Course Syllabus - West Virginia University: Fill & Download for Free

Three times. Once as a child, once as a teenager and once as an adult.I was probably 8 years old. I was playing outside while my Dad was repairing a tractor nearby. He was frustrated, having a bad day. The sun was setting and he needed to have the tractor fixed before morning. He was probably tired.He couldn’t find some tool and he was convinced that I took it. This was out of character. It’s the only bad memory I have of him. He is truly the best man I know.But that night he yelled at me and said, “Just go away, you are no son of mine, I will not have a son who lies to me.”My mother was in the house, but I went to seek solace from my favorite baby sitter, the forest. My earliest memories are of being alone in the forest behind our house. Yes, my parents were a bit unconventional, but wonderful people. I thank God for them every day. These experiences made me who I am.I came back home hours after dark to find my parents praying for me at the dining room table. They were glad to see me. Dad never mentioned his outburst and neither did I. To this day, Mom has no idea why I was in the woods that night.No matter what happens in my life, I always know my parents are praying for me. My Dad is in a nursing home with end stage dementia. He can’t walk or feed himself. On a good day he might say a 6 word phrase, but I know he is praying for me in his spirit.I read the journal he wrote for me when I was a teenager. It is full of Bible verses and his thoughts and prayers for me. Those prayers are eternal.The 2nd time was when I was 16 years old. My parents took me to a wrestling tournament. It was the biggest tournament I had ever won, the AAU Mid-Atlantic Regional, which included several states.Wrestling was a big deal for me. My Dad was a state champion and the best coach I have ever known. Wrestling was the biggest sport at my school, Bald Eagle Area High School. I remember a home meet against a county rival, Philipsburg-Osceola, in which the gym was standing room only. The cafeteria and the auditorium were both filled with people watching us on video feed. But I wrestled for my family, more than my friends and fans.If you win semifinals in a big tournament you usually have a couple hours break before the finals while all the losers are wrestling in the consolation rounds. It was a warm spring day before the bugs were out. The first flowers were popping up and the birds were happy and so was I as I walked out to the football stadium at Shippensburg University and took a nap in the sun.I came back to the gym, warmed up and won the biggest match of my career. I noticed my parents seemed totally unimpressed, but they said nothing until the ride home.My Mom asked me where I went in the afternoon. I then realized that I had not told them where I was going. They didn’t believe me when I said I took a nap. That’s when I found out that some teenage wrestlers from that tournament had been arrested for underage drinking and fighting in a bar while I was napping in the empty football stadium.I was unable to supply an alibi as I was napping alone. And then my mom asked me where did I get money for alcohol. I had no idea what she was talking about or why they didn’t believe me. I never lied to them before.Then my mom told me that someone stole money from her that day. There was money missing from her purse. She seemed convinced that I stole money from her and went drinking.That would have been completely out of character for me. I didn’t even go to movies or school dances, because I believed everything I heard at our old time Church. I played the piano, sang in the choir and visited old people in nursing homes.It was a quiet ride home. As usual we didn’t stop for dinner. My first memory of a restaurant was still a year in the future. I went straight to bed.Breakfast was quiet, but we read the Bible and prayed as usual. My Dad was a teacher at the high school, so I always rode to school with him in his old red Ford truck. It was a quiet ride.I felt like there was nothing to say because I had told the truth and it was rejected. I felt guilty and embarrassed despite my innocence.About 10:00 that morning I was sitting in history class when my mom knocked on the door. My first thought was that something was really wrong. Then I walked out into the hall and I could tell she had been crying. Very unusual. It’s the only time I ever saw my mom cry. She was in tears asking for my forgiveness. She found the money right where she left it after I left for school that morning.She broke the law and prayed with me right there in plain sight in the hallway of an American public school. Now I do the same thing with my kids who are in High School. They smile and laugh as I pray loudly, praising God and asking his blessing for every student. My mother’s prayers have pulled me through some dark days in my life and I hope to pass the same legacy to my children.The 3rd time was at age 38. I was assistant professor and director of ethics at a medical school (The West Virginia School Of Osteopathic Medicine), and chairman of the ethics committee at a local hospital.I wanted to set the tone with a guest lecturer at the beginning of the year. I did some thinking and reading about my purpose within the mission of the school. The school’s published mission statement was “to prepare primary care physicians for rural West Virginia.”I grew up in rural Appalachia, so I knew the culture, but I looked for data. Medical ethics is all about helping patients make decisions in their best interest, consistent with their own view of the world. So the question I wanted to answer for the students is how do their rural Appalachian patients view the world?A large portion of medical ethics curriculum deals with issues surrounding death and dying. I hoped to have a guest lecturer of standing who could launch the course in the right direction.I found a professor at West Virginia University who is a national expert in death and dying, particularly in regard to “advance directives.” He has done more than any other person to improve state laws in multiple states for patients who want to control their treatment decisions when they die.He is also an expert on Appalachian culture. He asked me what the students needed from him. When I read the school’s mission statement, he knew exactly what was needed. “Your students need to know how to deal with peoples of various philosophies and faiths. But if they are going to practice in rural areas of this state, about 98% of their patients will be fundamentalist Christians. They need to know what these people believe about death and dying.”I was raised in the traditional American version of fundamentalist Christianity and learned to despise its legalistic and rigid traditional narrow views. But I had to agree that our students need to understand their fundamentalist patients. So we set a date and started the usual preparations including a syllabus and test questions.Before dawn of the morning of the lecture I walked across every row of empty seats, pausing to lay hands on each chair to pray for each student. “Lord bless this student with wisdom and understanding that she may become a healer of mind, body and spirit.” Or “God, grant a special portion of healing power to this student so that he can be the physician you want him to be.”The classroom was filled that day, an indication that the students actually wanted to hear this lecture. After a brief general description of the management of dying patients, the visiting professor briefly compared different philosophies and religions.Then he reviewed the school’s mission statement and launched into the details of rural Appalachian Biblical Fundamentalism.“These people believe that man was created by God to know him and enjoy him forever. But the first man rebelled and passed on his sinful nature to every person. But God had a plan to send his only son to pay the debt of sin with his own life. He then defeated death and promised that anyone who trusts him will live forever. Of course people must die, but they die believing that they will rise again just like Jesus did.”I was a bit surprised that the end of his lecture sounded a bit like a sermon. I looked around expecting to see students scowling and rolling their eyes. There was none of that. They all looked like they were watching an interesting movie.When he asked if there were any questions, the entire lecture hall was filled with a standing ovation!The next day the Dean called me into his office. He was hot! “This is a state funded school, you can’t preach religion here! We could be sued! They could shut the place down! It’s okay to talk about all religions and philosophy, but you can’t talk about Christianity like that! What were you thinking? You know better! I should just fire you right now!”I tried to explain that all religions were included in the lecture but that the mission statement of the school suggested we needed to focus on Appalachian culture which is predominantly Christian. His face looked like a wood stove in January. I expected smoke to come out his ears.”If you know what’s good for you, you will cease and desist. Don’t let this happen again!””Don’t let what happen? Did someone complain?””No! But they could! And we wouldn’t have a leg to stand on!”He is retired now. My wife saw him recently in the grocery store and almost did not recognize him. He is a worn out, grumpy and frail and depressed old man.I accomplished tenure approval the following year and then quit within 6 months. I simply did not want to be a part of an institution that sucked the spiritual life out of me. It felt so dry and cold there working with people who have no hope.Hope is the most important thing we can give patients. Medications or surgery without hope are completely useless. Hope is the foundation of all medical care. While there is life there is hope.There is a huge difference in the view of death between patients who believe in some sort of existence after death of the body vs those who view death as the Universe’s fulfillment of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.If death is not the end, then it is the ultimate healing. Every health problem of the body disappears in death. Death can be met with gratitude.

Two reasons, really. The Core Curriculum and New York City.Columbia College’s Core Curriculum: Founded in 1919, the Core Curriculum is a rigorous, two-year course of studies that every Columbia College student must take, regardless of his or her major. It sets Columbia College apart from its Ivy undergraduate school peers.The Core Curriculum:Literary Humanities: Masterpieces of Western Literature and Philosophy:Books to be read include: (Spring) Luke and John from the Bible; Augustine’s Confessions; Dante’s Divine Comedy; Boccaccio’s The Decameron; Montaigne’s Essays; Shakespeare’s King Lear; Cervantes’ Don Quixote; Milton’s Paradise Lost; Austen’s Pride and Prejudice; Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment; Woolf’s To the Lighthouse; Morrison’s Song of Solomon; (fall) Homer’s The Iliad; Sappho’s If Not, Winter, Fragments of Sappho; Homer’s The Odyssey; Genesis from the Bible; Herodotus’ The Histories; Aeschylus’ Oresteia; Euripides’ Bacchae; Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War; Plato’s Symposium; Virgil’s The Aeneid; Ovid’s HeroidesContemporary Civilization: Introduction to Contemporary Civilization in the West:Books to read include: (Spring) The Writings of David Hume; Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality and Social Contract; Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments; Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations; Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals; American Revolution and Founding Texts; Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France; The French Revolution; Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication on the Rights of Woman; Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America; Georg Hegel’s Introduction to the Philosophy of History; John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty and Other Essays; Karl Marx: Selections from the Marx-Engels Reader; Friedrich Neitzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals; The Writings of Charles Darwin; W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folks; The Writings of Sigmund Freud; Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas; (Fall) Plato’s Republic; Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics; Aristotle’s Politics; The Hebrew Bible; Roman and Hellenistic Thought; New Testament; Augustine’s City of God; The Qur’an; Medieval Philosophy; Machiavelli’s The Discourses; Machiavelli’s The Prince; The Protestant Revolution (Selected Readings); Rene Descartes’ Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy; The Scientific Revolution; New World Writings; Hobbes’ Leviathan; Locke’s Second Treatise; Locke’s Letter on TolerationUniversity WritingArt Humanities: Masterpieces of Western Art: “Art Humanities teaches students how to look at, think about, and engage in critical discussion of the visual arts. It is not a historical survey but an analytical study of a limited number of monuments and artists. The course focuses on the formal structure of the works of architecture, sculpture, painting, and other media as well as the historical contexts in which these works were made and understood. Among the topics included in the syllabus are the Parthenon, Notre Dame and Amiens Cathedrals, and works by Raphael, Michelangelo, Bruegel, Bernini, Rembrandt, Goya, Monet, Picasso, Wright, Le Corbusier, Pollock, and Warhol. In addition to discussion-based class meetings, all sections of Art Humanities make extensive use of the vast resources of New York City through field trips to museums, buildings, and monuments.”Music Humanities: Medieval and Renaissance Music—Gregorian chant, Hildegard of Bingen, Josquin des Prez, the madrigal; Baroque Music—Monteverdi, Handel: Messiah or opera seria; Bach: The Brandenburg Concertos; Classical Music—Haydn instrumental works, Mozart’s operas and instrumental works, Beethoven symphonies; Romantic Music—Schubert (the Lied), Chopin, Berlioz Symphonie fantastique, Wagner, Verdi; Twentieth-century Music—Debussy, Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring, Berg: Wozzeck, Schoenberg, American Composers: Ives, Copland, Cage; Jazz: Armstrong, Ellington, ParkerFrontiers of Science: Chemistry and AstronomyScience Requirement: Frontiers of Science, plus two other science coursesGlobal Core Requirement: see under the Core CurriculumForeign Language Requirement: see under the Core CurriculumPhysical Education Requirement: see under the Core CurriculumNew York CityThe most culturally and ethnically diverse city in the world. The financial, media, artistic capital of the world. Living in and exploring New York City for four years while at Columbia College is like taking a cruise around the world for four years and being able to get on and off the ship whenever you want. It makes you a citizen of the world, no matter where you wind up living the rest of your life.Let’s start exploring: The Theater District—Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off- Broadway (as a student at Columbia College, you can get discounted tickets to a myriad of cultural events throughout the City). Lincoln Center, home of the New York Philharmonic, the New York City Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera, the Lincoln Center Theater, jazz, modern dance, film, festivals. Art Museums—The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), The Whitney Museum, The Guggenheim Museum, The Frick Collection. The Financial District—Wall Street, The New York Stock Exchange. The American Museum of Natural History. Sights: Central Park, Ellis Island, Statute of Liberty, Grand Central Station, Empire State Building, The Cloisters, The Bronx Zoo, Yankee Stadium, the Brooklyn Bridge, The Staten Island Ferry, Rockefeller Center, Times Square, National September 11 Memorial, Chinatown, Little Italy, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, Riverside Church, Grant’s Tomb, One World Trade Center, The Garment District, The Chrysler Building, The Flatirons Building, Soho, art galleries galore, the Lower East Side, Chelsea, Coney Island, 5th Avenue, all the professional sports teams, Madison Square Garden, Apollo Theater, New York Public Library, Radio City Music Hall, National Museum of the American Indian, United Nations, New York Botanical Garden, Jewish Museum, Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, Asia Society and Museum, South Street Seaport Museum, El Museo del Barrio, Museum of Chinese in America, Diamond District, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Harlem, Greenwich Village, all kinds of ethnic foods from around the world. Not to mention internships available in virtually any profession you can think of. Well, this is not a complete list, but you get the idea.The 2018 admit rate for Columbia College was 5.5%, making it the third most selective school in the nation. Out of over 40,000 applicants from across the country and around the world, only 2,048 were admitted.