Core Courses
In the BIPS program, you will develop breadth through a hands-on curriculum of core courses such as Design Thinking, Systems Thinking, and Understanding Data. This builds a foundation of transferable skills that you will utilize throughout the program and beyond. Upon graduation, you will be able to:
- think critically
- analyze and interpret data
- use empathy to solve problems
- collaborate across cultures and organizations
- adapt to changing environments
- show leadership potential
Our Core Courses:
Roadmaps to Degree Success (IPS 201)
IPS 201 provides foundational program and university information for your success online in the BIPS program. Basic concepts for interdisciplinary study and people-centered problem solving are included as well as the fundamentals of higher education such as effective reading, providing feedback, group work, and career development. You will create a core course website and create a plan for project completion throughout the program. The course will also foster personal and professional development through goal setting and planning exercises.
Design Thinking (IPS 301)
Design Thinking is a creative and pragmatic path to innovation that embraces ambiguity, practices empathy for the client or customer, and learns from failure. Thus, students learn a human-centered approach to problem-solving, emphasizing experimental and collaborative learning and real-world applications.
Systems Thinking (IPS 302)
This course introduces you to some frameworks and best practices that will help you articulate your skills, talents, abilities, and experiences in a comprehensive, interconnected way visually and verbally. By exploring your life from both personal and professional perspectives, by reflecting and reframing your experiences through experiments with voice and image to discover the common threads of your story, and by better understanding your story and who you are, you will have a greater command of how you communicate your story to others in various forms.
Understanding Data (IPS 303)
Students learn to identify, analyze, use, and interpret data to solve problems and make decisions. Interactive data activities, case studies, videos, lectures, and dialogue will facilitate student understanding.
Contemporary Media Literacies (IPS 304)
Power flows through media in digital networks. To gain access to that power and mitigate its negative influence, you must understand the history, structure, and language of media. In this course, you will learn theories of contemporary media literacy as well as the concepts of visual, spatial, textual, and gestural design in order to interpret and create research products in multiple modes and situated in global contexts.
Global Awareness and Intercultural Competence (IPS 305)
This course focuses on developing a critical framework for understanding culture and its influence on daily interactions with other people. Emphasis is placed on recognizing the needs of oppressed and marginalized groups, including issues of race and gender equity. Students will examine their interconnections with groups who have a history of oppression. Students will be encouraged to show active respect toward differences in perspectives, experiences, values, and individual histories of others and will be guided to develop effective change strategies to promote social justice in their personal and work environments.
Self-Awareness (IPS 306)
This course engages you in activities that will help you learn more about your strengths, your values, and your talents. Whether you are interested in exploring a new career or a promotion, trying to decide what’s next for you, or simply fulfilling this course as a requirement in the BIPS degree program, a primary goal of this course is to enhance personal success by getting to know yourself better.
Depth of Experience
In addition to the core courses, you’ll choose courses in an area of focus that connects to your goals, the stem of the T. This allows you to build deep knowledge by practicing the skills and processes you learn in the core of the BIPS program. You will do this through the following:
- selecting an industry focus area
- exploring electives that support your career goals
- producing a self-defined capstone project
Our Focus Courses:
Trends and Issues in Health and Wellness Occupations (IPS 401)
This course explores different aspects of health, starting with the U.S. healthcare system and how a system that works only to treat us after we enter it is reinforcing illness. You will look at personal health behaviors and how those can establish preventative care; look at data-driven health goals; and look at how culture and cultural identity influence health, and the benefits of establishing a health mindset.
Trends and Issues in the Changing Workplace (IPS 402)
Explore how the ever-shifting realities of the modern world are reshaping the workplace, and the roles of the people who comprise it. Examine some real-world examples across many sectors and the lessons you can draw from these organizations and their ability to adapt to changes in the work environment.
Applied Project Management (IPS 405)
We are all project managers every day, no matter what our personal and professional environments may be. In this course, students develop foundational language and a common lexicon for the field of project management; identify different project management methodologies, from predictive to adaptive; recognize the prevalence of projects and an individual’s role in projects in everyday life; apply project management theories and strategies to real-world scenarios; build transferable project management skills to leverage within a chosen career field.
Contemporary Warfare (IPS 405)
Contemporary Warfare offers you the chance to investigate current global conflicts from multiple perspectives. The course begins by asking you to examine the definition of warfare, the key terms associated with warfare, and how both have changed over time. You will become familiar with the history of warfare, its weapons, and how wars begin and end. The latter half of the course provides an overview of ongoing contemporary military conflicts between the United States and various adversaries including China, Russia, Iraq, and North Korea. An emphasis is placed on how technology is changing the way military intelligence engages with enemies in the air, land, sea, and cyberspace. Leave the course with the ability to summarize current conflicts in relation to the history of warfare; the knowledge and vocabulary needed to discuss the moral, humanitarian, and environmental implications of warfare; and the skills needed to compile military briefs about ongoing conflicts. Military experience not required to participate in the course.
Ethical Leadership (IPS 405)
Develop your own ethical leadership perspective and connect it to your work experiences and goals. To accomplish this, you will reflect on different types of leadership and relate them to your own core values. You will identify common ethical frameworks and behaviors people bring to the workplace, and then practice developing empathy and resolving conflicts that happen when these worldviews clash. By exploring successful examples of companies that have consciously balanced the perceived tradeoffs of sustainability and profit as well as analyzing cases where there have been failures in ethical leadership, you will generate ideas for creating an organizational culture that makes failures less likely.
Science, Environment, and Media (IPS 405)
Science, Environment, and Media teaches you, through practice, to evaluate popular media topics from the lens of scientific perspective. Science major not a prerequisite!
Working in Virtual Teams (IPS 405)
Learn about the different methods to communicate and collaborate as a team when working in diverse locations. As a class, we will discuss establishing success factors, dealing with conflict, managing your project, and much more. The team project in this class is designed to give you hands-on experience on a virtual team, putting into action what you learn; and the research for the project relates to virtual communications.
Your Body of Work (IPS 405)
This course introduces you to some frameworks and best practices that will help you articulate your skills, talents, abilities, and experiences in a comprehensive, interconnected way visually and verbally. By exploring your life from both personal and professional perspectives, by reflecting and reframing your experiences through experiments with voice and image to discover the common threads of your story, and by better understanding your story and who you are, you will have a greater command of how you communicate your story to others in various forms.
Integrative Thinking (IPS 406)
Integrative Thinking is the intersection of Design Thinking, Systems Thinking, and Understanding Data. These tools and processes are applied together to address complex real-world problems and build evidence-based solutions. Students will use the 4 step integrative-thinking methodology to creatively solve problems building on the critical thinking skills they learned in the BIPS core courses.
Capstone
Demonstrate what you’ve learned in the BIPS program by creating an electronic portfolio in the IPS 410 Capstone course. You will integrate skills learned in the six core courses in a self-designed, real-world project of your choosing.
