in the end the tornadoes are just icing on the cake. Just seeing the storms and the other awe-inspiring things we see weather-wise are enough to satisfy us,” he said.
The trip can cost up to $1,500 excluding the $300-$400 needed for food said Call.
“The students really grow and mature a lot as the trip goes on; they run things more and more themselves and I step back into more of an advising role,” he said. “That’s the best thing to learn — to do it yourself. Sometimes we make some mistakes that way, but the answers aren’t clean like they are in the book.”
HEALTH, SEXUALITY AND FAMILY LIFE
CREDITS: 3
PRE-REQUISITES: none
AVAILABILITY: Summer and Fall
Ashley Nakata, a junior aquatic biology and fisheries major still needed to fulfill her tier two natural science requirement. After scanning her options, she decided to take a class she didn’t know much about: HSC 261.
“I think that a lot of what we talk about in that class is stuff that people don’t really like to talk about. It’s kind of sensitive. And I thought, ‘Well that’s kind of interesting. I want to learn more about stuff like that’,” she said.
Nakata is taking Health, Sexuality and Family Life. She said its like sex education in high school, but its more extensive.
One of Nakata’s requirements for the course is a field trip assignment.
Some of her peers visited a gay bar or a strip club, but she said interviewing a counselor on subjects discussed in class, including information on love and relationships, also works.
“In a lot of my other classes, I look at the clock every five minutes and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh this class is going by so slow,’ But in that class I look and it’s almost over,” she said.
MYTHOLOGIES OF THE WORLD
CREDITS: 3
PRE-REQUISITES: none
AVAILABILITY: Fall and Summer
Stories of death, love and sacrifice.
Richard King, an assistant professor of classics, sees myths told in the ancient Greek, Babylonian and Roman cultures as tales for children, but as ways for students to understand social matters still important today.
In CC 205, King has students read myths and think about them in depth.
King said the classical stories studied in class can be serious at times, but also comical.
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