University of British Columbia

This course utilizes an applied learning, team-based approach to examine and address food system sustainability challenges and opportunities on the UBC-Vancouver campus. Students apply skills and concepts derived from earlier coursework, experience, and areas of specialization to address contemporary challenges in an integrative, interdisciplinary setting. The central theme of this course is the envisioning, planning, implementation, and evaluation of projects aimed at enhancing the ecological, economic, and social sustainability of the campus food system. The course provides opportunities for students to analyze food-related academic literature and food system issues experienced in the UBC-Vancouver campus and broader regional and global contexts. Students complete a UBC Food System Project, by engaging with the UBC food system by acting as junior professional consultants with campus clients and community stakeholders with the aim of enhancing the sustainability of the campus food system in an integrated disciplinary setting.

This course offers a study of the basics principles of learning and the neural mechanisms underlying simple forms of learning. The course covers the topic learning in a variety of ways: theoretical analyses, experimental research using animals, experimental research using humans, applications of research to daily problems, behavioral approaches, cognitive approaches, and physiological approaches. The course consists of lectures and materials including assigned text, lecture notes, and readings posted on connect. The course examines different kinds of simple learning in a range of invertebrate and vertebrate organisms, a history of learning theory and an appreciation of the biological foundations of learning and memory, as well as how the simple kinds of learning we study can be applied to daily life. Students discuss topics including basic theories of non-associative learning, classical and operant conditioning, and experimental findings from behavioral and biological analyses with animals and humans.

This course is an introduction to metaphysics, the study of the most general and fundamental features of reality. This course discusses some of the central, traditional topics in contemporary analytic metaphysics such as existence, time, necessity, personal identity, the nature of physical reality, the mind/body problem, free will, and causation and action theory. Analytic philosophy in general, and metaphysics in particular, are rather technical and abstract disciplines, both in their substance and methodology. This course strives to uncover the fundamental insights and concerns behind the technicalities of the field, while appreciating the subtlety and sophistication of the philosophical arguments under examination. Course lectures use the readings as a guideline, and expand beyond them. The course examines topics moving from the more basic and general concerns to the more specific ones.

This course explores the principles of viticulture, enology, and wine microbiology and chemistry. It offers a study of the marketing, regulation, and classification of wines from selected regions of the world. This course examines the social, economic, and health aspects of wine consumption. Finally it discusses wine appreciation.

This course is an introduction to contemporary family forms and relations. The course explores the continuity, change, and diversity in intimate relationships and family life. The course utilizes sociological perspectives to understand families in transition, both in Canada and abroad, and in relation to other sociological areas.

This course offers a study of the role of the state and politics in economics. Topics include: the emergence of states; dictatorships; democracies; the affect of electoral institutions on policy outcomes; conflict and war; voting and political participation.