CURRICULUM & COURSES

"All good teaching entails some kidnapping."
– Mark Edmundson, "Teacher: The One Who Made a Difference"

The Watauga Global Community curriculum is consciously and deliberately interdisciplinary, designed to teach you to adopt integrative habits of mind and to manage your everyday practice as an integrative way of being.

The curriculum fulfills some of Appalachian's general education requirements: First Year Seminar,  First Year Writing, Sophmore Writing, and various themes in the historical/social, local-to-global, and aesthetic perspectives. First year Wataugans will take Investigations: Local in the fall and Investigations: Global in the spring.  Tangents are sophomore level courses, although freshmen can take them whenever there is available space.  The capstone course is an interdisciplinary, junior-level seminar which must be taken in your junior year.

INVESTIGATIONS: LOCAL

This six semester-hour class has both a common and a linked component, combining skill-building workshops, collaborative group projects, and specific academic content.  You will learn the investigative techniques of interviewing and research and how to evaluate and document the results of your searches.

In the middle of this class block, from 12:15 until 1:45 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we all gather for lunch and common time in the Great Hall.  Occasionally events are scheduled at this time, but in general this is relaxed social time for students, faculty, and staff.

The main focus of the class is reflected in its name: you will explore, investigate, and research issues in Watauga County relevant to the academic focus of the class.  Your community-based research and collaborative group work will result in a creative presentation at the LLC Research Day in December.

Investigations: Global

The spring core class is structured just as the fall core class.  The content of the linked classes will focus on global issues in a specific part of the world (Eastern Europe, Iraq, Uganda, Native American, etc.).

General goals of Investigations: Local and Investigations: Global:
1.    Build your investigative and research skills
2.    Introduce you to Watauga County and the important issues faced by local residents
3.    Introduce you to global issues that are relevant to Watauga County
4.    Increase your global awareness as you move toward global competence
5.    Increase your reading, writing, and analytical skills and your ability to work effectively in small groups

Tangents

Tangents are three-hour, sophomore-level interdisciplinary seminars on a variety of topics.  These classes incorporate aesthetic, social and historical, and local to global perspectives, allowing you to understand specific topics in a variety of contexts.

Junior Seminar

Every semester there will be an array of junior-level, interdisciplinary seminars available as a Watauga capstone course.  Some will be designed specifically for Watauga students, and others will come from a variety of programs and departments.