Sociology

This course fosters students' understanding of the fast-emerging trans-national English-speaking culture by exploring such socio-linguistic themes as language and gender, language and race as well as cultural diversity. It provides students with skills needed to make them into international citizens and leaders in today's global society. This course introduces how English has become a global language, what changes and variations English has come through, and what issues such changes have generated. The English language is playing a pivotal role as an important tool to communicate in today’s globalized world. As it spreads out throughout the world, linguistic changes have appeared in different varieties of English and the new varieties are received differently in different parts of the world. Students learn about linguistic descriptions of the new varieties of English, attitudes towards New Englishes, and issues related to learning and teaching of the English language. In addition, students take a peek at what
is happening to languages whose speakers are decreasing in numbers (as opposed to English whose number of speakers is increasing).

This course reviews organizations and workplaces with a focus on how to enhance relationships with the organizations. Organization Theory is a branch of social sciences that is particularly interested in the why, how, and when multiple individuals join efforts to reach a common goal. It is a multidisciplinary subject drawing from disciplines such as arts and humanities, educational sciences, psychology, evolutionary biology, economics, and politics. These multiple lenses through which we view organizations make Organization Theory a fascinating and relevant topic to explore and examine at any stage of your study program. The main topics covered in this course are organization-environment relations, organizational design types and culture, leadership development, HRM and well-being, and managing diversity and inclusion at work.

Since the industrial revolution, the global population has flowed extensively and rapidly into the cities, and more than half of the world's population has lived in cities today, and the population of more than 10 million megalopolises is growing. The various aspects of urban life have already constituted an important collective experience of contemporary human life. This course focuses on the contemporary 21th century Taiwan metropolis that brings together a large number of people, goods, money and information, representing the possibility of various development imagination. This course objective is to analyze the issues of urbanization as a large number of people and objects coexist at the same time. These issues include questions of infrastructure, transport network, land use, public safety, class differences, multicultural and even biodiversity planning and design issues. Issues of city governance and growth constitute a major challenge which this course attempts to provide practical solutions for. Simultaneously, this large number of people, the aggregation of things, also lead to the expansion of risk, how the contemporary city of extreme weather and man-made disaster is not only an unavoidable subject but also a threat. There is also a complication of a gradual increase in health care needs as the consequences of the large migration into cities. Throughout this semester students will analyze, research, discuss and draft up proposals to these urbanization issues found in Taipei, Taiwan. By the end of the course, students will have completed proposals to the Taiwanese government that address these socials issues and will post physical copies of their proposals in the main lobby of Taipei City Hall.