This course introduces the theory of relative prices in a market system, consumer choice, marginal analysis, and the allocation of productive resources among alternative uses in a market economy. Other topics may include market power and price discrimination, public finance, the labor market and environmental policy.
Course Outcomes:
1. Discuss the role scarcity plays in defining economic choices and how individuals, companies and nations resolve these issues.
2. Describe and apply marginal principle, principle of opportunity cost, principle of diminishing returns, comparative advantage, and elasticity.
3. Analyze the relationships between production costs and cost curves.
4. Explain the mechanics of supply and demand and apply the supply and demand model to evaluate markets.
5. Discuss the efficiency and equity of both competitive and noncompetitive markets and how both are impacted by government intervention.
6. Explain, compare and contrast, and apply in context each of the basic market structures - i.e. perfect competition, monopoly, oligopoly and monopolistic competition.
This course is an introduction to families with application to personal life. It focuses on diversity in family structure, social class, race, gender, work, and its interaction with other social institutions.
Course Outcomes:
1. Use theoretical frameworks to interpret the role of the family within social process and institutions.
2. Describe the nature, value, and limitations of the basic methods of studying individuals and families.
3. Using historical and contemporary examples, describe how perceived differences, combined with unequal distribution of power across economic, social, and political institutions, result in inequity.
4. Explain how difference is socially constructed.
5. Analyze current social issues, including the impact of historical and environmental influences, on family development.
6. Analyze ways in which the intersections of social categories such as race, ethnicity, social class, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disability, and age, interact with the country’s institutions to contribute to difference, power, and discrimination amongst families.
7. Synthesize multiple viewpoints and sources of evidence to generate reasonable conclusions.
This course provides an overview of the United States from pre-Columbian North American and European antecedents to colonization, Colonial America, Revolutionary America; development of U.S. government, economy, and society to 1840.
Course Outcomes:
1. Articulate an understanding of key historical events from pre-Columbian North America and European antecedents to colonization, the development of slavery, Native American history, Colonial America, Revolutionary America and the development of U.S. government, economy, and society to 1840.
2. Identify and investigate historical theses, evaluate information and its sources, and use appropriate reasoning to construct evidence-based arguments on historical issues.
3. Construct an historical argument integrating both primary documents and secondary sources.