UNXD 3350 (W 12:30-2:30)

Negotiation affects all of our lives. We constantly strive in so many daily situations to secure agreements or cooperation or coordinated conduct with others that benefit our own interests.  This course introduces students to the structural theories and the practical applications of negotiation, and, with realistic simulations, explores the behavior of individuals and organizations in competing situations.

Through a series of negotiation exercises, lectures, and class discussions, students will come to understand negotiation theory and practice negotiation skills that will be useful for a lifetime.  Simulation exercises employ hypothetical situations in which students buy/sell a used car, agree on the various terms of a new job, negotiate the terms of a new business venture, and buy/sell a house, among others. Simulations give students an opportunity to develop and try their negotiating skills in a safe environment with continuing feedback from the professor and their classmates.

Feedback and self-reflection are critical to the success of experiential learning.  Student journals, recording their analysis and impressions of each negotiating simulation, are recommended but not required.

Instructor: Andrew Caffey

UNXD 3357 (M 6:30-8:30)

“You can run, but you can’t hide.” What boxer Joe Louis is reported to have said about his ring opponents could also be said about you and ethical challenges.  You can run from them, but you can’t hide from them.  They will confront you in your personal life and in your professional life. Indeed, in all likelihood, they already have.

Leadership or ethics? Leadership and ethics?  Some people think you have to choose between the two.  The premise of this course is that leadership and ethics are two sides of the same coin. The ideal is ethical leadership.  It’s not only ideal, but it’s possible (though not always easy) to practice both.  That is what this course is all about.

This course will help prepare you to deal more successfully with some of the kinds of ethical challenges you might face in your career.  It will do so by using case studies of people, leaders at various levels, some real and some fictional, in different kinds of settings, who have been confronted with ethical challenges, and by introducing you to various concepts and frameworks for moral reasoning and ethical decision-making.  Applying the concepts and frameworks to the case studies should help you build your own tool kit for moral reasoning and ethical decision-making — helping you become an ethical leader.  We will be analyzing various actors in the case studies, but in the end, this course is not about them, it’s about you.

There are no prerequisites for this course, which is open only to seniors across the university during their final semester.

Instructors: Albert Pierce

UNXD 3362 (Th 12:30-2:30)

1. Course Description

2. Learning Goals

As a result of taking this course, students will,

• Identify creative gifts, explore gifts that are possibly unidentified, and to find methods to use these gifts post-graduation, in the work force, and in everyday life
• Integrate avenues of creative expression and creative problem solving for personal growth, cross pollination of creative outlets, imagination, and actualization.
• Market your creativity in personal branding through creativity, imagination, and idea innovation.

3. Learning Outcomes

After taking this course, students will be able to:

• To name, and to know how to use, creative gift(s) in a fulfilling way in every aspect of their everyday lives
• To use a wider range of creative problem-solving tools, and techniques to maintain a creative life after Georgetown University
• To understand and use creative problem solving with personal goals and team goals in mind in the work place
• To strategize and plan methods of applying these creative powers to enhance personal growth, branding, and innovation in, and beyond, the workplace
• To exercise curiosity, appreciate inquiry, exploration, experimentation, and imagination through creative avenues from various creative disciplines

Instructors: Thomas Xenakis

UNXD 3363 (TH 4-6)

The experiences undertaken in the undergraduate years echo into adulthood: many of the types of challenges confronted in the college years will present themselves again. Within this course, you will deeply reflect upon the person you were when you entered Georgetown, grapple with your growth and development during the college years, and prepare to meet future challenges mindfully. Each week, through readings, discussions, podcasts, videos, written reflections, and activities, you will recognize your tremendous personal and intellectual growth over the past four years and will be encouraged to consider the personal and professional challenges you might encounter as an independent adult. What tools and strategies do you now have to confront these challenges? What lessons have you learned, and what wisdom have you earned? Finally, how can you use all you have gained during your time at Georgetown to design a life that brings you joy and fulfillment?

Instructor: Erin Force (CAS Advising Dean)

UNXD 3364 (W 10am-11:50pm)

Instructor: John Trybus, Center for Social Impact Communication

Environmental degradation. Gender inequality. Toxic political division. The list of challenges facing society can often seem endless, overwhelming and without solutions. What can one person do to make an impact on the world? 

UNXD 3364

This class has 2 sections that meet together: one at the DC Campus (-01) and one at the Doha Campus (-70)

This course focuses on how Georgetown students develop a sense of well-being, belonging and purpose within the various communities they live.  This course takes a social and developmental psychology perspective, encouraging students to reflect, explore, and discuss how key aspects of their identity have evolved during their time at Georgetown (and beyond).  The learning environment will be enhanced through a cross-cultural component where students from the main campus and GU-Qatar campus will interact in real time.  The course will create opportunities for exploring and expressing one’s authentic self through in-class interactions with peers and various out of class experiences (online and volunteering).  Students will attend to the relationship between their individual well-being and sense of purpose and that of the multiple communities they live and represent (Georgetown, Qatar/DC, groups that reflect various identities).  In doing so, students will address the following existential question: to what degree should I expect to nurture myself or my communities and vice versa.  Topics that influence the interaction between personal development and community affiliations – power dynamics, identity statuses, core values and belief systems, and social-navigational strategies – will be investigated.  In doing so, students will strive to understand their optimal balance between personal fulfillment and responsibility to the communities within they exist.  

Instructor: John Wright, Director of Student Life, GUQ

UNXD 4404 (T 1-3:30)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky famously wrote that “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”  Yet today it is almost impossible for members of free society to go inside of prison walls, much less to interact with incarcerated people as human beings. 

This 1-credit UNXD course will prepare a select group of Georgetown seniors for life after graduation by exposing them to this forgotten and ignored element of our humanity.  It is an extraordinary experience that they will cherish and that will inspire them for the rest of their lives.  The course will include some meeting at Georgetown and some meetings at the DC Jail. 

Students will read several prison-related memoirs—including Wilbert Rideau’s In the Place of Justice, and Shon Hopwood’s Law Man—and Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy will be the centerpiece of the class discussion with the DC Jail residents.  These readings will prepare students to understand the background surrounding poverty, crime, race, and incarceration, as well as the dynamics of prison life.  During the three sessions in a carceral facility, the students will work to identify possible avenues of criminal justice and prison reform.  Final projects will consist of a reflection paper addressing what students have experienced and learned, and how the course has changed their perspectives, as well as a joint small project to be carried out in conjunction with the incarcerated students.

Instructor: Marc Howard

UNXD 4410 (W 6-7:20)

This seminar will provide students the opportunity to explore the core beliefs that guide their daily lives, and how their backgrounds and life experiences influenced and shaped the beliefs they hold today.  Utilizing Jesuit values as our foundation, this course will examine students’ formation process throughout their Georgetown career, within the context of their daily lives. Students will be challenged to contemplate “Where They Are From,” connecting this journey to the larger construct of power and privilege. The course will conclude with students (re)developing “This I Believe,” in order to articulate to themselves and other persons the core of who they and who they aspire to be.

Learning Goals: As a result of taking this course, students will:

1. Foster a rudimentary skill set in discernment, recognition of gratitude, and application of values and beliefs in everyday life.
2. Develop language that enables students to share values and goals with other persons.
3. Establish a personal vision for the enactment of goals in life beyond Georgetown.

Learning Outcomes:

At the completion of this course students will be able to:

1. Define personal values and how they are sustained in their lives.
2. Describe Jesuit values and evidence of these in their GU experience.
3. Discuss the contribution of Jesuit values to personal and professional outcomes.
4. Engage in discernment and personal values reflection in connection anticipated challenges.

Instructor: Joan Riley and Christopher Barth

UNXD 4412
(Section 1: T 4:30-6
Section 2: 6:30-8)

This course will consist of 6 guided discussions, and a student led one, on questions that will most probably arise as Georgetown Seniors transition from their student life to a working life and beyond. We will reflect on your education at Georgetown and chart a possible courses to apply it for the rest of your life.  The problems we discuss have no permanent solutions; people have been wrestling with them from time immemorial.  Life challenges you to create answers to new situations, mostly new to you, until it ends. We will explore the idea of a life of learning, based on your Georgetown education, as a path to your most successful and rewarding life.

Instructor: Keith Hrebenak

UNXD 4409
(T 2-4)

Georgetown prides itself on its religious ecumenicalism and welcomes students from a variety of religious backgrounds.  But what about those students with no religious affiliation?  Where do they fit within a Jesuit university? 

Georgetown’s Core Curriculum asks all students to wrestle with important existential questions: How did we come into being? Do our lives have purpose? What happens to us when we die?  How do we create an ethical framework for decision-making?  How do we create a life imbued with meaning and purpose? 

Regardless of our personal religious affiliations, how we respond to these questions shapes the contours of our lives – our sense of purpose, our identity, our personal relationships, and our individual ethos. 

This course offers an opportunity to reflect upon these questions in ways that both draws upon and challenges the Jesuit education under which it is taught.  How do students without a religious affiliation navigate through these philosophical waters?  How can these students engage with Jesuit practices in an enriching and meaningful way?

Through critical reading of both ancient and contemporary texts, we’ll explore some ways in which others have attempted to address these existential questions from outside a religious framework.  From there, we’ll turn to Ignatian spiritual practices– the examination of consciousness, discernment, reflective and imaginative exercises – and reflect on ways in which these practices may or may not apply to non-theist students.  Finally, we’ll look ahead and think about how we can create meaning, purpose and community in our lives, regardless of whether we identify with any specific religious tradition.  How can students who doubt or reject a religious tradition benefit from a Jesuit education?  How might Jesuit practices apply outside of Georgetown? How can non-theist and theist students better engage in meaningful dialog with one another? And how do we create lives with meaning and purpose, regardless of our religious beliefs?

Students of all faiths (and no faith) are invited to participate in this conversation about whether it’s possible to create a good life without believing in an afterlife.  

Instructor: Anthony Pirrotti

UNXD 4414
(M 4-6)

This course will engage students in somatic theory and its application for personal well-being, goal setting (aligned with what you care about) and systemic change.  

Principles of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) are blended with intentional movements of the body to create an opportunity to deeply exhale and reflect inward. You will build on your knowledge of how to restore dignity, sense boundaries as a form of self-care, source aliveness and align your values to action.

Learning Goals: 

This class is designed to help you meet a number of personal and community goals. Students who complete this class will gain through theory and practice:

1) understanding of the “soma” and reflect on personal sites of cultural and historical shaping 

2) somatic awareness of longing and centered action, setting goals for yourself and your communities 

3) somatic understanding of the impact of systems on personal and community well-being 

4) practices to build and sustain a community of care

Learning Outcomes: 

After taking this course, students will be able to: 

• Understand and discuss the theoretical frameworks and their application to their sense of safety, dignity and belonging through physical practices, group discussion and journaling activities; 
• Achieve greater awareness of self and systems and recognize somatic applications to goal setting and positive well-being habits.

Instructor: Jennifer Crewalk

UNXD 4415
(M 6-8)

In this course, you will explore a unique and flexible kind of entrepreneurial activity: the intentional community. Whether called a club, society, or association, intentional communities occupy the space between economic ventures and individual pursuits. Forming your own intentional community as a recent graduate is not only a great way to solve the problem of loneliness and isolation that often accompany the first years out of college, but also counterbalances career pursuits that risk crowding out everything else in your life. By focusing on a greater purpose — social, educational, political, charitable — an intentional community invites you to live your ideals while providing a platform for satisfying human connection with like-minded people.  Above all, it’s entrepreneurial: you’re not joining someone else’s venture; you’re creating your own. 

Universities like Georgetown are great incubators of clubs and societies. But what do you do when you’re on your own, without the nurturing structure of your alma mater?  This course answers that question!

Entrepreneurship is promoted in many parts of the University, but almost always in ways encouraging you to view it within the context of the “economy of cash:” i.e., how can you monetize your efforts? This course introduces instead the idea of an “economy of grace,” a world of immaterial benefits and relationships that are the source of meaning, relationship and, ultimately, mental (and physical) health. Entrepreneurship is possible in this economy, too. And such ventures are not necessarily without compensating cashflows.

Learning Goals 

Through this course, you will

• Understand the unique role of intentional societies in the world of entrepreneurship;
• Learn principles and strategies for community building, governance, and management suitable for intentional communities;
• Acquire skills for effective decision-making and conflict resolution; and
• Explore actual examples of successful clubs and intentional societies and meet social entrepreneurs

Learning Outcomes:

After taking this course, you will:

• Develop a comprehensive plan for an intentional community of your own;
• Experience group problem-solving and decision-making;
• Have observed and documented both the factors of success and the common pitfalls connected with intentional communities; and
• Acquire new study tools for learning any complex subject.

Instructor: Gregory Robison