Search for January 2024 Term Courses

Students develop fundamental skills in creative entrepreneurship andexplore ways to attract capital. This experientially based class draws from time-tested entrepreneurial methods to assist students, regardless of their discipline, to createentrepreneurially. Students also learn to act entrepreneurially within existing organizations,intrapreneurship, a process making employees more valuable to the companies they work inand for. Entrepreneurship is an experiential process. Consequently, students in this course engage in games, simulations, demonstrations, and other experiential exercises to offerexperiential insights in what it is to act entrepreneurially. Students will also travel to area arts and nonprofit organizations including Meow Wolf in Santa Fe and other sites.

The overall goal of this course is to introduce undergraduate students to current societal issues around public health nutrition. This course examines the nature of poverty, food security and hunger at the community, regional, or national level. The Taos campus allows for APSM 3360 students to become embedded in the community and assist local farmers with harvesting and planting. Nutrition and Population Health students will also work with the local schools in the Farm-to-School lunch program and after school program. Lastly, the Taos campus allows for my students will also serve at the local food pantry alongside community members to hand out bags of food to individuals in need. Introduces current societal issues concerning public health nutrition and examines the nature of poverty, food security, and hunger at the community, regional, and national levels. Emphasis is placed on personal experience via community engagement, the applicability of cutting-edge research on creating effective national policies, and advocacy campaigns for low-income Americans. Finally, this course reviews existing local and national programs and policies, including strengths, weaknesses, and areas for modification or new interventions.

Examines ancient Native American, Hispanic, Latino, and Anglo arts and cultures of the American Southwest. Considers the effects of ethnicity, gender, and community identity on regional art traditions and places artworks within their material, religious, political, and economic contexts. Most class days include field trips as well as interactive, collaborative projects. Films, readings, and the instructor’s PowerPoint slide talks set the stage for visits to artists’ studios, archaeological sites, pueblos, churches, and museums. My goal is to give students tools for understanding the rich cultural heritage and traditional arts of Native American and Spanish New Mexico and an introduction to 20th century art. Simple hands-on projects help students understand the technical and aesthetic qualities of artworks we study in this class. This course examines Native American and Spanish cultures of the American Southwest between 100 CE and the 21st century. It considers the effects of ethnicity, gender, and community identity on regional art traditions and places artworks within their material, religious, political, and economic contexts. Field trips to: Taos Pueblo, Millicent Rogers Museum, workshop with Gustavo Victor Goler

This interdisciplinary course explores the history of New Mexico, from the pre-contact era to the present. In the first half of the class, we will consider New Mexico’s successive and overlapping waves of human settlement, from Pueblo Indians, to the Spanish Empire, the Mexican Republic, and the United States, with particular attention to the complex relationships between Native peoples, Hispanos, and Anglo-Americans. Then we will turn to a handful of key topics that continue to define the so-called Land of Enchantment even today: religion and spirituality; the natural world (particularly New Mexico’s scarce water resources); and its enduring cultural symbolism as reflected in literature and film.

Review of fundamentals of vibrations with application of simple machine and structural members. Topics include harmonic motion, free and forced vibration, resonance, damping, isolation, and transmissibility. Single, multiple, and infinite degree-of-freedom systems are also examined. Mechanical Engineering students must complete over 120 credit hours to obtain their bachelor's degree from SMU. Many of these students highly value the chance to take their core ME course in Taos, with its stunning scenery, intimate class sizes, skiing, and hospitable environment.

This course will show students how to leverage fundamental marketing frameworks and apply them to the nuances related to social impact marketing. In this course, the term “sustainability” will cover both Planet and People related issues (i.e. environmental as well as social issues), as it is known that these are many times inter-related. We will learn ways organizations and brands can drive sustainable behavior change in a way that builds brand equity and drives sales, while avoid greenwashing, purpose-washing, and virtue-signaling. In the beautiful natural environment of Taos, New Mexico, students will have the chance to engage with 4 organizations that have either or both an environmental and social mission. After our site visits, students will be able to choose which of the 4 organizations they want to focus on for the duration of the course.

The ability to experience a form of exercise in the mountains that only Taos can provide to an SMU student. The Jan Term Mountain Sports class in Taos will be focused on winter sports and fitness. Students will receive ski and snowboard instruction. Exercise and health-related fitness principles as described in the course objectives will be reviewed and discussed in which presentation/lecture/discussion will replace the workout for those class periods. Each student will be provided with lift passes to Taos Ski Valley, lessons, and ski/snowboard gear.

Social psychology is the study of how the presence of others influences our ABCs - Affect, Behavior, and Cognition. The course addresses the question of how an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and influenced by his/her social environment. This includes topics such as attitudes change, conformity, attraction, aggression, and small-group behavior. After completing this course, you should be able to discuss social psychology in relation to general psychology, other disciplines, and your own life and interests. You should be able to demonstrate both a general knowledge of the field as well as an advanced understanding of a few specialized topics. By taking this course at the SMU in Taos campus, you will be able to experience social psychology beyond the traditional classroom. We will have field trips and off-campus experiences at several different locations. You will also have a chance to engage the local community and apply your course material in one of several project options.

An introductory historical overview of select religious traditions of Asia. The course explores developments in religious and cultural trends expressed in South Asia and East Asia in traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and/or Shintoism. Why are yoga studios and mindfulness classes seemingly everywhere? The aim of this course is to explore and this question and better understand the history of Asian religions in America from the vantage point of Taos, an epicenter of the counter-culture movement. Each religion studied (Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Chinese religions) will therefore be approached in a two-fold manner. First, we will study the historical development and transformations that occurred in these different traditions across Asia. Then, building upon this foundation we will investigate how Asian religions came to be not only shaped by the forces of modernity, but also how Asian religions shaped the modern West.

This interdisciplinary and experiential course examines the intersections of food and identity in the Southwest. Through literary and scholarly texts, film, fine arts, pop culture, and experiences, students explore topics such as heritage and tradition, cultural contact and exchange, conquest, resistance and revolution, issues of gender, and responses to modernity and change in the so-called “American Southwest.” Examines how technology (including agriculture, cooking technology, commercial farming, global trade networks, and social media) impacts the production, consumption, distribution, dynamics of power, and systems of meaning of food and eating in this region.