Thursday AM   

This hands-on course guides participants through designing and building an original tabletop or puzzle-based game they can take home to share with friends and family. Using simple materials and optional digital tools, we’ll explore game mechanics, storytelling, puzzle design, graphic layout, and the fundamentals of playtesting. Each session blends creativity with accessible technology, showing how to shape an idea into a playable experience, whether a card game, board game, or mini escape-room-style puzzle. No prior experience required. All materials provided. By the final class, each participant or team will complete a personalized take-home game.
New in-person course. Format includes hands-on learning.

It’s what we loved to do, right? Sing along to the radio, the record player and later, the new invention that gave us “Bandstand.” Some of the most singable, nostalgic tunes have been thoughtfully culled for this course. We won’t talk titles here, but we will name-drop artists such as Garland, Holly, Reeves, Armstrong, Diamond, Buffett, and Charles. Students will be emailed the words to the upcoming songs prior to each class. At each meeting, we will learn a little about the music and the artist before we enjoy the music. (Because Zoom is incompatible with sing-alongs, students will be muted only during the video during which time they may simply listen or sing as loudly as they wish!) New remote course. Format includes lecture, discussion, and film.

Lucid dreaming, the practice of oneironautics, is a way of bridging the gap between waking states and sleeping states, creating opportunities to explore the deeper realms of the mind. In this course, we will explore, didactically and experientially, ways in which we can access these deeper states and the nature of mind and reality, through videos, writings, lecture, discussion, and experience. We will learn and practice techniques to enter dream states from daytime wakefulness, and to bring dream awareness during nighttime sleep.

New hybrid course. Format includes lecture, discussion, and film.

SUGGESTED BOOK: Dreams of Light, Andrew Holecek, ISBN 9781683644354

Coffee will provide a lively lens on major past and present issues, including climate change, social life, health, global North–South differences, social and economic justice, tourism, and slavery. We will begin “from the ground up,” tracing coffee from planting and processing through shipping and, ultimately, the beverage in our cups - part of nearly two billion cups consumed daily worldwide. We will explore coffee’s global history and its shift from an elite drink to an everyday staple. Drawing on current research, we will examine coffee and health, as well as practical questions such as how more income might reach farmers and how coffee production might adapt to a changing climate. The instructor will share firsthand experiences from coffee farms around the world, discuss a range of brewing methods, and demonstrate how coffee is brewed. Sessions will be interactive, with time for questions throughout.