Shortly following my arrival at Metropolitan State University, I met Kim Halvorsen (psychology department). She and I quickly arrived on a shared vision-- a neuroscience minor. Neuroscience is a multidisciplinary field which is only broadening its base. With specialties like neuroeconomics, computational neural networks, philosophy of mind, and neuroscience of addiction to name a few, we felt it important that this minor be open to students within and outside of our respective majors. This meant the formation of a GELs level neuroscience course that would give students the necessary knowledge base to take future neuroscience courses. Beyond fulfilling the GELs goal area 3 requirement (and supporting the increased GELs 3 requirement), this course is meant to serve as the first in an interdisciplinary neuroscience minor. We hope to propose the minor later this year. A course in computer science (deep learning) has already been developed with the idea that it will be part of the minor and additional courses are topics of discussion with various departments.
Even without the minor, I am of the belief that understanding how your brain works can help you to function better. Afterall, much of what you brain does is learning. With apps out there like elumen which are said to improve brain function, it seems that the general public shares this interest.
Course Proposal
Sample Course Materials
Unofficial support of the course
Cindy Kaus Email.pdf
In Fall 2018, a CCR was submitted to allow MATH 110 (math for liberal arts) to function as a prerequisite for this course. Prior to my submission of this CCR, this was not true of any of our GELs goal 3 courses. I did submit another similar CCR for Biol 105.