Search for Summer 2025 Term Courses

The topic of Human Rights is a recently invented discourse, and one that has contributed to many positive changes around the globe since 1948. Even so, definitions, responsibilities, and the cross-cultural context of these “rights” remain a source of debate and accusation as a great many humans in the world continue to suffer. This course examines the concept of Human Rights critically, with an eye for cross-cultural variation, and with a particular focus on rights that are health-related including climate change, human environments, and human rights and health. A diversity of students will benefit from the lectures, case studies, and dialogues in this seminar, but a goal of the course is to prepare students for careful inquiry to and application of this powerful policy idea for both international and local settings. In the Taos campus version of this course, we engage heavily in applying anthropological frameworks and materials in New Mexico through various fieldtrips focusing specifically on engineering and human health in Taos and Northern New Mexico.

This course examines Native American, Spanish, and Anglo arts and cultures of the American Southwest between 100 CE and the 21st century. It considers the effects of ethnicity, gender, and community identity on regional art traditions and places artworks within their material, religious, political, and economic contexts. Astronomical alignments, water, earth and sky, spirits and saints, the living and their ancestors—these are among the themes in the art of the region. Emphasis is placed on careful seeing, individual analysis and reflection, and collaborative learning. The course is designed for SMU-in-Taos. Many class days include field trips or interactive projects. Films, readings, and PowerPoint slide talks set the stage for visits to artists’ studios, archaeological sites, pueblos, churches, and museums. Hands-on art projects are simple and require no previous art experience to succeed. They will help you understand the technical and aesthetic qualities of artworks we study in this class. Watch Course Video

The course is an introduction to observational drawing. It is designed to expose students to various techniques and approaches relevant to the discipline. Moreover, it seeks to orchestrate encounters whereby students gain direct understanding of the act of perceiving and methods for recording those perceptions. Drawing from observation is an exercise in learning to see— and what better place to “learn to see” than Northern New Mexico! The landscape and history of Taos (and surrounding areas) offer an abundance of resources, both natural and cultural, to augment the content of the course. The indigenous inhabitants, Spanish Colonial settlers, Taos Society of Artists, and figures like Agnes Martin, Ken Price, and Dennis Hopper all responded to the immensity and beauty of Taos’s landscape, and in turn contributed to its rich and enduring history as an arts destination. Class work will be supplemented with field trips outside assignments, and readings.

This non-major introductory biology course with a special focus on aquatic biology studies the aquatic systems of the American Southwest, emphasizing the unique challenges and adaptations of life in semi-arid environments prone to drastic seasonal and occasional catastrophic (e.g., wildfire) disruptions. The SMU-in-Taos campus serves as an ideal hub for this course by providing direct access to study these specific environments. Students benefit from hands-on field experiences, allowing them to conduct fieldwork, collect data, and directly observe the region's aquatic biodiversity, thus deepening their understanding of the ecological principles discussed in the course. Taos' geographical location and the richness of its surrounding aquatic environments serve as a living laboratory, enabling students to apply theoretical knowledge to real-world settings.

Discusses information technology and information resources for business. Builds spreadsheet proficiencies focusing on the use of spreadsheets for business data analysis and reporting. Introduces database concepts along with tools and skills required to explore, analyze, extract, aggregate and report data. Restricted to Cox majors only.

Counts as an Honors course. Focuses on contemporary issues facing the American Southwest, including social problems that exist within the contexts of particular groups, communities, cultures, and societies. Explores sociological issues relating to the environment, the media, poverty, immigration, food insecurity, education, crime, economic development, and health, among others. Community engagement will allow us expiore the major problems facing these Taos area communities as well as some possible solutions to the problems facing them.

Counts as an Honors course. This interdisciplinary course explores the history of New Mexico, from the pre-contact era to the present. In the first half of the class, we will consider New Mexico’s successive and overlapping waves of human settlement, from Pueblo Indians, to the Spanish Empire, the Mexican Republic, and the United States, with particular attention to the complex relationships between Native peoples, Hispanos, and Anglo-Americans. Then we will turn to a handful of key topics that continue to define the so-called Land of Enchantment even today: religion and spirituality; the natural world (particularly New Mexico’s scarce water resources); and its enduring cultural symbolism as reflected in literature and film.

Counts as an Honors course and a Business Elective. This course will show students how to leverage fundamental marketing frameworks and apply them to the nuances related to social impact marketing. In this course, the term “sustainability” will cover both Planet and People related issues (i.e. environmental as well as social issues), as it is known that these are many times inter-related. In the beautiful natural environment of Taos, New Mexico, students will have the chance to engage with 4 organizations that have either or both an environmental and social mission. After our site visits, students will be able to choose which of the 4 organizations they want to focus on for the duration of the course. Watch Course Video

Moral problems and ethical dilemmas surround us: in our schools and workplaces, in our homes and families, and in the news and politics. In this course, we’ll begin to reflect on ethical problems in a systematic and thorough way. We’ll learn some tools for helping us do this (ethical theories) and use these to grapple with some important contemporary issues we’re faced with, focusing in particular on environmental ethics and Native American approaches to ethics to take advantage of the opportunities to explore nature, sustainability, and Indigenous history in Taos.

Mountain Sports is a class where students will have the opportunity to participate in a wide range of activities such as hiking, rafting, rock climbing, and fly-fishing. Students will have the opportunity to apply the five components of health related fitness to all of the activities that they pursue.

WRTR 1313 takes as its mission the development and refinement of critical reasoning skills, skills that will allow us to both analyze and create arguments that adhere to time-honored principles of validity, persuasion, and soundness. Throughout the term we will hone our abilities to distinguish among reasonable claims, questionable assertions, and utter nonsense. We will also develop skills that allow us to create rational coherence in a world in which we are bombarded daily by competing truth claims, contrary “facts,” false information, and “gut-based” opinion, and in which time-honored techniques of rational discourse are under assault. We will explore techniques to forge credible, truth-based arguments and examine the social forces that undermine the reasonable exploration of issues, both personal and public.       

A survey of the theoretical, practical, and ethical issues associated with creative thinking and making. Examines strategies for promoting creativity and the creative thinker’s role in shaping culture. As a special “Taos Edition” of this course, taught in the beautiful and culturally-rich American Southwest, our exploration of creativity will feature extended discussions of the ways in which beauty plays a special role in our understanding of art and creativity with an emphasis on Georgia O’Keeffe who lived and worked for many years in the high-desert landscape surrounding Taos. The course will feature at least two field trips that takes full advantage of the unique opportunities offered by our learning environment. This course is devoted to understanding the mysterious nature of creativity as both art and science. Considerations from philosophy, ethics, biology, sociology, economics and the fine arts will all be brought to bear on our study of this elusive concept, cultiminating in an exploration of creativity as it takes shape in the realm of advertising - from ideation to execution, as well as in organizational dynamics.

This course explores the contributions of anthropology to understanding the experience of psychological phenomenon and mind across cultures. It will examine anthropological theories about the interplay of culture, mind and self in various Western and non-Western societies. Child development, cognition, emotion, morality, altered states, “brain sciences” and mental health and illness are analyzed from a cross-cultural perspective. Working through a full range of classic and modern works in medical and psychological anthropology, we debate the ways that social context—and local notions of what is “good” that are upheld in these contexts—impact one’s everyday life and one’s experience of one’s own mind, and with what consequences. It is important to have a comparative perspective in psychological anthropology, and we will have readings and films from Africa, South America, Oceania, East Asia, South Asia, Europe, and the U.S. As this course is taking place in Taos, we will spend some time focusing on traditional ways of promoting mental health in the Southwest, including the vision quests of the Pueblo people and the adolescent initiation rites of the Apache. The course will also draw students’ attention to some of the mental health challenges facing this region, including high rates of opioid abuse, with an eye toward the ways that substance abuse is rooted in historical trauma, such as land loss, for Hispanos and Native Americans in the region.

An overview of the ecology, evolution, and identification of plants and animals of the Southwest region. The course will heavily rely on the wildlife around Taos as a teaching tool. You will go on 2 hikes, learn to identify plants and animals, and give two presentations on evolution and wildlife. An introduction to the major concepts of biological thought for the nonscience major. Learn about the geology and ecology of the Southwest, the role human plays in conservation and sustainability of our planet, and the major events that took place in the evolution of life. BIOL 1300 is not open to students with prior credit in BIOL 1301 or BIOL 1401.

In this course, students will learn the fundamentals of experimentation research for the purposes of designing novel measurement studies for drone communications. Students will also learn about the unique problems that are facing wireless communications when designed for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which has the challenges of Doppler effects induced by high levels of mobility, limited power consumption, and highly-restrictive load capabilities. In the advanced version of the course (7393), students take on leadership roles with the labs and the projects and are expected to lead efforts to publications in top-tier conferences with measurement results. Watch Course Video

“Technologies and Our Society” (TAOS) examines the development and lasting impact oftechnological change in the contexts of US and global societies and cultures. The courseintroduces students to nine (9) networks essential to contemporary life while encouraging them to think critically about the challenges involved in revisioning/reforming these systems to advance sustainable development, environmental preservation, and socio-economic equity, among other concerns. Reading (and viewing) assignments along with course discussions are augmented by visits to select local sites giving students opportunities to examine, evaluate, and debate technological “progress” in juxtaposition with the physical environments and lived realities in which these technological networks operate today. Watch Course Video

Mountain Sports is a class where students will have the opportunity to participate in a wide range of activities such as hiking, rafting, rock climbing, and fly-fishing. Students will have the opportunity to apply the five components of health related fitness to all of the activities that they pursue.

Addresses issues that pertain to how individuals adjust to various developmental, social, and cultural challenges across their lifespan and environments. Throughout life one is faced with many challenges whether that is learning how to walk and talk, developing one’s own identity, getting through school, starting and keeping friendships and romantic relationships, establishing a successful career, maintaining mental and physical health, or dealing with the impact of a global pandemic. Why do some individuals navigate these challenges seemingly easily while others struggle? Can we predict how successful people will be? What role did early life experience play in navigating such challenges? By taking a scientific look at the challenges that have shaped your life, and an empirical examination of individual differences and their association with life challenges, this course will provide you with the tools to both better understand your life challenges and apply what you have learned to everyday life. Through a combination of lectures, discussions, papers and presentations, and experiential learning in a field trip, this class will highlight the major theoretical perspectives and contemporary research findings regarding individual differences and how they are related to challenges throughout the lifespan. We will incorporate research and theory from Clinical Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Social Psychology, and Personality Psychology. Broadly speaking the course is split into two sections. The first section of the course will focus on individual differences and challenges during childhood and adolescences that have shaped your development in life up to this point. The second section will focus on adulthood and predicting challenges one might encounter into the future. As a whole, this class will push you to think critically about the application of psychological science to challenges of everyday life. The format of this course as an interim course will allow for in-depth discussions, application, and application of psychological concepts to a variety of life experiences and challenges.

Counts as an Honors course. First, the course seeks to provide you with an introduction to a wide variety of religious traditions, communities and practices within the context of globalization. Topics we will cover include the rise of religion as an academic subject in the age of modernity, religion as it relates to colonialism and national identities, religious expression in the media and in popular culture, and changing religious practices and expressions in the light of globalization and immigration. Second, this course aims to introduce you to several approaches to the academic study of religion. Throughout the course we will explore the ways that people have and do investigate religious histories, practices and people. Finally, this course is designed to build your skills in the analysis of complex argumentation and your abilities to discuss matters critically, curiously, and civically. Watch Course Video

Explores the nonprofit sector’s role in addressing myriad social problems. Students examine issues such as poverty, domestic violence, health care, and the aging population. Traditional lectures on campus introduce concepts relating to the social issue being explored and the specific ways in which the nonprofit sector is working to mitigate the problems. Includes fieldtrips to local nonprofit agencies to tour facilities and meet with administrators, volunteers, and clients who are working to address the social problems discussed in class.

Counts as an Honors course. This interdisciplinary and experiential course examines the intersections of food and identity in the Southwest. Through literary and scholarly texts, film, fine arts, pop culture, and experiences, students explore topics such as heritage and tradition, cultural contact and exchange, conquest, resistance and revolution, issues of gender, and responses to modernity and change in the so-called “American Southwest.” Examines how technology (including agriculture, cooking technology, commercial farming, global trade networks, and social media) impacts the production, consumption, distribution, dynamics of power, and systems of meaning of food and eating in this region. Watch Course Video

Counts as an Honors course. This course examines the chronology of American history through an interdisciplinary lens with the question of “who is an American” as a thematic focus. Students learn about important moments in American history, specifically in New Mexico and the Southwest. They begin to understand the basic chronology of the country, as well as how key events were understood and experienced by some of the country’s most creative and probing minds. The organizing theme of who is an American is an important examination of when and where the human rights of the country’s inhabitants have been respected–or not respected–over the decades. Open to all students. Watch Course Video

This nationally recognized award-winning course is experientially based. Most projects are developed in collaboration while in class. Regardless of whether you want to be an entrepreneur or not, you will professionally benefit from this class. Entrepreneurial skills make you more valuable as an employee and will also enable you to found an new organization—whether for-profit, nonprofit, social, corporate, arts, or creative in nature. Topics include branding, creativity as the keystone of entrepreneurship, crowdfunding, event-based fundraising, leveraging inherent assets, website creation, pitching angel investors and venture capitalists, acting entrepreneurially within existing organizations, navigating startup processes, and other critical entrepreneurship topics.

Examine contemporary and real-life challenges in business ethics & corporate social responsibility in the context of New Mexico and the legacy of colonialism that has impacted Native Americans. Build and hone your ability to understand, adapt to, and evaluate the current challenges in business ethics and CSR. Grow in your personal awareness of your own ethics and will develop an understanding of how to create real social impact through the variety of tools that will be at your disposal as you enter the business world. Develops managerial decision-making and stakeholder analysis through a study of ethical dilemmas in contemporary business. Topics include whistle blowing, corruption, bribery, human rights, crisis management, role of corporate boards, lobbying, philanthropy, externalities, and sustainability.

Covers research and theory in the psychology of interpersonal conflict, as well as mechanisms for resolving, managing, or avoiding conflict. Emphasized domains are alternative dispute resolution, close relationships, and workplace and international conflict. Learn how to identify conflict styles and generate predictions from those styles about conflict and conflict resolution, as well as how to diagnose a conflict and provide recommendations for resolution.

Examine how personal mindsets, choices, behaviors, and outcomes impact their lives, other people’s lives, and their communities. Through coursework grounded in the Assets-Based Community Development Model, students are challenged to think critically about the effect of values, beliefs, and identities on how they engage with others and their communities at large. In a term-long community engagement project, students learn about themselves and others, apply class content to a community need, and reflect on the experience through a process that can benefit them throughout their lives.

The topic of Human Rights is a recently invented discourse, and one that has contributed to many positive changes around the globe since 1948. Even so, definitions, responsibilities, and the cross-cultural context of these “rights” remain a source of debate and accusation as a great many humans in the world continue to suffer. This course examines the concept of Human Rights critically, with an eye for cross-cultural variation, and with a particular focus on rights that are health-related including climate change, human environments, and human rights and health. A diversity of students will benefit from the lectures, case studies, and dialogues in this seminar, but a goal of the course is to prepare students for careful inquiry to and application of this powerful policy idea for both international and local settings. In the Taos campus version of this course, we engage heavily in applying anthropological frameworks and materials in New Mexico through various fieldtrips focusing specifically on engineering and human health in Taos and Northern New Mexico.

This course examines the human body’s responses to acute exercise and adaptations to exercise training. A systemic approach is employed to identify the adaptations of specific organ systems to exercise. Additional topics include: exercise as medicine, exercise at altitude, identifying barriers to daily physical activity and strategies to overcome them.

The overall goal of this course is to introduce undergraduate students to current societal issues around public health nutrition. This course examines the nature of poverty, food security and hunger at the community, regional, or national level. The Taos campus allows for APSM 3360 students to become embedded in the community and assist local farmers with harvesting and planting. Nutrition and Population Health students will also work with the local schools in the Farm-to-School lunch program and after school program. Lastly, the Taos campus allows for my students will also serve at the local food pantry alongside community members to hand out bags of food to individuals in need. Introduces current societal issues concerning public health nutrition and examines the nature of poverty, food security, and hunger at the community, regional, and national levels. Emphasis is placed on personal experience via community engagement, the applicability of cutting-edge research on creating effective national policies, and advocacy campaigns for low-income Americans. Finally, this course reviews existing local and national programs and policies, including strengths, weaknesses, and areas for modification or new interventions.

Renowned for its natural beauty and deep artistic heritage, Taos has long been a haven for artists, offering an environment that encourages creativity and a profound connection to the landscape. This setting provides an engaging geographical context for Introduction to Drawing, which I have tailored my syllabus around, encouraging students to directly engage with the landscape and culture of the area. The rich history of art-making in Taos aligns with my goal of immersing students in a place-based experiential learning, allowing them to explore fundamental drawing techniques while drawing inspiration from their surroundings. By incorporating field trips to places like the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and Ghost Ranch, students will be exposed to the interdisciplinary themes of art, ecology, and memory, encouraging them to explore how their own work can respond to the natural world and artistic legacy of the region. These themes will be integrated through readings, discussions, and projects that challenge students to consider how art can reflect and engage with the broader cultural and environmental context of the region. SMU-in-Taos offers a distinctive experiential learning environment where students can immerse themselves in the practice of observational drawing, using the local architecture, ecology, and cultural landmarks as their subjects. This blend of natural and artistic heritage provides an unparalleled backdrop for fostering artistic growth and represents a unique and powerful experience within their education.

This course examines Native American, Spanish, and Anglo arts and cultures of the American Southwest between 100 CE and the 21st century. It considers the effects of ethnicity, gender, and community identity on regional art traditions and places artworks within their material, religious, political, and economic contexts. Astronomical alignments, water, earth and sky, spirits and saints, the living and their ancestors—these are among the themes in the art of the region. Emphasis is placed on careful seeing, individual analysis and reflection, and collaborative learning. The course is designed for SMU-in-Taos. Many class days include field trips or interactive projects. Films, readings, and PowerPoint slide talks set the stage for visits to artists’ studios, archaeological sites, pueblos, churches, and museums. Hands-on art projects are simple and require no previous art experience to succeed. They will help you understand the technical and aesthetic qualities of artworks we study in this class. Watch Course Video

Provides a first introduction to the exciting field of data science using applications and case studies from various domains (e.g., social media, marketing, sociology, engineering, digital humanities). Introduces data-centric thinking, including a discussion of how data is acquired, managed, manipulated, visualized, and used, to support problem-solving. The fundamental practical skills necessary are taught in class, and each step is illustrated with small examples. Tools presented in this course include SQL and Excel, along with other state-of-the-art tools. No prior knowledge of statistics, math, or programming is necessary.

An introduction to principles and concepts of operations management with an emphasis on problem solving for common business analytics models. Topics include forecasting, product and service design, reliability, strategic capacity planning for products and services, optimization (in particular linear programming, sensitivity analysis, and transportation problems), decision analysis, computer simulation, supply chain management, inventory, scheduling, and project management. Coursework exposes students to quantitative business applications and includes problem solving and case assignments from a wide range of functional areas in business. For the experiential learning part, we will have a field trip to Taos Bakes to observe the production process of bars, discuss how strategy affect production and planning.

This interdisciplinary course explores the history of New Mexico, from the pre-contact era to the present. In the first half of the class, we will consider New Mexico’s successive and overlapping waves of human settlement, from Pueblo Indians, to the Spanish Empire, the Mexican Republic, and the United States, with particular attention to the complex relationships between Native peoples, Hispanos, and Anglo-Americans. Then we will turn to a handful of key topics that continue to define the so-called Land of Enchantment even today: religion and spirituality; the natural world (particularly New Mexico’s scarce water resources); and its enduring cultural symbolism as reflected in literature and film.

Being different from most mathematical courses, Math 1309 Introduction to Calculus for Business and Social Science deliveries mathematics under the practical background of business and social studies. Instead of using the passive lecturing style for most mathematical courses, this proposed course requires frequent interaction between students and the instructors, as well as experience outside classroom. This twelve 4-hour-per-day class schedule in August term at SMU-in-Taos is particularly suitable for the required commitment from both students and faculty. The instructor will delivery two-hour interactive lecture every day and use the remained two hours for students to have a field trip, meet guest lecturers from broader mathematical and business community, work on assignments, group discussion, and group projects with faculty’s availability to provide timely help and guidance. SMU-in-Taos is geographically near the Los Alamos National Lab and connection between these two institutes will largely benefit the participating students. It is planned that students and faculty will visit the Lab once and a data scientist or numerical analyst from the Lab will be invited to give a machine learning related lecture, followed by a group discussion at SMU-in-Taos. In the Taos-based projects assigned in this course, students are divided into groups of 3-4 to conduct projects involving mathematical modeling and data analysis for Taos in the categories of Demographics, Economic Evolvement, Geography and Climate, Education, Art and History, etc. These projects utilize the mathematical skills learned in this course to study and understand Taos horizontally and vertically, exposing Taos and SMU-in-Taos to the greater community of business and social science.

Advances in technology are raising many ethical issues that require serious considerations. After a brief introduction to ethics, we will discuss several ethical issues surrounding the rapid development and emergence of new and powerful technologies. Topics include: the environment and sustainability, automation, artificial intelligence, and the impact of the internet & social media on our lives and our democracy.

Mountain Sports is a class where students will have the opportunity to participate in a wide range of activities such as hiking, rafting, rock climbing, and fly-fishing. Students will have the opportunity to apply the five components of health related fitness to all of the activities that they pursue.