Courses in the FIG:
UGST 109 FIG Seminar
XXXXX | XXXXX | 16468 | 1 Credit
What helps people feel that they truly belong in a new place? What helps people live meaningful, energized, and resilient lives?
This seminar explores the science of flourishing and how students can navigate the transition to college with greater resilience and purpose. Drawing from psychology, health science, and mindfulness research, we will examine how belonging, personal values, habits, relationships, and beliefs about stress shape mental and physical health.
Research shows that feeling accepted, valued, and connected predicts stronger academic success, health, and long-term flourishing. At the same time, many students experience moments of uncertainty about whether they fit in during their first year. In this course, we will examine the psychology of belonging, identity, resilience, and social connection while building community within our own group.
A distinctive focus of the seminar is the role of play, creativity, nature, and meaningful connection in supporting learning, curiosity, and resilience. Through games, storytelling, creative exercises, outdoor exploration, and reflective practices, students will experiment with ways of engaging more fully with their surroundings and with one another.
We will also discuss contemporary challenges affecting student life, including digital culture and the growing role of artificial intelligence. Students will reflect on technology use, attention, and habits that support focus, balance, and meaningful engagement with the world.
Activities may include collaborative games, story circles, mindfulness practices, nature walks, habit experiments, and small-group discussions. By the end of the seminar, students will develop a personal framework for flourishing during college and beyond, while contributing to a small learning community focused on thriving at the University of Oregon.
PSY 202Z Introduction to Psychology II
Tuesday/Thursday | 14:00-15:50 | 14795 | 4 Credits
+Lab | Friday | 10:00-10:50 | 14808
Psychology is the systematic study of experience and behavior -- how we think, feel, and act. This course introduces psychology by considering many of the sources of influence that produce the variations and commonalities we see in human psychology. The scope includes topics relevant both to the understanding of "normal" human functioning and to mental illness. Mental illness is an important part of psychology, but many of the influences on the mind that produce mental illness are at play in mentally healthy minds too.
Topics covered in this course include:
Development - Over time, how do the physical and cognitive changes that occur in humans affect their abilities, activities, and emotions, and how are these changes similar or different to those that occur in other species? Events and influences at one point in time can predict outcomes later in life.
Personality - Our behavior often reflects stable and enduring traits that make us uniquely us. Some of these traits we are born with, others are encouraged by our environments, and some reflect the interplay of both nature and nurture.
Social influence - Human behavior rarely occurs in isolation. Much of what we do everyday involves coordination and communication with the rest of the "pack," concern about how other people regard us, and a desire to influence others' behavior.
The course takes a research-based approach to psychology, considering at every step along the way how psychologists can best empirically test their theories and add new knowledge about human behavior. Students are given a chance to hone their own observation skills, to develop and test hypotheses, and to become critical consumers of research findings.
BI 170 Happiness: A Neuroscience and Psychology Perspective
Monday/Wednesday | 12:00-13:20 | 10958 | 4 Credits
+Dis | Friday | 12:00-12:50 | 10962
Welcome to happiness: a neuroscience and psychology perspective! This course examines research in positive psychology and neuroscience that reveal the behavioral activities and mindsets that promote positive life engagement and the neural circuits that influence this. The course will examine the evidence that happiness is significantly influenced by genetics and mindset, with only a small component arising from life circumstances. Studies in positive psychology that reveal important factors in mental mindset, such as quality of interpersonal relationships, biases, resilience, growth vs. fixed mindset, self-esteem formation, etc. will be critically evaluated and discussed. The neural pathways underlying the fight/flight/freeze response, stress/anxiety, attention, reward/pleasure/addiction, conditioned fear, learning and memory, parent/child and romantic relationship bonding, compassion/empathy, and habit formation will be reviewed and critically evaluated. Methods for altering these neural pathways and their associated cognitive states, such as pharmacological, behavioral, meditative, cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness-based stress reduction, will be demonstrated and discussed. The course will encourage students to critically evaluate and assess their assumptions about positive life engagement in their own situations and to explore, through critical discussion and final projects/papers, mechanisms that may facilitate their own understanding of the psychological/neuroscience factors involved in their unique situation and how to put practices into place that provide positive growth potential.
