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  6:30-8:30pm)

“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.

Instructor: Al Pierce 

UNXD 3362 (Online, Thur  12:30-2:30)

How can students apply creativity to their lives that they gained, before and during their time at Georgetown, and beyond the Hilltop? This course will offer seniors organizational plans for maintenance, growth, for using creative gift(s) for creative expression and creative problem solving. The fulfillment of a creative need will be investigated for personal growth, and innovative thinking through a variety of creative means, and professional branding for the future of the student. Maintenance, nourishment, and currency to fulfilling a creative need will be investigated as well. This course is not lecture-based, rather it is highly experiential; students will engage in creative exercises each week that draw on the readings and their personal experiences. No previous knowledge or coursework of art, drawing, or art history is required. 

Instructor: Tom Xenakis

UNXD 3364 (W  10-11:50am)

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?

Dr. Jane Goodall, the international environmental icon who is literally the woman who redefined our notion of man through her groundbreaking work with chimpanzees, thinks deeply about these questions. She responds with a simple, yet provocative philosophy that has become the signature of her work: the need to have reasons for hope and then to act upon them.

Dr. Goodall has five reasons: the determination of young people, the resilience of nature, the human brain, the indomitable human spirit and the power of social media (her latest). As she reminds us, “the greatest danger to our planet is that we lose hope. Because, if we have no hope, we give up and stop trying to do our bit to make a difference.”

Using her book, Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey, as a guide, students will explore Dr. Goodall’s framework and be challenged to interact with tangible examples in their everyday lives that illuminate each reason. They will then reflect deeply on their own values to create their personal reasons for hope, along with a plan for how to activate them as they proceed to the next stage of their life’s journey.

Along the way, students will also meet change makers leading with a hope mindset while they apply lessons from Dr. Goodall’s remarkable life story, the instructor’s personal experience working for her, and even the famous chimpanzees themselves.

Instructor: John Trybus

This class has 4 sections: 2 pairs across Main Campus and Doha

Seniors:

3365-01 GU MAIN students (TH 10 – 10:50AM)
+
3365-70 GU-Q students (TH 5-5:50PM)

Sophs and Jrs:

3365-02 GU MAIN Students (TH 11-11:50AM)
+
3365-71 GU-Q Students (TH 6-6:50PM)

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 3366 (W 2-4)

This course provides an introduction to mindfulness meditation especially through the lens of the mind-body connection. The course includes practicing various mindfulness techniques. 

Instructor: Anthony Pirrotti

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 several meetings at the DC Jail with incarcerated students. 

Instructor: Marc Howard

UNXD 4405 (T 4-6)

This course examines our increasingly interconnected – yet stubbornly fragmented and unequal – world, and asks how we might conscientiously choose to live and act in it. Drawing on the fields of comparative political and economic development, we will explore the cross-national patterns of behavior by states and private actors that are shaping outcomes in education, growth, social inclusion, and political participation. We will complement this empirical study with normative perspectives drawn from the fields of philosophy, social and cultural analysis, and theology, ultimately pushing each of ourselves to decide on concrete ways our convictions can shape our choices about how to live as aware and responsible citizens in the world as it exists today.

Instructor: Fr. Matt Carnes SJ

UNXD 4406 (Section 01: M 11-12:50) (Section 02: T 12:30-2:30)

Instructor: Sarah Stiles 

UNXD 4410 (W 6 – 7:20pm)

 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.

Instructors: Joan Riley and Christopher Barth

UNXD 4412 (Section 01: T 4:30-6pm) (Section 02: 6:30-8pm)

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.

Instructors: Keith Hrebenak