Culture, Art, and Technology

OFFICE: Sixth College Administration Building
http://sixth.ucsd.edu/

Program Director

Hillel Schwartz, Ph.D.

The theme of Sixth College was prompted by the rich intellectual challenges at the intersection of technology and the arts as historically imbedded within diverse cultures. The academic plan develops the college theme through a curriculum that prepares students for a future that demands an aptitude for thinking analytically and moving fluently between worlds of theory and practice; the ability to adapt to rapid change; skill at teamwork; competence and enthusiasm in searching out, assessing, and integrating text, image, and sound; a critical understanding of media and the forms in which new information may be presented or underrepresented; proficiency at communicating across disciplinary boundaries; and, throughout, probity and integrity. To achieve these goals, Sixth College is creating a learning environment inside and beyond the classroom that emphasizes collaborative learning, pattern recognition, close reasoning, and creative approaches to well-defined problems through consistent exposure to methods and models from diverse fields, including the expressive and kinetic arts. Sixth College will provide the tools and momentum necessary for lifelong learning in the twenty-first century: information literacy, familiarity with digital media, the habit of seeking out and learning from those at the forefront of their fields, and the equally valuable habit of pausing to reflect upon the wider ethical and cultural implications of new theories or discoveries.

On campus and off, students will be linked in many ways—by social and local engagement, by cultural and intellectual projects—so that Sixth College becomes an identifiable, sustaining community that is always reaching out to others. More than an ethical obligation to service, the engagement with the outlying community is integral to the mission of the college to engage our students in the process of learning to listen across cultures.

Courses

Lower-Division

CAT 1. Culture, Art, and Technology 1 (4)     A global historical overview of principles and patterns of human development, with emphasis on technology and the arts. Traces causes and consequences of cultural variation. Explores interactions of regional environments (geographic, climatic, biological) with social and cultural forces. Prerequisites: Sixth College students only; may be taken concurrently with SDCC 1.

CAT 2. Culture, Art, and Technology 2 (6)    Fundamental shifts in one area of endeavor can have a profound impact on whole cultures. Examines select events, technologies, and works of art that revolutionized ways of inhabiting the world. Intensive instruction in university-level writing; featured sections on information literacy. Prerequisites: completion of Subject A requirement; Sixth College students only.

CAT 3. Culture, Art, and Technology 3 (6)    Students engage with various interdisciplinary modes of apprehending the near future. Working in teams on community projects, they are challenged to listen and communicate across cultures and develop cogent technological and artistic responses to local problems. Writing and information literacy instruction. Prerequisites: completion of Subject A requirement; Sixth College students only.

CAT 4. Culture, Art, and Technology 4 (2)    Students will work in project teams to explore the prudent and appropriate use of software applications to gather, process, shape, and communicate information. Topics may include critical examinations of computer-based technology, impact on privacy, ethical problems in computing, etc. Prerequisites: Sixth College students only; lab attendance is not required.