Undergraduate Education

The Dance Program's new online course, Understanding Dance, combines online lessons and discussion forums with assignments that get students dancing and attending performances. 

UW geography students extensively researched neighborhoods along three new RapidRide bus routes in King County, then created a website to share their information with artists creating work for those routes. 

To provide more opportunities to interact with locals, French and Italian Studies' program in Italy now includes volunteer work and stays in both Rome and a small village in southern Italy.

The Biology Department has tested teaching methods that keep students engaged and accountable, even in its 700-student classes. As a result, more students are passing the courses—with better grades—than in past years. 

Working in teams with seniors from the Pike Market Senior Center, students in a course on qualitative research methods learned to embrace the "organized chaos" that is field research.

As part of a Dance Program course on teaching methods, UW undergraduates traveled to Yakima to teach dance to high school teens involved in the GEAR UP Program. 

Most undergraduates arrive at the UW with only a vague understanding of various academic disciplines and the distinct perspective that each provides. A&S hopes to increase students' awareness of various disciplines through Academic Learning Links, a pilot project for freshmen. 

Students in the course ”Fashion, Nation, and Culture” may never look at a three-piece suit the same way again. Or stilettos. Or any other article of clothing. The course explores Italian culture from the late medieval period through the present day through the study of clothing. 

Working closely with a Seattle artist with a prosthetic left arm, undergraduates majoring in industrial design tackled an unusual challenge in class last quarter, developing innovative designs for prosthetics.

How's this for a course assignment? Fall in love with a novel and three poems. The assignment hints at what's to come in Writers on Writing, a lecture course designed to remind students that "literature is a joy." 

Wanting more discussion of mixed-race and mixed-identity issues in their classes, an ambitious group of undergraduates created and taught their own course on the subject. 

Using GIS technology, geography students collaborate with community partners on projects ranging from siting Pea Patch gardens to analyzing K-12 student philanthropy.