Houston beer and Cantonese culture: Students teach unique courses at Rice

Rice University
Office of Public Affairs / News & Media Relations

MEDIA ADVISORY

Katharine Shilcutt
713-348-6760
kshilcutt@rice.edu

Houston beer and Cantonese culture: Students teach unique courses at Rice
College Courses allow undergraduates to learn from their peers — and get credit for it

HOUSTON — (Jan. 17, 2018) — If you could design and teach your own college course on any subject in the world, what would it look like? Each year, dozens of Rice students do just that, creating syllabi, scheduling lectures and homework assignments and teaching their fellow undergraduates — all for course credit.

And each year, these College Courses become more popular, more diverse and more interesting. Most of them have waiting lists, and all of them offer a unique undergraduate experience that leaves students with an appreciation of both the subject matter and the work their professors put into developing courses.

This semester, the 25 College Courses include such diverse topics as:

• Houston Microbreweries
• The Art of Trash Cinema
• Cognitive Neuroscience and Theater
• The History of Hip-Hop
• Cantonese Language & Culture
• Blockchain Beyond Bitcoin
• The Cost of Consuming
• Beer: The History of the World in a Glass
• The Culture of Tea
• Hawaii: Beyond the Brochure

College Courses take place in the evening and allow students the opportunity to flesh out their traditional undergraduate load with nontraditional classes that range from serious (Medical Decision-Making) to flat-out funny (Intro to Stand-Up). Many of them include field trips across the city. Student teachers must successfully complete a pedagogy course (COLL 300) and all classes are approved by the dean of undergraduates prior to being included in the next semester’s catalog.

A few other universities across the U.S. offer such courses, but Rice belongs to an elite cohort of schools — including Caltech and the University of California, Berkeley — that offer credit for them.

Now in their 13th year, the College Courses are overseen by Rice’s Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE). The staff there helps students develop an average of 30 courses each semester.

“It ranges from the very scholarly to more skill-based,” said Robin Paige, adjunct associate professor of sociology and assistant director of the CTE. “A lot of the students have said that just going through COLL 300 has really helped them think about how much work it is to put together a course and, therefore, if they want to become professors they understand a little bit better.”

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For more information, contact Katharine Shilcutt, media relations specialist at Rice, at 713-348-6760 or kshilcutt@rice.edu.

This news release can be found online at news.rice.edu.

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

Related information:

Full catalog of College Courses: https://courses.rice.edu/courses/!SWKSCAT.cat?p_action=QUERY&p_term=201920&p_ptrm=&p_crn=&p_onebar=&p_mode=AND&p_subj_cd=&p_subj=&p_dept=COLL&p_school=&p_spon_coll=&p_df=&p_insm=&p_submit=

College Courses spotlighted in Rice News: https://news.rice.edu/2018/03/14/rices-unique-student-taught-courses-offer-learning-experiences-for-learners-and-instructors-alike

Center for Teaching Excellence: cte.rice.edu

High-resolution images for download:

Eric Pan ’18 (standing) taught Philosophy of Coffee for five semesters. (Credit: Katharine Shilcutt/Rice University): https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/news-network.rice.edu/dist/c/2/files/2018/03/coffeecourse-1y9gn0s.jpg

Students in last spring’s Survivor: Strategies and Social Implications course eye each other nervously before voting in a tribal council session. (Credit: Katharine Shilcutt/Rice University): https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/news-network.rice.edu/dist/c/2/files/2018/03/survivorcourse-1k7q8xa.jpg

Rice students explore chemistry, history and, of course, tasting during Philosophy of Coffee. (Credit: Katharine Shilcutt/Rice University): https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/news-network.rice.edu/dist/c/2/files/2018/03/philosophyofcoffee-w5usze.jpg

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,970 undergraduates and 2,934 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for quality of life and for lots of race/class interaction and No. 2 for happiest students by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. To read “What they’re saying about Rice,” go to http://tinyurl.com/RiceUniversityoverview.