Courses
Note: Students participating in the spring quarter/trimester option will take the core course, a seminar class, and will have a choice between either an internship or an independent study project. The course credits received should be equivalent to those of a full quarter/trimester. Please contact ACM and/or the Registrar at your college for any questions about the distribution of quarter/trimester credits.
Core Course - Chicago: A City of Many Dimensions
Required course, 4 semester credits
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All students in the Chicago Program enroll in the interdisciplinary Core Course, which aims to introduce the concepts of place and identity in Chicago, by exploring how arts, business, and socio-political issues intertwine. This course intentionally views the city through multiple lenses, asking important questions that cross disciplinary boundaries. Guest speakers from around the city will spark discussions and reflections. Common readings and projects will prompt conversation, creativity, research, and exploration. Most important, Core Course will engage students with the city as they meet the people who are making its art, defining its culture, confronting its problems, and reshaping its business. Through the experience, students will contextualize the Chicago they live, study, and work in for the semester within its rich and complex history, while imagining how the city's identity might continue to evolve.
The theme of the Core Course is Chicago: A City of Many Dimensions. The course begins with the question "What is Chicago?" Is it a city that "makes no little plans," as proclaimed a century ago by architect, visionary, and father of city planning Daniel H. Burnham? Carl Sandberg's "city of big shoulders?" Or a "city on the make," as portrayed by novelist Nelson Algren in 1951? No matter the characterization, Chicago is a city of complexity and contradictions, noted for its natural and artistic beauty, its innovation, its self-determination, and as a place where change commands the landscape. The course provides an opportunity to begin a discussion, engaging students in an ongoing conversation that views the city with hindsight into the past century and insight into current issues centered on contemporary interpretations of identity, power, beauty, and place. By questioning their assumptions about Chicago, students will discover themselves as transformed agents of change in the arts, innovators in business, and individuals reshaping their communities.
Arts Seminar: Art and Experience in the City
Elective course, 4 semester credits
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This course will provide a broad and deep cross-section of Chicago’s art, dance, literary, music, and theatre scenes. Designed for experiential learning, this course will take students to many of the city’s arts venues and events; students will attend presentations by Chicago-based guest artists and explore the neighborhoods and haunts of historical figures from the city’s artistic past. Students will explore the inter-relationships between artistic disciplines and between the arts and communities in which they currently exist. The course includes academic readings, regular in-class exercises, multi-disciplinary individual and collaborative artistic projects, and group critiques. This course searches out the authenticity of the arts culture in Chicago and promises exposure to myriad contemporary artistic endeavors.
Entrepreneurship Seminar: Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Elective course, 4 semester credits
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The city of Chicago has produced a plethora of innovative and successful for-profit and socially focused entrepreneurial ventures. In many ways, Chicago-based firms have been leaders in creating business models and approaches to problem-solving that have become a standard across the globe. Chicago is an ideal “laboratory” in which to study entrepreneurship and innovation. This seminar will introduce this concept of entrepreneurship as a thought process, an attitude, and a behavior. Because creativity is the foundation of innovation and therefore a key characteristic of successful entrepreneurs, this seminar will emphasize the creative process in a business context. In order to develop active practitioners rather than mere observers, students will engage in exercises and assignments that allow each student to flex his/her uniquely creative muscles. Real-world case studies, presentations, and interactions with a diverse group of local Chicago-based entrepreneurs will provide solid experiential learning opportunities. For example, students will construct a start-up entrepreneurial enterprise that includes a competitive analysis, a marketing plan, pro-forma budgets, and financial projections that will be “pitched” to a review panel of potential investors.
Urban Studies Seminar: Human Rights and Social Justice - Food for Thought, Hunger for Justice
Elective course, 4 semester credits
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The central work of this seminar will be to explore how Human Rights are fostered in the urban American context. Since the founding of the city in the 1800s, the Chicago experience has been one of struggle around a multitude of competing interests to realize the human rights of women, people of color, immigrants, religious minorities, the disabled, sexual minorities, etc. Chicago has also been the center of creative reform and change, positively affecting the American social landscape. From Nobel Peace activist Jane Addams’ Settlement House and juvenile justice reform movements, to the role of culture in neighborhood development and sustainability, the ingenuity of Chicago’s people continues to make social change possible. This seminar will look at contemporary social and human rights issues, with a special focus on how social justice strategies engage the imagination and ingenuity of marginalized groups to be more self-determining of their futures. The course will focus on a series of current Chicago case studies (for example: gender justice, race/ethnic relations, education equity) to illustrate how institutional practices shape the quality of life for these groups, and to define the creative processes that communities may employ to achieve justice and self-determination. The seminar will incorporate a variety of guest speakers, field studies, selected readings, and simulated class exercises to engage students in developing an understanding of these issues, and to encourage them to see themselves as vital agents of social change. Other recent seminar topics have included Media, Race, and Politics; Making Peace and Restoring Justice; Chicago Divided: A Study of Racism; Faith and Social Justice; and Issues of Women and Housing and Justice in Chicago.
Independent Study Project
Required course, 4 semester credits
Students have the option to explore creating an Independent Study Project (ISP) in an area of their interest. These ISP's can take various forms: A) Scholarly—Developing a research question and utilizing primary and secondary sources to support analysis and conclusions; B) Creative—Developing a project that involves some form of creative expression and contains a specific purpose and is meaningfully connected to the final body of work; C) Professional—A focus project that provides a valuable contribution to an organization such as developing training materials or evaluating the feasibility of a promotional campaign; D) Experiential—Active engagement and exploration around an issue, organization, or skill development. Examples could include social action projects or certification in a specific skill or technique. While the forms may vary all projects must be contextualized within Chicago. All students will share their final projects at the end of the program.
Internship
Required course, 4 semester credits
Click here to see a course syllabus
The internship offers students the opportunity to gain practical and professional experience working inside a Chicago organization in their area of interest, as well as to learn how the city works and how they may contribute its quality of life. Chicago is a working class city, a professional city, a global city, and an artistic city. Hundreds of opportunities await students in the fields of business, art, social service, politics, education, urban planning, law, medicine and health care, recreation and neighborhood development, and more. For a total of at least 150 hours (at least 12-14 hours weekly), students will work with, and be supervised by, professionals to gain valuable work skills. Discussion groups and writing assignments facilitated by the program faculty will guide students to contextualize and reflect on these experiences as they consider their future professional careers.