In today's world, the private sector is the dominant engine of growth-the principal creator of value and managerial resources. If the private sector does not deliver economic growth and economic opportunity-equitable and sustainable-around the world, then peace will remain fragile and social justice a distant dream . . . That is why I call today for a new partnership amongst governments, the private sector and the international community.

-Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations

This program is intended for students who wish to learn how the private sector, working in concert with local governments, can fuel and sustain healthy, self-reliant communities. We will assess long-term ecological, cultural and economic sustainability as goals for society, and examine the resources and structures required in attaining these goals. Textbook definitions of economics suggest that it is "the study of the allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses." To the citizenry, it is about the quality of life and how people seek to improve their standard of living through the creation of wealth.

We will examine U.S. rural and urban communities that are economically, socially, and environmentally thriving, as well as those that are unable to sustain themselves. We will focus on contemporary policy issues in community development, and on analysis of natural resources and community planning, as well as on other contemporary community development policy issues. These include affordable housing, alternative energy, effective community planning, and the way in which social and environmentally responsible businesses drive the economy to make communities globally competitive and sustainable. We will review government programs, including the viability of an urban redevelopment model that relies on small community development corporations; community services organizations; and small- and medium-sized businesses that have shaped the policies and practices of successful community development. We will also examine independent, community-generated programs such as public development authorities and public ports. We will focus our attention on the question: Why does sustainable development matter?

Our program activities will include community, economic development and team- building workshops. We will examine what sustainable community development is and how to use the tools that have proven successful in community development. Book seminars emphasizing critical reading and effective presentation and community research studies will enhance our studies.

"Sustainability" and "self-reliance" are emerging trends in defining community development, as a reflection of a community's sense (Res Publica) of what will preserve and protect the community's uniqueness and vitality for future generations. This concept is embraced in the connection between healing and wholeness as described by Christopher Alexander, "a medium for creating strong good places to live which nurture citizenship and social and fiscal responsibility." Students will study how job creation, service delivery and program implementation require a conduit by which nongovernmental agencies, corporations and not-for-profit agencies can partner with municipalities for economic and community development projects. Our study will also include socially and economically disadvantaged areas and how they can be revitalized.

We will study the political-economic and philosophical developments that set the stage for the global spread of Thatcherism and Reaganism. These developments contributed to the present dominance of neoliberal globalization.

We will study Hobbes, Locke, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Rousseau and Marx, their place in the history of capitalism, and their notions of freedom, liberty, equality and the State.

This classical tradition was transformed over time by two world wars, the Great Depression, a global American empire, a robust period of economic growth, the rejection of the welfare state and the current period of economic crisis and permanent war. How did this come about? Where might it go?

We will scrutinize the workings of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization, and their effect upon relations between the poor and rich countries. We will conclude with an examination of a working model of a democratic socialist market economy.

This is a demanding, bookish and scholarly program suited only to motivated, hard-working students.

The 20th century has brought about a revolution in our understanding of the physical universe. We have been forced to revise the way we think about even such basic concepts as space and time and causality, and about the properties of matter. An important part of this revolution has been the surprising discovery of fundamental ways in which our knowledge of the material world is ultimately limited. These limitations are not the result of surmountable shortcomings in human understanding, but are more deeply rooted in the nature of the universe itself.

In this program, we will examine the mental world created by the physicist so that we can make sense out of our experience of the material world, and try to understand the nature of physical reality. We will ask and explore answers to the twin questions of epistemology: What can we know? How can we know it? Starting with the Presocratic philosophers, we will continue through each major development of 20th-century physics, including the theories of relativity, quantum theory, deterministic chaos and modern cosmology. We will examine the nature and the origins of the limits that each theory imposes on our ultimate knowledge of the world. We will read primary texts, such as works by the Presocratics, Plato, Lucretius, Galileo, Newton and Einstein, as well as selected contemporary writings on physics. In addition to the other texts, a book-length manuscript has been written for this program that will serve as an extended outline and guide to the works and ideas we will read and discuss. Fall quarter will concentrate on the period up to the beginning of the 20th century; winter quarter will cover developments during the 20th century.

No mathematical prerequisites are assumed. Mathematical thinking will be developed within the context of the other ideas as needed for our purposes. The only prerequisites are curiosity about the natural world and a willingness to read and think and write about challenging texts and ideas.

Physics of Astronomy is a mathematical physics program in beginning to advanced calculus-based physics. How do fundamental principles of physics enable scientists to discover the genesis, structure and evolution of the universe? What does physics tell us about the past, present and future of our Sun and beyond?

From the realm of our immediate senses (classical physics) to the very small (quantum mechanics) to the vast (astrophysics and cosmology), this program will study fundamental concepts in classical and modern physics, with astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology as central areas of inquiry. Key themes will include scientific model making, conservation laws and symmetries. We will emphasize understanding the nature and formal structure of quantitative physical theories. We will focus on the unifying concepts and common mathematical structures that organize diverse physical theories into a coherent body of knowledge. We will study current models of the universe, including the role of electromagnetism and classical and quantum mechanics in understanding stars, galaxies and black holes. We will examine such questions as: What is energy and how is it related to mass, space and time? How do we know that stars use fusion to produce energy? Are we learning about pre-existing objective facts (truth), or do our experimental results depend on our theories? One goal is to learn to ask increasingly sophisticated questions about "nature" and "reality."

Physics of Astronomy offers an introduction to university-level physics and calculus. It replaces the usual sophomore physics and calculus program, Matter and Motion, not offered this year.

This program is necessarily mathematical. Calculus will be learned in the context of its use in physics. More advanced students will learn multivariable calculus, vector calculus, differential equations and possibly linear algebra. The central role of mathematics in describing nature is one of the core intellectual issues in this program. Quantitative problem solving will be emphasized. Physics topics will include astrophysics, classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, thermodynamics and modern physics.

Program activities will include lectures, seminars, lab-based workshops and problem solving workshops. Students will explore questions more deeply with research projects and will augment their book learning with structured peer instruction in the classroom. Integrated seminars on new developments in physics, history, literature, philosophy and/or cultural studies of science will stimulate ongoing consideration of the contexts and meanings of science knowledge systems and practices. Students will subscribe to three journals-Sky and Telescope, Science News and Physics Today. These journals will be used in weekly discussions and in student presentations about recent developments in astronomy and modern physics. We will use our eyes, binoculars and telescopes to examine the Sun and the night sky-so we'll need to meet at night a few times each quarter.

This program will be a rigorous and demanding course of study. Students will need to devote a minimum of 50 hours per week (including class time) to their academic work.

This program is designed as an advanced program, conducted entirely in Spanish, for students with extensive prior experience with the language. We will focus on Chilean literature written during the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-90) and during the country's subsequent transition to democracy (1991-present). In particular, we will explore the ways in which the human body provided a real and symbolic space where the central rules and hierarchies of these political contexts were expressed and contested. We will read 50 to 250 pages each week in Spanish, including theoretical and historical essays, novels, testimonios, plays and poetry. We will view these literary genres within the broad context of emergent forms of resistance during the dictatorship and post-dictatorship periods (e.g., working class subsistence organizations, human rights groups, feminist collectives and so forth). We will address the following questions: What is the relationship between the context of resistance and the new literary forms that have emerged in Chile? What is the connection between authoritarianism and Chile's feminist renaissance during the dictatorship? How has neo-liberalism, Chile's economic model, affected the country's culture? What role, if any, has literature played in resistance movements and in the transition to democracy?

A typical week will include lecture, two seminars, one film session and a writing workshop. Students will write four interpretive essays on literary texts. Each student will also choose a topic to explore as a final project, which will culminate in a longer essay and an oral presentation during the last week of the program. All program work will be completed in Spanish.

This program will examine the nature, development and concrete workings of modern capitalism, with the U.S. experience as a central focus. We will also examine the transitions from feudalism in Europe and elsewhere, the foundations of the U.S. political economy, and the development of globalization, including the political and economic relations between the United States and the rest of the world. Other recurring themes will be the relationship among oppression, exploitation and resistance, both nationally and internationally, and how we have understood the interrelationship of democracy and capitalism in the past and how we understand it in the globalized economy.

Specific issues that may be explored include the transatlantic slave trade and the development of markets. We will also examine the connections among war, economics and revolution. In the modern era, we will examine the role of the corporation, domestically and internationally, the global effect of neoliberalism on migration and labor markets, and comparative capitalism in Asia and Europe. As we examine the linkage between the economic core of capitalism to political systems and social structures, we will study the role of such institutions as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization and other institutions and alliances.

Throughout the program, we will examine how social change has occurred in the past and present trends, as well as alternatives for the future. In winter quarter, students will engage in a major research project.

Students will begin their study by exploring the power of dialogue, i.e., the personal skills and the world views that might, were we willing and able, maximize our own contributions to dialogue. Then explore how the limitations of dialogue and the attractiveness of alternatives to it manifest in the deep gulfs in the United States and world society, particularly between (1) the religious right and the secular left, and (2) Palestine and Israel.

This program demands an unusual amount of collaborative work. Given the nature of the program, students will be expected to participate in conversations with classmates and others with whom they would not normally converse. These expectations are crystallized in the program's very unusual Program Covenant.

A fuller program description including the Program Covenant and all students requirements will be available on February 15, and will be e-mailed to you by the instructor upon your request. A mutually agreeable time and place will be arranged for you to obtain the required signature for admission to the program.

The Practice of Sustainable Agriculture program consists of two parts: an academic program and farm practicum. The academic portion of this program will focus on practical organic farming, including farm management, crop selection and management, orchard and berry management, flower raising, summer and winter gardening, irrigation, composting, cover crops, pastured poultry and pig management. Additional instruction can be expected in soils, greenhouse management, grafting and pruning, equipment operation, small farm economics, pest and weed control strategies and marketing. The practicum portion will give students a chance to apply their knowledge on the college's Organic Farm. There will be field trips to visit a range of different types of organic farms, including at least one three-day field trip spring quarter and a possible extended field trip summer quarter.

"Public works"-the term refers to large-scale physical projects such as roads, waterworks, harbors or refuse-handling sites. Every community needs them. Indeed, most communities could not survive without these essential projects that allow us to live together as a civil collective. How long would civil society last if the garbage weren't being picked up, if clean water were not available, and if no transportation options were available? Yet, most communities struggle over their public works, and the outcomes are very often politically divisive and environmentally destructive. As such, the term "public works" can also refer to what it takes to make our public commons work.

We are interested in how to make our public projects work for us all, environmentally, ecologically and democratically. Our central question will be: In the present-day United States, how can public projects be designed ecologically and planned/implemented democratically?

The program faculty believe that the path to good answers goes through intelligent politics/administration and imaginative planning/engineering. In other words, good answers come out of good democracy and good design. This program will develop background in what it takes to achieve good democracy and good design, specifically in the nature and practice of American local politics and administration, and the theory and practice of ecologically sound civil engineering and planning. We do not require any specific background, although students will find it helpful to have solid experience and skill in at least one of the following: expository writing, community studies, graphic communication or ecological design.

Fall quarter will be organized around lectures and workshops on politics, administration, planning and engineering topics, case studies, and seminars on American society and culture, environmental affairs and human values. We will also lay the groundwork for winter quarter involvement in real-world public works projects in nearby communities. These projects will be a major component of winter quarter, alongside continued background development in democracy and design and seminars.