Summer Course Highlights

Whether you join us on campus for the beautiful Portland summer or take a UP class online, you will find something to spark your interest and ignite your passion! These are just a few of the great offerings this summer. 

First Session (6 Weeks, May 18 - June 25)

CORE 391X Coffee Deconstructed : This hands-on course explores design thinking and problem-solving through an unexpected lens: the espresso machine. By examining both the machines that brew coffee and the human systems that produce and consume it, students will develop a more complete understanding of how technology, culture, and history intersect in everyday objects.

CS 421A Artificial Intelligence : The fundamentals of artificial intelligence. Topics include: heuristic search, adversarial search, local search, knowledge-based systems, artificial neural networks, reinforcement learning, AI history and philosophy of minds.

PHL 150A Engaging Philosophy (Online): Some of the most interesting, self-defining, and meaningful questions are among the most difficult to answer. In this class, we discuss issues ranging from the existence of God to questions about our mental life, and how our mental life affects, and contributes to, our identity. We will study and critically evaluate different approaches to these topics, so that we are not merely reading or memorizing theories but deeply engaging with them, applying them to our own lived experiences and assessing their strengths and weaknesses.

Second Session (6 Weeks, June 29 - August 6)

BIO 391A/CORE 391X Birds, Bees, and Beyond: Explore biodiversity, pollination, and conservation in light of how these biological and ecological systems intersect with human communities and shared environmental responsibilities. Three weeks will focus on birds and three weeks will focus on insects.

COM 425A Radical Relationships (online): Learn about romantic, familial, platonic, earthly, and sometimes “radical” relationships through various interpersonal, mediated, and culturally-situated communication concepts and theories. Special focus is given to the ways love, care, and/or grief inform our lived experience(s) over the life cycle. Topics span philosophies of birth, death, suicide, joy, fertility, queerness, eco-spirituality, and otherness.

FA 108 The Creative Process in Performative Art (online): Explore a wide variety of subjects, including visual arts, architecture, music, theater, and film. Develop your relationship with different art forms, enhance your creativity, and improve your understanding of different perspectives and cultures. This course fulfills foundation level Core requirement.

PHL 335X Self and Identity: Studies a range of metaphysical issues relevant to the nature of personal identity and self-consciousness such as identity over time, what makes someone a person, the nature of self-consciousness, the relationship of the self to a body, freedom of the will, the development of the self in the context of society and socio-political relations.