The Immersive Experience

This course focuses on immigration and the impact of economics, politics, geography, and society on a family’s decision to emigrate from their home country. Through the book Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario, students learn about the benefits and drawbacks of immigrating to the US, from the harrowing journey itself, to the separation of families, to finding one’s way once an individual arrives in the United States. Students also learn to better understand the immigration experience through in-depth research, conducting an interview, and writing a narrative. Through listening to and recording (both audio and written) the stories of others, we learn that diversity begins with the experiences of individuals.

In this field-based physical geology course, students explore the rocks, hills, and waters of the greater San Francisco area up to Point Reyes. Fieldwork includes hiking and camping. At each locale, essential observations will progress from the micro of rock identification to the macro of formation type and forces. With their growing skills in physical observation and understanding of geologic forces, students will write detailed field reports and create a final project that explains an aspect of the unique geology of the Bay region.

To learn how culture influences thinking and behavior, students begin by reflecting on their own personal narrative around culture. They also learn how to carefully observe and analyze human interactions in order to recognize and remove assumptions connected to culture, ethnicity, nationality, and other identity markers. Students visit several Bay Area neighborhoods and hear from residents and historians. Final projects explore the question posed within different contexts, including religion and ethnic identity.

This course explores the artistic traditions that emerged in Islamic art with the absence of figural representations, which are generally considered forbidden in Islam. Geometry, calligraphy, and biomorphic design are all disciplines of Islamic art. The class studies constructions, symmetry, and tiling groups in order to better understand the ways that geometry can be used to create works of art, and the ways in which art can help us understand geometrical relationships.

How can mathematics help us to model characteristics and phenomena we observe or imagine? How does the iterative design process relate to both our work in mathematics and the creation of a digitally animated film? Using Pixar films as a starting point, students learn about the stages in the digital animation process, from character development to fine-tuning animations. The class takes local field trips, hears from professional animators, and does a workshop at the Disney Museum. Using digital animation tools, including Tinkercad and Pixar in a Box, students learn to create their own animated figures.

In this course, students will write and read widely, exploring various aspects of poetic craft, including imagery, metaphor, line, stanza, music, rhythm, diction, and tone. The course will focus primarily on the rich and varied tradition of American and British poets, with a special emphasis on contemporary poets exploring the intersections of cultural identity, nationhood, race, gender, and sexuality. The first half of the course will consist of close reading of a selection of poems, while the second half of the course will consist of workshopping student writing. Through peer critique, students will respond closely to the work of fellow writers in a supportive workshop.

This class seeks to answer the question, “Why do we still read Shakespeare?” Each section studies various adaptations of two plays, from classic renditions to pop-culture takes. After close study of the text, students collaborate to create their own short adaptations—from writing the script to creating the set.

What is it like to live the day-to-day life of creating, brainstorming and experimenting in one’s own studio? Students will spend time assembling innovations for an exhibition, a publication, a performance, or a product launch. This Immersive takes the concept of the “classroom education” and radically transforms it into “studio practice” – embracing the concept that a maker’s intensive inhabiting of a personal space enables their creations to go to a deeper place. Each student enrolled in the course has a dedicated “studio” and a wide array of walls, tables, floors and ceilings to call their own. The course starts with students exploring how their quirky obsessions can be realized in multiple dimensions and media: drawing, sculpture, poetry, film, acoustic musical performance or political theater, comic books or t-shirt-logos, with each student eventually distilling their initial experiments into a single medium for a 10-day-long “Final Exhibition” project. Rather than placing emphasis on the “how-to’s,” this creative studio course encourages students to dig deeply into their own practice of making: experimenting, reworking, fine-tuning. The student is the teacher, and the Bay faculty is the studio-assistant. Students enrolled in this Immersive should arrive on the first day with a sketchbook filled with ideas of what they’d like to build, to paint, to photograph, to write a story about, to compose a suite of songs to and this initial seed will grow into a wild forest over the course of the Immersive.

Students step into a laboratory-kitchen to analyze the science underlying fundamental cooking techniques. Principles we study include thermal energy transfer in browning reactions, the intermolecular forces involved in emulsions, and the chemical reactions underlying bread, cheese, eggs, and pickles. Students will also have the opportunity to design and execute dishes of their own choosing. 

Click here to learn more about the chemistry in this course, from teacher Julie Spector-Sprague.

Contemporary art takes a diversity of stylistic approaches to interpreting our world from the super-realistic to the expressively abstract and from the politically charged to the evocation of overwhelming beauty. What kind of art are you drawn to? This course uses the rich collections of the art museums of San Francisco as its classrooms. These museums reveal the evolution of modern art from the nursery school of Realism into the elementary schools of spiritual expressionism and formal abstraction, growing into the exciting diversity of approaches in contemporary art. Students will develop an understanding of the strategies of modern painters, sculptors, photographers, and architects via the lenses of close study of the art and researching 20th century art movements. Most importantly, students will make art that mimics the strategies of early 20th century sculptors, painters, and photographers. By putting themselves into modern artists’ shoes, and mimicking their artistic practices, students will invigorate their understanding of this revolutionary period in art history. In the end, students will see how contemporary artists interpret the world—its politics, its beauties, its tragedies—and will develop their own personal languages for reinventing their own worlds.

Students get to live as professional astronomers while using the Tuolumne Skies Observatory near Yosemite. The course will start at Bay learning the basics of how to run our research-level observatory, and then spend at least four nights at TSO. We sleep during the day and work at night, learning telescope operation skills, astronomical data collection, image processing techniques, and data management skills. Students will run at least two types of projects: one as individuals with their own data and one in a group using archival data from public data sets. Students search for exoplanets and look for novel projects to do with our equipment. For Exhibition, students present some aspect of their work from the observatory; examples include creating a light curve, studying and discussing a scientifically interesting object, or creating a polished astronomical image. 

This Immersive studies the atmosphere by launching high-altitude weather balloons to the edge of space. Students make predictions about measurable characteristics of the atmosphere, then put together the hardware and software that will test their hypotheses when the weather balloons are launched into the stratosphere. Launching and retrieving the balloon payloads is a day-long endeavor, rewarding and frustrating. Before launches, students collaborate to prepare and execute a single-opportunity experiment, and try to plan for and mitigate unforeseen complications in the field. Essential questions guiding our work include: How can we study (and refine our study) of the atmosphere? How do weather balloons work? What things can we study in the atmosphere? How can we study them?

The Bay Area is home to an amazing food scene. From the variety of farms to the amazing diversity of restaurants, the Bay Area is foodie heaven! There are also a lot of questions about how and what we eat, as well as, what's happening with the people who grow and prepare our food. This course seeks to help us understand where our food comes from, how it gets to us, and what the future of food might be. Students will visit with people and places engaged in the modern food chain such as growers, farmers, farm laborers, distributors, inventors, scientists, food justice advocates, and chefs as we look at questions of sustainability, identity, nutrition, food politics, and taste. Essential questions include: What is factory farming? Is there any future for the family farm? For the planet, should we all be vegan? How did science and modern food change our palates? Is a $200/person meal ethical?  What defines a "nutritious meal," and is that available to everyone equally? What is the role of food in identity? in "othering?" What is the role of grocery stores and food marketing (social media) in helping to define our tastes? What does it really mean to "eat local?" There will be local field trips, interviews, and the opportunity to cook! Students will also "consume" various media on food, from essays to podcasts to book excerpts. The course will culminate in a Food Symposium where students will share their research and position on an essential Bay Area food question.

What is it like to work in a biotechnology research laboratory? How can the skills that students learn in Bay’s core science courses be applied to the “real world” of scientific research in a rigorous lab-based setting? Students in this course undertake a deep investigation into molecular biology and into the professional skills required to work in the technical field. On Day 1, students enter one of Bay’s science labs to find the classroom space transformed. Welcome to the Bay Biotechnology Laboratory! Lab benches are set up with pipettes, table-top centrifuges, PCR thermocyclers, incubators, electrophoresis apparatuses, and so on. Students then follow a brisk training schedule in a research laboratory environment, beginning a series of preliminary projects to test and extend their laboratory skills. More specifically, they work on cloning and analyzing the gene GAPC from a plant of their choice, using modern methods of biotechnology. The GAPC gene codes for the key metabolic enzyme glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH), an enzyme present in all known organisms.

The essence of Buddhism is to awaken, to be free in the midst of this changing world. Buddhism has a long and rich history from ancient India to the Bay Area. We study that history with an emphasis on how Buddhism has impacted the West, revolutionizing disciplines from neuroscience and psychology to education. Topics include Buddhist ethics, the Two Truths, the Eightfold Path, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, and the profound teaching of Dependent Origination. To understand these concepts, students spend time practicing mindfulness meditation, reading primary sources and practitioners’ perspectives, visiting local Buddhist communities to hear from practitioners, and applying their understanding and knowledge to academics, personal experiences, and the everyday world.

Students explore the forces that create the grand features of California: the Cascade range, the Sierras, the Central Valley, the San Andreas Fault, the Coastal Ranges, and the Salton Sea. Through this course—much of which is spent camping—students build an integrated, live understanding of these regions, the formations they are made of, and how these formations interact with one another. Assessments will include regular quizzes, a comprehensive field trip guide, and a visual representation of the California underground. Essential questions framing our study include: How do geological regions relate to one another? How far can a rock formation extend? What are the sources of volcanism in the state of California? Why is there so much gold in the Sierras?

This course is a historical and socio-cultural analysis of some of the significant people, places, and events of America’s Civil Rights Movement. At the center of this Immersive is the notion that “place” is vital to understanding. Therefore, we teach the course largely in the South, learning from the historical sites that generated and propelled the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Some of the locations we may visit include Martin Luther King Jr’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where the late John Lewis led Civil Rights protestors across the bridge in 1965. The course will provide a foundation for the academic study of the Civil Rights Movement, with a particular focus on the historical and contemporary implications of the movement within the context of social justice and community-building. Students will be able to contextualize other social movements of the 20th century and recognize the importance of those movements in today’s society. 

Construction Techniques is an overview of the construction trades, with integrated mathematical content. Students will use conventional measurements techniques, safely use hand and power tools, understand the necessary calculations and characteristics of typical building materials, learn basic carpentry and framing, and be introduced to electrical wiring and plumbing. Students demonstrate responsibility for personal, occupational safety on the job site. Students will learn about basic blueprints and plan reading. Students will also learn about construction careers and the role of unions in the construction industry. Coursework will be research and project-based, developing teamwork andproject managementskills. The culminating project will be a house design project: scale modeling, sketches, rough blueprints, materials lists and pricing, personnel needed, and in-class presentation.

With the world online, how do we ensure everyone has access to information safely and that our data is not shared with unintended parties? This course will cover: cybersecurity fundamentals, security awareness essentials, how to prepare for a career in the cyber industry, representation of hacking in media, the hacker ethos, and hacking ethics and law. While there will be lectures and videos, the majority of the course will be hands-on, project-based work, and prior experience with a programming language (preferably Python) is recommended. Students will be assessed by competitive hacking challenges, wargames, and Python scripts. At the end of the course, they will present their solutions and writeups on GitHub blogs that they will create during the course.

This course will provide a workshop environment for students to learn about social dances from the Caribbean region of Latin America, including: Salsa, Son, Bachata, Cumbia, Cha-cha-cha, Mambo, and Merengue. Students will learn to identify and dance to a variety of musical forms, gaining fluency in partner dancing skills, while learning about the social and cultural heritage of each form. For greater context, students will read, listen, view, discuss, and write about the history of Caribbean dances, their confluence of cultural influences, traditional roots, modern evolutions, quintessential songs, lyrical poetry, and musical storytelling. This course not only introduces students to the world of social dance but also prepares them to actively participate in, and contribute to, Latine communities through a shared musical appreciation and joyful expression of movement. The Four Domains of Global Competence—investigate the world, recognize perspectives, communicate ideas, and take action—will guide students’ project-based inquiry into why so many elaborately nuanced and detailed dances originated in the Caribbean, and how they have evolved to become some of today’s most popular partner dances worldwide. Students will perform rehearsed choreography and will also improvise (solo and with partners). They will learn how to identify a wide variety of musical genres, describe specific instrumentation, play distinctive rhythms with traditional percussion instruments, enhance their proprioception (body awareness), develop musicality, and dance in multiple roles as both leader and follower with consent and respect.

Poet Rainer Maria Rilke encouraged readers to “be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves… Live the questions.” This course will explore film as a modern medium through which to love and live timeless questions. Students view, write about, and discuss a selection of fictional and documentary films, analyzing the techniques that filmmakers use to tell their stories through sight and sound. Students will produce a brief video essay in which they describe how filmic techniques advance inquiry of an essential question in a film of their choosing. 

This course offers a thematic exploration of the evolution of the book, tracing its development from manuscript traditions to contemporary multimedia forms. Students will read and analyze a range of literary forms, including digitized manuscripts such as William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, hits from the popular book market such as Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, and innovative media such as zines, podcasts, and book art. This unique immersive experience includes conducting literary research in library archives (online and in-person), producing art and creative writing in studio, and culminating with a visit to the Art of the Book exhibit.

This class goes through all the stages of filmmaking: pre-production, production, and post-production. We spend a week on location learning how to shoot from a script. During this time, actors gain firsthand experience on a set and in front of a camera, while crew members learn what it takes to be part of a film team. After the shoot, students return to school to edit the footage into a cohesive film. This course explores essential questions such as the role of the three-act structure in telling stories in film, why film is the best medium for telling certain stories, the aspects of the filmmaking process, and how style, mood, and emotion can be conveyed through film.

Fire Ecology covers the role of fire in fire-adapted western US forests, at the scales of individual trees, communities, and ecosystems. Through field trips, lab exercises, and student-led projects, we will learn the essentials of different fire regimes and fire behavior across California. The class will also critically examine current management practices to reduce the negative effects of fires on communities and ecosystems. We also discuss climate feedback loops that are changing fire patterns and the implications of these on forests and communities across the west..

Flying cars? Mars colonies? How did people in the past imagine the future? Why did they get things so absurdly wrong? What did they get uncannily right? This class explores the history of the future through literature, film, and other cultural artifacts. Students visit places where formerly cutting-edge technologies are being kept alive; examine the connections between technologies like the wine press, loom, printed book, and computer; and engage in the process of “strategic foresight” to make predictions about the year 2056 and beyond. Areas of inquiry include AI, food systems, and energy.

This interdisciplinary course delves into the multifaceted history and impact of the California Gold Rush, blending elements of geology, environmental science, and humanities. Students will explore the geological processes that led to the formation of gold deposits, examine the environmental consequences of the Gold Rush, and analyze the profound human and societal changes that occurred during this transformative period in California's history. This course aims to provide students with a holistic understanding of the California Gold Rush, encouraging critical thinking, interdisciplinary connections, and a deeper appreciation for the complexities of historical events and their enduring impacts on society and the environment.

How are newspaper crosswords made? What vocabulary, language, and structure choices make crossword puzzles satisfying to solve? In this course, students will solve crosswords, construct crosswords, and investigate the cultural history of the crossword puzzle in the United States. We will find out historically who has gotten to write the crossword puzzles and who the crossword puzzle has represented. Each student will construct their own crossword puzzle and submit it for publication. We will view the construction as a creative project, with feedback cycles, revisions, and editing. Puzzles will be written for a variety of audiences, and students will practice soliciting, receiving, and incorporating feedback. This course will involve reading and writing: students will read books, articles, columns, and blogs in preparation for discussions. Students will learn how to write effective clues using grammatical conventions for various audiences. They will also write longer form pieces, including but not limited to constructor’s statements, reviews, and essays.

Learn about the structure of and the organisms that reside in the Bay Area Estuary, as well as the Pacific from Marin to Monterey. Along with this survey of the varied life we find, we will look at the diverse processes that support this life, from the oceans to the intertidal to the deep sea. Beginning with the smallest organisms, students investigate the life cycles and evolutionary connections among different phyla of marine organisms, including humans. Special topics incorporated into the course include current issues in marine environmental management and conservation, and how these are connected to climate systems. Lab and field work is an integral part of the course; possible dissections may be included in the lab portion of the course. 

In this interdisciplinary math and social studies course, students explore voting and representation, the fundamental features of democratic government, through a mathematical lens. Students learn about the history of representational government as well as analyze current election and representation systems. The course examines a variety of voting and representation schemes that are currently in use or that have been proposed, and looks at how these methods influence election strategies and outcomes. In addition to democratic systems themselves, students learn how representation is distributed to each state and how changes in the creation of districts may influence the outcome of elections. Essential questions guiding our study include: What is the function of representation in a democracy? How can/should groups of people make decisions? How can an individual make an impact on policy?

This course examines different family structures and dynamics through American visual art, literature, television, film, and various forms of nonfiction. Students explore how gender roles have changed throughout history and have been socially constructed. Exposure to the different interpretations of family encourages students to understand their own family makeup and their place in it. Class sessions include field trips, visiting artists, making art, looking at art, writing, reflecting, analyzing and decoding readings, and identifying the different constructs that exist in a household. Essential questions guiding the course of study include: How have artists, writers, film-makers, and musicians explored family dynamics in their work? How do various representations of family structures/dynamics help us understand our own definition of family and our role in it?

Do you like the movie or the book better? In this course, students examine how stories change over time. In the first part of the course, students watch a movie based on Mythology and then find the oldest source material for the myth. How did the story change and why? Students then retell the story using the artistic medium of their choice. In the second part of the course, students choose a text that they like that is based on a myth and research the source material. In their final projects, students make a piece of art—music, dance, painting—in order to show what the story means to them.

Why do we read? In today’s fast-paced, data-driven, screen-dominated world, how do we read? To help us answer these questions, this course trades classrooms for campsites and heads outside with novels in our packs. Students read two novels centered on a common theme while building backcountry skills, including hiking and camping. Without technology, our days provide space for students to engage deeply with full-length novels, learning to pace our reading to build a more sophisticated understanding of a text over time. Back on campus, students dive into writing projects, and learn to craft meaningful, well-supported arguments about literature.

Why are some people wealthy while others are homeless? What can be done to solve the homelessness crisis? In this course, students will investigate the causes and consequences of wealth inequality. Focusing on homelessness (or houselessness) in the Bay Area as a case study, students become more familiar with the economic and social structures that exacerbate an increasingly dramatic gap between rich and poor, while reflecting on their own relationship to economic class. Students spend several days engaged in solidarity service learning in the Tenderloin neighborhood, and have opportunities to meet and learn from a broad range of experts.

Students are introduced to the theories and practice of argumentation and competitive debate. This course focuses on the construction of arguments from the research to presentation, exploring different models of competitive debate, including policy debate, public forum debate, congressional debate, and Lincoln-Douglas debate. For Exhibition, the class holds a long debate on an issue, with students taking positions on either side of a proposed law.

Using local literature as a vehicle for exploration into San Francisco’s diverse communities, students compose fictional short stories that construct creative counter-narratives to develop a more complex understanding of the human experience in San Francisco. The class studies a variety of genres and participates in workshops and discussions. Students learn how to center their own stories with a clear sense of place and identity, and present their works at Exhibition. The class takes several field trips and guided tours within the city.

In this course, students will learn the techniques of wilderness medicine to help patients in a remote setting until EMS can arrive. After successful completion of the course, students will be certified as a Wilderness First Responder (WFR), the industry standard certification for professional guides, trip leaders, and search and rescue team members. The course will feature hands-on practice and role-playing scenarios, including a mock-rescue event in a local wilderness setting. The curriculum for this course is determined by the National Outdoor Leadership School; certification is valid for two years and can be renewed with a shorter course.

In this project-based, interdisciplinary course, we use the tools of science and humanities to investigate the myriad ways in which humans rely on water; the political, economic, and ethical issues stemming from our need for water; and how our quest for this critical resource has led us to re-engineer natural ecosystems. Our headquarters throughout most of this course will be the Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Lab (SNARL), located several miles east of Mammoth Lakes, CA. SNARL is an active research laboratory run by the University of California Natural Reserve System, and is relatively close to iconic features in the story of western water such as Mono Lake, Owens Lake, and Hetch Hetchy Reservoir.