Netherlands

This course explores the intricate dynamics of ecosystems and the application of resource management strategies. Students engage in practical exercises and fieldwork, gaining hands-on experience with environmental measurement tools and real-world resource management scenarios. This course examines human dimensions behind managing forests, ranges, water, and fish/wildlife along with the ecological processes that enable these resources or cause difficulties in managing them. Participants are equipped with a comprehensive understanding of ecological systems, the skills required for responsible natural resource management, and a newfound understanding of the natural world.  Recommended pre-reqs include Introductory Biology, Geology, and Sustainable Development.

This course provides a map of contemporary approaches to the so-called separation of church and state, or political secularism, and enables them to use the relevant concepts and insights in analyses of societal issues concerning religious diversity. This course provides the theoretical and empirical knowledge to make sense of these academic debates and contemporary issues regarding the relation between states and religions. The course explores the concept of political secularism through multidisciplinary readings, especially anthropology, sociology, law, and political philosophy. Theory and concepts concerning political secularism are always be discussed by in depth readings of case studies, for example about native-Americans and religious freedom, Muslim sartorial practices and gender equality in France and Iran, or political secularism in postcolonial nations such as India and South Africa.

Discrimination, crime, marriage, fertility, education, or religion are all examples of key parts of our societies. The behavior of people and the design of institutions in these social contexts have major consequences for society (including policy and the economy as a whole). Economists claim that the economic approach is useful in explaining human behavior and social interactions in such settings and hence helps to better understand the functioning of societies. This in turn helps to design policies helping to achieve societal goals. This course analyzes different social phenomena through the lens of economists. It trains students to understand and analyze a wide range of social phenomena from an economic point of view and to investigate and interpret these issues empirically. In particular, students are given a thorough understanding of how social phenomena can be analyzed from an economic perspective and they get an introduction to econometric tools with which empirical claims about causality can be established. PREREQUISITES: Basic understanding of economic theory and quantitative methods, an advanced level of English.

This course focuses on Maxwell's Laws and provides a solid, modern introduction to classical electrodynamics. Emphasis is on understanding these foundations. There are applications, but they do not take center stage. Once students have understood the theory in its modern formulation, insights can be expanded both in the direction of fundamentals of quantum field theory and in the direction of practical applications to be derived from Maxwell’s laws in their conventional formulation. After completing this course students are able to: describe the principles of the theory of classical electromagnetism and understand its practical applications and start examining the fundamentals of quantum field theory. During the entire course, available class hours are devoted to teacher instruction, problem solving, and student presentations, in which students take turns to explain various aspects of the material. There are graded homework assignments (computational work) designed to reach an adequate level of quantitative ability. After midterms students choose a topic for an individual paper. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the ability to fully understand a fundamental issue in, or an application of, electrodynamics. Finally, there is a written exam, the purpose of which is to demonstrate basic knowledge and understanding of the essentials of the theory of electrodynamics. As a prerequisite students must have taken Calculus and Intro to Wave Phenomena in Nature. 

Museum Studies, sometimes called Museology, deals with the birth, development, and operation of the public museum as one of the key institutions of the modern world. Starting in the eighteenth century, museums became one of the instruments whereby nation-states created and democratized national pasts using a repertoire of images and objects that were displayed in purpose-built or adapted architecture (such as the British Museum and the Louvre). Musealization involves removing artworks and other objects from the original context of manufacture or use and re-installing them in a new order according to criteria such as chronology, school, genre, or theme. Since the inception of the public museum, ideas and practices of the exhibition (as well as storage, preservation, classification, and public education) have undergone continuous transformation. The course examines several approaches to key players – director, curator, patron, architect – through case studies, site and/or virtual visits, analyses, review-writing, and a practical exercise in curating. Part I departs from the concept of museum script to consider the agency of curatorship. Part 2 considers forms of agency exercised by modern patrons in public museums. Students research an aspect of curatorship for their term paper.

FQD633 is the first module of the online course on Product and Process Design. This first module focuses on the principles of consumer-oriented food product design. Group work is an essential part of this module. Deadlines are in place to ensure appropriate progress of the (group) work. The online course on Product and Process Design focuses on design aspects of food products from an integrated product and process perspective and aims at strengthening so-called T-shaped skills, i.e., the ability to tackle in-depth disciplinary technological problems in combination with the aptitude to deal with broad multi-disciplinary challenges. The online course on Product and Process Design is divided into four modules: FQD63303, FQD63403, FQD63503, and FQD63603.

This course combines knowledge from different disciplines of food science to study the effect of processing on product quality, in relation to innovation of food products, taking both a technological and a consumer perspective. The product quality is described by technological properties (e.g. chemical and physical properties). Examples include consistency, color, flavor, and appearance of the food. An introduction to sensory analysis is given, explaining the use of statistical computer programs to handle data sets from sensory analyses. In addition, the process of product innovation is analyzed in its societal context, with an emphasis on ethical issues. Moreover, the theory on chemical analysis of foods with means of chromatography techniques is given and practiced in lab-simulation tutorials. The course includes classroom lectures, (lab) tutorials, and sensory experiments. In the laboratory classes, groups produce an innovative food product starting from raw materials and compare its properties with those of an existing food product. This part of the course is also known as DIPP: Discipline Integrating Product Practical. Students perform consumer interviews on their raw materials and innovative food products. A scientific report is written on the experiments and assignments performed on the innovative food product. For this course, it assumed that students know the different food science disciplines: food chemistry, food physics, food microbiology, and food process engineering, including laboratory experience in these disciplines.