Summer semester yields unique classes

Michael Vander Linden & Megan Hash / Washburn Review

Another spring semester has come to a close, and many students are heading their separate ways.

Some travel away, others stay in Topeka and get jobs and there are some that continue their education by taking summer classes.

Washburn has an extensive summer course program, offering a wide variety of classes in different majors. Most of the time, students only take classes that they will need to help them graduate.

However, Washburn offers several electives that can be applied for a major or taken for fun.

One of the classes that will be offered during the summer  is an eight-week course called Large Scale Printmaking, taught by Michael Hager, assistant art professor.

“The major point of the class is to produce large scale prints,” said Hager. “When most people think of printmaking, they think of it on a small scale.”

Hager said that beginning students can easily be intimidated by large scale design, but working in large scale printing is an area where students feel like they aren’t going to mess up.

“Twice during the session, we will have steam roller sessions,” said Hager. “It’s where I rent a ride-on-roller and we will go in the parking lot and pull prints. I did this a couple years ago and it was successful.”

The steam roller sessions are open for the public to watch. For more information about when the steam roller sessions are visit: www.washburn.edu/cas/art.

Another class is open to all students who want to know more about law enforcement.

Tony Palbicke, fresh off his first year teaching at Washburn, looks forward to his summer class, Police Experience.

“The premise of the class is to give criminal justice students a birds-eye view of what the different agencies look like that we’ll be talking about,” said Palbicke.

During this course, they will be taking five different trips to visit different law enforcement agencies: week one is local, week two is county, week three is state, week four is national and week five is military.

Unfortunately, this class is filled up for the summer. However, there is a sister class that can still be joined: correctional experience. The classes are very similar formats, but the correctional experience will visit correctional facilities rather than police facilities.

“I come from law enforcement in Illinois,” said Palbicke. “So I’m excited to compare the two states and to put names with some of the faces around Kansas law enforcement.”

Some may not be interested in law enforcement, though. A large group of people enjoy topics like music. If one were interested in music, they may want to consider taking the online course, The History of American Rock and Roll.

Catherine Hunt oversees this class and is really impressed with the passion that students bring to it, not only about rock and roll, but with other genres, too.

“I learn so much from the students about every type of music that is out there,” said Hunt. “It’s fascinating to hear of what is out there and to hear why people are so attracted to it.”

The focus of the course may seem like an unusual combination, but according to Hunt, there are many correlations between rock and roll and the history of the United States.

“There are so many sociological contexts, as well as historical contexts that it really is an art form,” said Hunt. “The young generation does not see that sometimes and we want to show them and help them understand why it is important.”

Unlike both of these classes, which are general education, Duane Hinton offers a class that specializes for senior biology students. Human Cadaver Dissection may be one of the most unusual and interesting classes taught during the summer.

During the middle of the year, Hinton sends out an e-mail to figure out what students are interested in taking the classes. Once he has a number, he begins choosing students based off of his criteria and the suggestions of other professors in the department.

Eight students are selected to participate in this class, where during the summer, Hinton uses hands on techniques to help remove parts of the cadaver that can be used for teaching methods in the human anatomy classes.

“We have eight sections of human anatomy, and you can’t learn everything about the human body from a computer or textbook,” said Hinton. “Our students take the steps to get used to the cadavers, and then we perform the dissections to get the best possible instructing tools for students to learn with.”