Courses in the FIG:
UGST 109 FIG Seminar
TIME | BUILDING | CRN | 1 Credit
Dream of launching the “next big thing” from your dorm room? Follow in the footsteps of innovators like Melanie Perkins (Canva) or Iman Abuzeid (Incredible Health) by joining Startups from the Ground Up. In this hands-on course, you’ll explore the fast-paced world of tech startups, gain real-world entrepreneurial skills, and learn what it takes to turn an idea into impact.
CS 110 Fluency with Information Technology
Science (>3) | Monday/Wednesday/Friday | 16:00-16:50 | 100 WIL | 11547 | 4 Credit
+Lab | Friday | 15:00-15:50 | B026 KLA | 11553
CS 110 is about the digital world, the study of computer-based information systems, and computational thinking.
Computational Thinking (CT) is a way of solving problems that draws on concepts fundamental to computing. In the information age, CT is a requisite skill for everyone, not just computer scientists. From logical thought to programming, database concepts to website architecture, information privacy and security to networking and multimedia, CS 110 is designed to help you understand how computational thinking can be used to transform information into knowledge in your field of study. CS 110 helps you develop computing capabilities suited to all careers in the 21st century.
Students create websites using a project-based, hands-on approach to web development. Students learn the basic HTML elements, and how to deploy them to produce visually appealing web pages. This part of the course emphasizes on page layout, user interface elements and mechanisms, and responsive web design.
CS 110 is the first course in the CIT minor, and serves as a recommended prerequisite for CS 111
BA 101 Introduction to Business
Social Science (>2) | Monday/Wednesday | 14:00-15:50 | 182 LIL | 10705 | 4 Credit
This course is designed to challenge you to learn about private enterprise and to better understand how organizations operate within that environment. The course will help you understand and think carefully about the economic dimensions of your life. You have four roles in the private enterprise system: consumer, employee, owner and citizen. To make informed decisions in each of these roles, you need to understand both the basic principles of the system and its complexity.
You will begin building your understanding by studying the kinds of decisions that are made in organizations, the models managers use to help them make the decisions and how those decisions are shaped by the competitive environment. You will be actively involved in making business decisions in a competitive environment and using the underlying models to improve your decisions over time.
Your decision-making experience should help you to appreciate each of your economic roles. As a consumer, understanding an organization's marketing decisions should provide insight upon your impact as a consumer; understanding human resource management decisions should help you understand your present and future employment relationships; and understanding entrepreneurship and how stock markets work should help you understand the potential of ownership. Most importantly, building your understanding of how the whole system works should prepare you to meet your duties as a citizen with responsibility in setting the rules that shape business decisions and give definition to society.
Building understanding is like building anything else. You need raw materials and you need to engage in an active process that combines the raw materials into something new. In this case, the raw materials are business vocabulary, concepts, and models that are provided in the course. The active process will involve teamwork and in-class participation.