Summer Hilltop Immersive Program (SHIP)
PEOPLE. PLACES. PURPOSE.
Special 1-credit learning opportunities for the class of 2024+
The University community is eager to welcome the Class of 2024 and newly admitted transfer students to the Hilltop this summer. SHIP will include academic, experiential learning and social activities for the students to participate in over the summer. Find more information on Georgetown Summer Sessions here.
Learn more about your options below.
We have created a set of immersive experiential courses exclusively for SHIP students, aimed at deepening connections to each other (people); to campus, the wider neighborhood, and the city (places); and to the distinctive values that animate Georgetown, including Jesuit values (purpose).
The courses are offered under three themes: D.C. as Classroom, the Spirit of Georgetown, and Designing Your University Experience. Each thematic cluster offers multiple 1-credit courses featuring combinations of classroom work and experiences outside of the classroom.
Courses and sections are being added as interest grows, so we encourage you to continuously check this page for updates.
Summer 2021
D.C. as Classroom
Students will engage with faculty and each other at sites around the city in order to connect with Washington, D.C. and its complex past, present, and future.
SHIP 001 – Washington, DC is only 68 square miles, but within those 68 square miles, you will find the seat of government for the longest-lasting democracy in the world, dozens of museums, hundreds of restaurants, and your intellectual home: Georgetown University. In this class, we will not take “field trips” off-campus, but instead, our classroom will be the District of Columbia. Through a weekly deep dive into a different major cultural or political institution, you will gain insight into your new home on and around the Hilltop, and deepen your engagement with a small group of peers. There will be no lectures, but we will hear from community leaders and experience some of the full richness of life in your new home: Washington, DC!
Instructor: Sam Aronson
SHIP 002 –While Washington, D.C. is popularly known as “Chocolate City,” far less well known is the vibrant black history of the Georgetown neighborhood. In this class, we will learn about Georgetown’s forgotten–and then remembered– black history through a combination of experiences in the neighborhood through walking tours, the important book of this history and accompanying video, Black Georgetown Remembered.
Instructor: Andrew Davenport
SHIP 003 — Washington, D.C.’s story can be told through the story of the Anacostia River. Through lectures, readings, and discussion — and most importantly, through boat trips out on the river with experts in history, the environment, and justice — students will come to understand the intersecting branches of the River as it pertains to, and shapes, life in the nation’s capital.
Instructor: Mark Giordano
SHIP 004 — We live in a moment of unprecedented global urbanization, where more than half of humanity resides in urban areas. In just a few short decades, this percentage will rise to 75% whereby cities around the world will absorb an additional 2 billion people. And yet, each city is host to unique communities, subject to unique environments and fosters unique cultures and economies. This 1-credit course explores facets of global urbanization as embodied and expressed by local people, places and networks in Washington, DC. The expression of Washington, DC as a global city supports and transcends its legacy as national capital of the United States. This course requires off-campus meetings in order to visit sites and conduct field work; students will learn a variety of methods to perform urban analysis.
Instructor: Uwe Brandes
SHIP 005 — In an era of intense ideological, social, and political polarization, how can we learn not merely to converse, but also to listen and respect one another? How might we share our deepest concerns, hopes, fears, and dreams with others who hold different perspectives on politics, community, economics, or faith? By using experiential sites and engaging with community partners in Washington, DC, this course will build upon the work of In Your Shoes, a project since 2018 wherein students use performance techniques and exercises as a way to deeply listen to and dialogue about the experiences of those who are different from them. Alongside active engagement in shared experiences including field trips and guest speakers, students will foster respectful, probing, honest, and empathetic communication rooted in the Lab’s signature “performing one another” approach in which two-way pair conversations between student participants, based on a simple prompt, are mutually recorded, curated, transcribed, and then shared with the group in excerpted form through performance. No previous performance experience is required; rather, we will use the “performing one another” methodology as an avenue to develop skills and habits necessary for productive and respectful dialogue and understanding.
Instructors: Derek Goldman and Ijeoma Njaka
SHIP 017 — This 1-credit course, led by two art historians, focuses on art held in collections on the National Mall. Through in-person discussions at the National Gallery and the Smithsonian Institution, the course will consider key works in a range of media, this experiential first-year experience aims to teach students not only about the cultural humanities, but to think critically about the history of the United States, with a particular emphasis on questions of race and racism, national identity and belonging, and America’s geographic and cultural formation from the 19th c. to the present. Beyond the works themselves, we will discuss the narratives generated by national collections and major institutions, and the power of artists curators to shape our collective self-understanding.
Instructors: Ian Bourland and Lisa Strong
SHIP 019 — Learn about the incredible history of activism in and for DC and the way the virtues of hope sustains courage and vice-versa. This course will remember significant moments in activism and civil disobedience in DC including numerous marches on Washington, Occupy Wall Street, and the Capitol insurrection, with an emphasis on symbolic imagination. We will visit key sites of public action and remembrance such as, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, Black Lives Plaza and learn about DC’s residents own continued struggle for congressional representation. A weekend field trip may replace one class session but we will determine this based on student availability.
Instructor: Samuel Aronson
Complete your HALC requirement bundle with 3 SHIP courses
The Spirit of Georgetown
Students will engage with faculty and each other to reflect on our diverse community, wellbeing, and Jesuit values.
SHIP 006 — Encounter and explore with the Jesuits the life of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the Jesuit Heritage of Georgetown University, and the values embodied in the Spirit of Georgetown that animate Hoyas around the world.
Instructor: Fr. Mark Bosco
SHIP 007 — Learn about Georgetown’s distinctive ethos as a Jesuit and Catholic University and discover how key values (Community in Diversity, Contemplation in Action, Faith that Does Justice, and Care for Our Common Home) invite us to sharpen our moral vision and character for our own and the world’s well-being. Together, we will examine our human and ecological interdependence as an overlapping religious and secular basis for these values and learn from the past to shape our future. In addition to short academic readings, students will visit various sacred/important sites on campus or near campus and in the larger dc area. Come ready to dive into short, powerful readings on theology and ethics and be ready to discuss what we as a community do well and where we can do better.
Instructor: Kerry Danner
SHIP 010 — This course explores the kinds of care made possible through disability justice-informed ways of knowing and being, particularly disability justice’s commitment to radical access. It examines anti-racist disabled activism and organizing, including in the time of COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement, to provide a blueprint for creating structures of care to address the needs of Georgetown students and their communities. It will focus on mental health, collective trauma, student experiences, and access-centered pedagogy, and will draw on wisdom and offerings from queer and trans disabled people of color.
Instructor: Lydia X. Z. Brown
SHIP-016 — Restorative Justice is a community-based philosophy and approach to preventing and responding to harm with roots in indigenous traditions. It involves facilitated group processes that emphasize accountability through shared understanding and repairing the harm done. It has been used successfully in many contexts, including school and juvenile justice systems. This course is intended to introduce participants to the restorative justice movement, as well as to support participants in learning and integrating key concepts, tools, and skills related to restorative justice through an experiential, interactive, and self-reflective approach. Participants will be asked to think about the role of Restorative Justice in the modern US social context, at Georgetown University, as well as in their own personal lives.
Instructors: Jordan Brown and Tarek Maassarani
SHIP 009 — In this course, students will read and discuss a small group of recent nonfiction books chosen with themes of Georgetown’s Jesuit identity in mind: men and women for others; faith with justice; care for our common home; community in diversity; and contemplation in action. We’ll consider the books both as complex accounts of unsettled and unsettling ideas and as models for clear, strong, personally inflected writing. Students will write a short critical essay (1000 words) and a short personal essay, and we’ll discuss the personal essays over lunch in a pair of writing workshops.
Instructor: Paul Elie
SHIP 018 — Centering on the Jesuit value for interreligious understanding, this course introduces students to Christian institutions of faith throughout the nation’s capital. With particular attention given to the role of music, students are offered an immersive experience with in-person visits to several of D.C.’s most prominent houses of worship, engaging in the musical traditions of each so as to discover how music adds identity, purpose, and meaning to a population of people rich in diversity and steeped in history.
Instructor: Russell Weismann
SHIP 021 — This course will introduce the student to the riches of the various faith traditions across Georgetown’s campus, with a focus on how symbol and ritual are experienced in spirituality. Campus Ministry at Georgetown represents six principle religious traditions – Catholic, Protestant Christian, Orthodox Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Dharmic traditions all have a home on the hilltop. The course will explore these six traditions both in study and experience. The study element will focus on aspects of word, ritual, and symbol found in the religious services. The experience element will focus on the actual spaces across Georgetown’s campus where services take place. The class will meet each week in a different sacred space on campus, explore the religious tradition of that space, and learn about the beliefs of each faith tradition.
Designing your Georgetown Experience
Students will engage with faculty, each other, staff, and alumni in order to develop a sense of their co- and extra-curricular trajectory in the coming years. This cluster will include research, professional, and skill-building opportunities.
SHIP 011 — This course will focus on the importance of showing up, fully, as you. Taught by Jaime Brown, a wellness advocate and champion of DEAI, topics will revolve around questioning notions of professionalism, codeswitching, who has access to “seats at the table”, the power of your network, and aligning how you show up in your search and career. Can take asynchronously with permission of the dean if a student has another class time conflict.
Instructor: Jaime Brown
SHIP 013 — How can we use the tools of the Makerspaces to give visibility to issues of injustice, and to manifest visions of a more equitable, joyful future?” In this 1-Credit course, students will learn to use fabrication tools such as 3D printers, laser cutters, digital embroidery machines, and more to develop “Guerilla Art Objects,” objects designed to be installed in public spaces with the purpose of inspiring joy, reflection, and/or civic engagement. In addition to learning the practical skills of fabrication, students will also engage in readings on the history and practice of Guerilla Art; participate in discussion groups to develop their own identity, creative vision, and goals; practice exercises in ideation and iteration; and ultimately design, fabricate, and install their own Intervention Object. Students will observe the public’s response to their object, and reflect on how the reaction compares to their expectations.
Instructor: Don Undeen
SHIP 015 –– Podcasting has exploded in recent years. The form lowers the barriers to entry, allowing creators to find both niche and general audiences on a variety of topics. Join us this summer to try your hand at creating your own. In this class, you will create podcasts of your own as a means of exploring the local community and sharing its diverse stories. You will practice conducting research, preparing for and holding interviews, composing scripts, audio editing, and participating in production critiques. In support of this work, you will read and discuss a range of research and theory on audio storytelling as a medium.
Instructors: Becca Tarsa, Meghan Modafferi
SHIP 014 –– Between the moment you received your Georgetown acceptance letter to the moment you cross the stage at Commencement, there are thousands of decisions to be made and experiences to enjoy. How can you ensure that the Georgetown you create for yourself is true to your values, interests, untapped potential, and developing identity? In this course, we’ll use readings, discussions, podcasts, videos, written reflections, and activities developed in Stanford’s Life Design Lab to think deeply about personal formation, consider big questions about the purpose of an undergraduate education, and design a Georgetown that brings you joy and fulfillment.
Instructor: Erin Force
SHIP 012 — Discover. Design. Define. This 1-credit course will introduce you to basic theories and learning outcomes of experiential learning through a five-week discovery of Georgetown’s co-curricular opportunities. By the close of this 5-week 1-credit course, you will be empowered with information and skills required to thoughtfully design your Georgetown commitments beyond the classroom. An accompanying online CANVAS site will host our course mirco-reflection discussion boards, through which you will identify the personal values that will act as your Hoya compass. Each week a new campus unit will define their not only “what” you do, but “how” you learn, reflect, and grow through their programs and “why” the creation of a civic and global identity is central to our Jesuit mission. [Participating units include: Capitol Applied Learning Lab (CALL) Cawley Career Education Center; Center for Research and Fellowships; Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching and Service (CSJ); and Office of Global Engagement (OGE).]
Instructors: Laura Perille and Lauren Tuckley
SHIP 022 – Learn about several important and timely global business topics from faculty members in marketing, operations, finance, and management. Sessions will include: Making a Business Case for Sustainability (Professor Vishal Agarwal), Creating Value for Customers (Professor Rebecca Hamilton), Visualizing and Communicating with Data (Professor Bonnie Montano), Understanding Global Financial Markets and Blockchain Technology (Professor Jim Angel), and Lighting the World on Fire Through Entrepreneurship (Professor Jeff Reid).
Instructors:
Instructors: Vishal Agarwal, Jim Angel, Rebecca Hamilton, Bonnie Montano, and Jeff Reid
