Search for Summer 2025 Term Courses

This course examines Native American, Spanish, and Anglo arts and 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. Astronomical alignments, water, earth and sky, spirits and saints, the living and their ancestors—these are among the themes in the art of the region. Emphasis is placed on careful seeing, individual analysis and reflection, and collaborative learning. The course is designed for SMU-in-Taos. Many class days include field trips or interactive projects. Films, readings, and PowerPoint slide talks set the stage for visits to artists’ studios, archaeological sites, pueblos, churches, and museums. Hands-on art projects are simple and require no previous art experience to succeed. They will help you understand the technical and aesthetic qualities of artworks we study in this class. Watch Course Video

This non-major introductory biology course with a special focus on aquatic biology studies the aquatic systems of the American Southwest, emphasizing the unique challenges and adaptations of life in semi-arid environments prone to drastic seasonal and occasional catastrophic (e.g., wildfire) disruptions. The SMU-in-Taos campus serves as an ideal hub for this course by providing direct access to study these specific environments. Students benefit from hands-on field experiences, allowing them to conduct fieldwork, collect data, and directly observe the region's aquatic biodiversity, thus deepening their understanding of the ecological principles discussed in the course. Taos' geographical location and the richness of its surrounding aquatic environments serve as a living laboratory, enabling students to apply theoretical knowledge to real-world settings.

Counts as an Honors course. 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.

Counts as an Honors course and a Business Elective. 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. 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. Watch Course Video

Mountain Sports is a class where students will have the opportunity to participate in a wide range of activities such as hiking, rafting, rock climbing, and fly-fishing. Students will have the opportunity to apply the five components of health related fitness to all of the activities that they pursue.

In this course, students will learn the fundamentals of experimentation research for the purposes of designing novel measurement studies for drone communications. Students will also learn about the unique problems that are facing wireless communications when designed for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which has the challenges of Doppler effects induced by high levels of mobility, limited power consumption, and highly-restrictive load capabilities. In the advanced version of the course (7393), students take on leadership roles with the labs and the projects and are expected to lead efforts to publications in top-tier conferences with measurement results. Watch Course Video

Mountain Sports is a class where students will have the opportunity to participate in a wide range of activities such as hiking, rafting, rock climbing, and fly-fishing. Students will have the opportunity to apply the five components of health related fitness to all of the activities that they pursue.

Counts as an Honors course. First, the course seeks to provide you with an introduction to a wide variety of religious traditions, communities and practices within the context of globalization. Topics we will cover include the rise of religion as an academic subject in the age of modernity, religion as it relates to colonialism and national identities, religious expression in the media and in popular culture, and changing religious practices and expressions in the light of globalization and immigration. Second, this course aims to introduce you to several approaches to the academic study of religion. Throughout the course we will explore the ways that people have and do investigate religious histories, practices and people. Finally, this course is designed to build your skills in the analysis of complex argumentation and your abilities to discuss matters critically, curiously, and civically. Watch Course Video

Explores the nonprofit sector’s role in addressing myriad social problems. Students examine issues such as poverty, domestic violence, health care, and the aging population. Traditional lectures on campus introduce concepts relating to the social issue being explored and the specific ways in which the nonprofit sector is working to mitigate the problems. Includes fieldtrips to local nonprofit agencies to tour facilities and meet with administrators, volunteers, and clients who are working to address the social problems discussed in class.

Counts as an Honors course. 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. Watch Course Video