What Was Your Favorite Course in College and Why?

JAMAAL BARNES, ED.M.'11, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF ADMISSIONS
My favorite college class was freshman Ancient Greek; it was a blast learning with my peers and translating texts like Plato's Republic. However, no matter how much I studied, it was still all Greek to me!

HEATHER MCCORMACK, ED.M.'15
Grassroots Community Development at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst. It was unique in that it was a studentrun class founded on the Freirean concept of critical praxis. It engaged us in hands-on community service projects while also requiring us to actively reflect on our positionality and identity in community-centered social justice work.

ANJALI ADUKIA, ED.M.'03, ED.M.'12, ED.D.'14
My favorite course in college was Cell and Structural Biology 308: Immunology. It ignited my imagination and illustrated how even micro activity in our body can represent macro animal activity. In many ways, it helped to catalyze my entrance to the pathway of the field of education.

LECTURER VICKI JACOBS, C.A.S.'80, ED.D.'86
My favorite class was the one in which I worked the hardest. As a sophomore English major, I took an upper-level class on Milton and slaved (with frustration and fascination) over Paradise Lost. By so doing, I first became cognizant of the intrinsic rewards (including an addictive "runner's high") that disciplined literary analysis affords.

PROFESSOR ANDREW HO
In my first fall at Brown, due to a fluke of scheduling, my English Literature class ended up with only six students. My instructor, Nelina Backman, decided we should meet in a coffee shop. Line edit by line edit, she began to teach me how to write.

MICHAEL RODMAN, ASSISTANT DEAN FOR MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS
Psychology and the Law. This course, which I took in my junior year at Washington University in St. Louis, was fascinating then and particularly relevant today, given what has happened in Ferguson, Staten Island, Baltimore, Cleveland, and elsewhere.

KATHERINE CARTER, ED.M.'14, CURRENT DOCTORAL STUDENT
One course that I remember well was a class I took with Angela Davis titled Race, Gender, and the Prison Industrial Complex, where I learned that today's legacy of institutional racism in the prison system began with the conversion of slave plantations in the South into state prisons during the reconstruction period.

KATHLEEN LYNCH, ED.M.'08, CURRENT DOCTORAL STUDENT
History & Literature Senior Thesis Tutorial. I loved having the opportunity to work one on one with a faculty member on a research project, as well as to explore topics in the history of education.

MARC JOHNSON, ED.M.'99, ED.D.'15
My favorite course in college was REL 203: Introduction to Religion. The professor, the Rev. Aaron Carter, helped me understand the role of faith and reason in my religious beliefs.

MEGHAN LOCKWOOD, ED.M.'09, CURRENT DOCTORAL STUDENT
When I was a senior at Yale, I loved John Gaddis' class The Cold War because learning the history that happened the few decades before and after my birth helped me understand current events on a deeper level and to really feel like an adult.

CELA DORR, ED.M.'13
Linda Nathan's Democratic Schools. Freedom.