Innovative Courses
The Schiller Institute regularly expands our course offerings to respond to pressing societal challenges. Our courses cover a wide range of topics and specializations—bringing together the sciences, humanties and the arts to discover new knowledge to serve the common good.
The Schiller Institute co-sponors the Global Public Health and the Common Good Major and Minor. Visit the CSON site for details.
This course is a one-credit professional development course featuring meetings with leaders engaged in both for-profit and social entrepreneurship, and whose organizations are aligned with the Schiller Institute's mission to serve the common good, focusing on our three core areas: energy, environment, and health.This course offers opportunities for students in any Boston College major to develop an understanding of entrepreneurship, and skills in communication, business, and networking while having unique opportunities to connect with leaders and innovators working on the cutting-edge of these fields.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Describe the entrepreneurial mindset and the student’s relationship to it.
- Assess an entrepreneurial organization’s history and structure with respect to the steps in the entrepreneurial process.
- Communicate effectively with entrepreneurs and about entrepreneurship.
Thursdays, 3:00-4:30pm in 245 Beacon Street, room 215
As part of the Schiller Institute's leadership of the BC@UNCOP programming, delegation selection, and administration, we offer a one-credit fall semester course that provides an academic overview of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP) from a historical, political, and social perspective.
The course is required for student members of BC’s official delegation traveling to the Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, and open to other interested students through departmental permission.
The fall 2024 version of this course will be facilitated by the two faculty co-leads for the COP29 delegation along with guest faculty.
Fridays, 12-1:30pm in 245 Beacon Street, room 230
The Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society works to serve the common good by developing capacity for scholars to work across disciplines. Being able to navigate across boundaries such as disciplines is a crucial 21st century skill to solve the world's most daunting problems. If we are to truly work for the common good, we need to learn how to work in interdisciplinary teams to address seemingly impossible challenges, but we also need to have the humility to learn from, listen to, and work within communities.
In spring 2025, students selected for this course sequence will take a 2-credit course that meets weekly with two central components: a foundational piece that provides students with the tools they need to work thoughtfully and collaboratively with communities beyond their own as well as a project-oriented component that prepares students with the skills and knowledge they need for the project they’ll be working on.
In the foundational component, students will develop not only the ability to work in cross-disciplinary teams, but also the ability and understanding to deeply engage with and work within a community. They will learn about themselves and their relation to others; global inequality, teamwork, leadership, and project management. For the project-based component, we offer two international project options (described below) and provide relevant coursework to prepare students to generate impactful project results. This immersive blend of community engagement and project-based skill-building will help students be for and with others as they learn to build community and work together.
In summer 2025, students will participate in one of two project options:
- Collaborating with public service charity Hogar de Cristo (HdC) to design functional community spaces and programming for and with people with mental disabilities/conditions in Santiago, Chile. The summer component requires three weeks in Santiago, Chile.
- Collaborating with students and faculty from State University of Zanzibar (SUZA) to create learning modules to better position Zanzibaris to benefit from economic development opportunities in the context of climate change. The summer component will be stateside from Boston College.
Through this application process, a small interdisciplinary group of up to 8 students will be selected for each project. All non-graduating undergraduates are eligible to apply for this course. Need-based financial aid is available.
For priority consideration, apply by midnight on Tuesday November 5. Final deadline is midnight November 12.
During the Spring 2025 semester, students selected for this project will learn about how mental disabilities and conditions are treated in Chile, conduct research on the latest interventions (including practices in the United States), and combine insights to generate ideas for projects that can help provide therapeutic benefits to these populations. The group will also meet with representatives from HdC throughout the semester, as well as with the people they serve, to collaboratively conceptualize how to utilize the outdoor space available in ways that meet the occupants’ needs, such as a space for gardening by the supported population.
During the summer, students will explore the questions: What do Hogar de Cristo’s occupants want to do with the space? Based on their research and understanding of the context, what kinds of projects are likely to provide some therapeutic benefits? How can the transformed space encourage residents to use their free time in ways that bring them meaning and purpose? How to best ensure that residents will continue to feel connected to and utilize the space once our group leaves?
The final project will be a plan, to be delivered to Hogar de Cristo in September 2025 for utilization of the space. Components of the plan could include: materials needed, design of the physical space, an outline of training materials, projected costs and staffing needs, timeline of tasks needed to complete the project, and/or any other materials that would help HdC with plan implementation.
The overall goal is to help meet community-identified needs by helping HdC and those they serve transform their space in a way that gives occupants a sense of ownership, provides therapeutic and aesthetic benefits, and offers comfort and a sense of purpose to their community members.
Last year, students from the 2024 offering of this course, led by Dr. Caity Bolton in collaboration with two of our in-country community partners, the State University of Zanzibar (SUZA) and Tanzania’s Blue Economy Ministry, conducted in-country ethnographic research. Through their research, the team found that creating a series of educational modules would help address challenges facing Zanzibaris, namely their comparatively low direct involvement in Zanzibar’s booming tourism economy and intercultural tensions between locals and tourists.
Building on their work, students selected for this project will work stateside from Boston College with SUZA faculty and students to develop educational materials to help Zanzibaris’ increase social media, marketing, and financial literacy as well as enhance their negotiation skills, thus better positioning them to benefit from tourism’s economic development opportunities, particularly in the context of climate change. Additionally, the team will create materials aimed at providing tourists information about Zanzibari culture to help ease tensions arising from cultural differences and misunderstandings.
During the spring 2025, students will learn about Zanzibari culture as well as the ethnographic research conducted by the 2024 team. They will research social media, marketing, financial literacy, and negotiations as well as best practices in creating effective, culturally-appropriate educational modules.
During summer 2025, Professor Mary Khatib and students from SUZA will come to Boston to work collaboratively with our interdisciplinary team to develop educational modules and materials aimed at increasing skills and knowledge that will better situate Zanzibaris to benefit from economic opportunities created by the islands’ increasing tourism as well as informing tourists about Zanzibari culture to mitigate intercultural strain.
The final deliverables will be a series of educational modules for Zanzibaris and informational materials for tourists as well as a plan for disseminating the resources to the intended audiences to be finalized by the end of September 2025.
Enrollment and active participation in both semesters is required. The spring semester (2 credits) includes coursework led by Vaughn Thornton with a series of guest speakers representing different disciplines at Boston College. Students will enroll in SCHI3001 Working For and With Communities: Community Engaged and Project Based Learning for the Common Good, which meets on Wednesdays from 4:00-5:45 PM.
The summer semester (1 credit) involves either an immersive 3-week experiential learning opportunity in Chile or three weeks collaborating with a team of students and faculty from the State University of Zanzibar (SUZA) who will come to Boston for this project. Students will enroll in SCHI3002.
Students are expected to show up to class prepared having carefully read required readings and other materials to actively engage with course faculty and fellow classmates. During the summer immersion the class will act as a team engaging with and learning from the communities with whom they are working and collaborating on the project that will be discussed through the spring semester. In addition to class participation, students will be expected to regularly record their thoughts in a journal through the two semesters, complete an individual term paper, and complete a group presentation.
Spring: Wednesdays, 4 - 5:45pm
Summer Immersive for Chile Project: May 24 - June 14, 2025 (tentative)
Summer Immersive for Zanzibar Project: July 27 - August 16, 2025 (tentative)
This course examines the relationship between health and the environment, focusing on how pollution, climate change, and ecosystem changes influence human health. Students will learn how these environmental factors impact public health and explore the roles of public response, policy, and technology in reducing health risks. The course is structured around three main components: Pollution and Health, Climate Change and Health, and Ecosystem Changes and Health. Through an interdisciplinary approach, students will engage with scientific research, real-world examples, and policy discussions to develop a comprehensive understanding of the links between health and the environment and address complex environmental health challenges.
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Analyze the health impacts of pollution, climate change, and ecosystem changes.
- Evaluate the eRectiveness of policies and technologies in addressing environmentalhealth issues.
- Apply interdisciplinary approaches to solving complex health and environmentalchallenges.
- Communicate evidence-based insights on environmental health issues to variousstakeholders.
- Critically assess current and future trends in environmental health.
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:30-2:45pm in 245 Beacon Street, room 230