Five exciting yet practical summer courses

Summer Term is an ideal time to expand your horizons. Here are five summer courses—some of which are new for 2019—that will do just that.

These courses impart knowledge you can put to use immediately and may also help you meet graduation requirements or prerequisites for other courses you’d like to take. Contact your academic advisor to see how these courses—or one of the 1,000-plus others offered this summer—can help you meet your goals.

Design Thinking for Transformation

Design Studies 341

On campus, 3 credits

May 28-June 23

Enhance your problem-solving skills and channel your creativity into exciting projects at the UW–Madison Makerspace. You and your classmates will create, prototype, and test designs that address real-world problems, from everyday annoyances to challenging community issues.

Introduction to Unmanned Aircraft Systems

Engineering Mechanics & Astronautics 601

On-campus, 3 credits

May 28-July 21

You won’t just learn about drones—aka unmanned aircraft systems (UAS)—in this course about their commercial uses. You’ll also learn how to operate them. Online tutorials and hands-on experience will prepare you for your midterm: taking the official exam to become a commercial UAS pilot. After that, you’ll take field trips to worksites that employ drones and participate in group projects where you’ll use a drone to collect data and produce commercially viable products. To enroll in this course, email [email protected].

Food and Culture

Nutritional Sciences 375, lecture 2

Online, 3 credits

June 17-August 11

Compare different cultural perspectives about well-being through discussions about food choices, dietary patterns, and more. Content experts from a variety of communities will lead the conversation, which will also explore relationships between spirituality and sustenance and biases that influence the health disparity gap.

Managing Organizations

Management and Human Resources 300

Online, 3 credits

June 17-August 11

Whether you’re hoping to work for a global corporation, helm a nonprofit organization, start your own business, or launch a career in academia, knowing how to lead teams, manage change, and build strategies will serve you very well. This Wisconsin School of Business core course covers all of those topics, as well as entrepreneurship, organizational culture, and human resources issues.

Bonus: The business school’s other three core courses—Operations Management, Marketing Management, and Introduction to Finance—are also available online this summer.

Introduction to Relaxation: Mind, Body, Spirit

Nursing 590, section 2

Online, 2 credits

June 24-July 21

Explore hatha yoga, mindfulness, progressive muscle relaxation, and other stress-busting strategies from anywhere in the world. Then use these tools to tame tension before finals, job interviews, and other high-stakes events in your future.