Coming to a University Near You

I just learned that the special honors seminar I had proposed for next semester has been approved. So I and a colleague in English will be teaching a seminar on Developing a Sense of Place. Should be fun. As I developed the course proposal, I got on the web to see what other universities have such classes and was pleased to see that a number do. Some are in humanities-related departments (architecture, visual arts, writing). A few were in environmental sciences type departments. Some were in Honors programs. During the the next semester, I'll let you know how the seminar comes along. The course project will be a mini-symposium at which students present a scholarly paper or creative writing or visual art about how sense of a particular place has informed their lives. I already am eager to see what they will have to show. The mini-symposium will be open to the public and coordinated with our annual Environmental Summit and an artifact of each presentation will be posted on the web. Speaking of presentations, as part of my casting about on the web for that course proposal, I found a TED talk on placemaking in an urban setting and pass it on: http://blog.ted.com/2007/04/20/james_howard_ku_1/#more