Project Renaissance

Stephen E. DeLong, Director
Professor of Geology (Collins Fellow)

Project Renaissance is a year-long living/learning program for first-year students at the University at Albany. Participating students live together in shared residence halls and take team-taught or linked, interdisciplinary courses that typically satisfy 12 credits of General Education requirements (6 credits per semester), and also fulfill the lower-level writing intensive requirement.

Students must register for six credits each semester (three credits lecture and three credits discussion), with the first semester prerequisite for the second; six credits may be awarded to students who complete the first semester but opt not to continue in the second semester.

Each of the integrated, full-year programs of courses examine, through an interdisciplinary approach, the varying manifestations of human identity expressed in or resulting from literature, philosophy, religion, arts, and the development of science and technology.

Other features of the program include the use of contemporary technology for communication and research, and a community service experience.

Project Renaissance has special pre-professional sections for students interested in:

medicine and biology,
history and law, and
economics and business.

Students in these special sections must take one Project Renaissance course (3 credits) that is linked to a regular course (3 credits) within their major each semester of their first year.

Course configurations and thematic focuses may vary year by year. For example:

• how human identity or the "self" is understood in relation to groups, cultures, and institutions;

• human identity in relation to issues of racial and ethnic diversity and gender difference and also cultural definitions of the individual in relation to nature;

• the formation of traditional concepts and challenges to them from early history through the early modern period; and

• in the context of the last two centuries, the impact contemporary academic disciplines, especially the natural and social sciences, have had on the way we regard our humanity, our function in society and our place in the world.

Courses

Note: within each group of four Project Renaissance courses a student will take during the year program, one course will be designated as meeting the Writing Intensive requirement. This usually occurs in the spring semester.

U Uni 151 Human Identity and Technology I (3)
General Education: HA
Brings writing, language, literature, and the arts to bear on issues of human identity as the "self" is understood in relation to groups, culture, and institutions.

U Uni 152 Human Identity and Technology I (3)
General Education: SS
Explores the questions of how individual identity is understood in relation to groups, cultures, and institutions and how that understanding is produced through various technologies.

U Uni 153 Human Identity and Technology II (3)
General Education: HD
Explores human identity as it relates to issues of racial and ethnic diversity and gender-related concerns in the United States; explores as well how human identity is related to sociopolitical concerns and their aesthetic representations.

U Uni 154 Human Identity and Technology II (3)
General Education: NS
Examines cultural definitions of the individual in relation to nature; questions of the origin of life and the fate of Homo sapiens will be explored, along with study of the environment.

U Uni 155 Human Identity and Technology I (3)
General Education: CHP
Examines how writing, literature, the arts and religion have represented the changing manifestations of our understanding of human identity.

U Uni 156 Human Identity and Technology I (3)
General Education: HA
Explores the historical development of the concept of human identity from prehistory through the eighteenth century.

U Uni 157 Human Identity and Technology II (3)
General Education: SS
Examines contemporary approaches to issues of human identity, particularly as it relates to society.

U Uni 158 Human Identity and Technology II (3)
General Education: NS
Explores contemporary understandings of human identify from Darwinian evolution through contemporary genetics.

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