Noble and Greenough School Course Catalog

This course is designed to introduce students to the overriding economic issues that confront a nation: growth, inflation, and unemployment. No mathematical ability is needed beyond the rudimentary skills of mathematics. Students are first introduced to the basic economic concepts of scarcity, efficiency, production possibility frontiers, and the laws of supply and demand. Students next examine national income, the components of aggregate demand, the Keynesian multiplier model, money and banking, the stock market, fiscal and monetary policy, the Federal Reserve system, aggregate supply, and the different macroeconomic schools of thought. The course incorporates recently published news articles and opinion pieces culled from the nation's leading publications to bring to life the theory that we are studying.

This course is designed to introduce students to the fundamental principles of economics. No mathematical ability is needed beyond the rudimentary skills of mathematics. Students are first introduced to the basic economic concepts of scarcity, efficiency, production possibility frontiers, and the laws of supply and demand. Students then investigate more advanced economic theory: elasticity, production theory and business organization, cost analysis, perfect and imperfect competition, game theory, and selected topics in labor economics. The course incorporates recently published news articles and opinion pieces culled from the nation's leading publications to bring to life the theory that we are studying. The course concludes with student-designed projects that apply microeconomic theory to the analysis of public policy.

Political philosophers have debated questions about justice, power, freedom, and community throughout history. Modern thinkers have added a concern with individualism, rights and equality. Our goals in this class will be both to appreciate the complexity of various classic texts and to use them to illuminate enduring political problems and contemporary ethical issues. The current political landscape will serve as a fitting backdrop by which to test long-held and debated theories about the state of nature, the nature of the state, the relationship between means and ends, and the role of ethics in politics.

In this course, students will learn how to take entrepreneurial ideas or innovations from the idea stage into reality. Areas of focus will include customer and market research, writing, public speaking, working within a team, and gathering and using data to inform decision-making. In the first half of the course, students will engage in the process of learning how to use the Business Model Canvas and Lean Launchpad methodology to develop their ideas. They will learn techniques for innovation, analytical approaches to research, and evidence-based systems for decision-making. Students will learn skills such as observing, interviewing, discovering problems and forming solutions using rapid prototyping. This process will include a series of readings and discussions about entrepreneurship. Students will also work with local entrepreneurs to develop real solutions to existing problems. In the fourth quarter, students will work in teams to develop their own innovations and entrepreneurial ideas using the methodologies learned during the first half of the course.

This interdisciplinary course introduces students to (1) the causes, course and consequences of genocide in the twentieth century and (2) the reasons why the United States responded as it did to genocide during that time. We will start by defining the term, studying its history and discussing the questions and patterns scholars have proposed about it – i.e., What are the politics surrounding the term? Why do states commit genocide? How do they mobilize citizens to become perpetrators? How and why do other states respond? What happens to societies in the aftermath of genocide? We will then spend most of the course exploring four case studies: Armenia, The Holocaust, Cambodia, and Rwanda. Finally, we will learn how scholars from different disciplines study genocide, and we will compare their methods, motives and conclusions. As a final assessment, students will undertake a research project about a genocide from before or after the twentieth century.

We The People: History of American Government is an intensive study of the formal and informal structures of the government and the processes of the American political system. This course includes the study of various institutions, e.g., political beliefs/parties, branches of government, and interest groups/media to become acquainted with the variety of theoretical perspectives and explanations for various behaviors and outcomes in government and politics. The course will also explore the intersection of race, specifically, in the context of these government structures. Additionally, students will then analyze and interpret “issues” in society to understand how government at different levels (local, domestic, global) identifies, examines and proposes solutions. Examples of topics covered include: counter-terrorism, opioids, sex and human trafficking, cybersecurity, education and poverty.