The Oxford Tradition

Students become full-time journalists, acquiring and perfecting their research, composition, editing, and formatting skills as they discover the varied skills now required of journalists: publishing a class magazine, running a blog, managing information on social media, and creating TV news reports. They address key topics in contemporary journalism, including ethical issues surrounding journalistic responsibility and risk in a rapidly changing environment before moving on to define and establish best practices for news consumers in an age of mistrust, rumor, and fakes. Interview access to outstanding guest speakers deepens this fascinating introduction to the world of the working journalist. Production fee of $100 US for the Major; $50 US for the Minor.

Students examine the British and American legal systems and how they reflect the values and institutions of their respective societies. Emphasis is placed on legal history and modes of thought, precedent-setting cases, current controversies, and the kind of first-hand courtroom observation that brings them to life. Each course includes visits to a court and sessions with lawyers. Major courses culminate in a formal moot court competition.

This hands-on course introduces students to key aspects of medicine and modern medical practice. Combining specialist lectures with experiments and class discussions, students learn the main principles of human anatomy and physiology, the pathology and significance of certain diseases, the main challenges that medical science faces today, and the variety and changing nature of careers in medicine.

Using cognitive, experimental, and clinical approaches, students explore the structure and function of the brain as it relates to cognitive process and behavior. Students address the principles of neuroscience, neurology, and psychiatry, learn select diagnostic techniques, and study brain injuries and mental disorders. Classroom experiments are complemented by visits to laboratories.

Students explore a host of topics drawn from major philosophical, literary, and religious texts. They consider fundamental questions through ancients like Plato and Aristotle; Oxford philosophers like Hobbes and Locke; idealists like Kant; iconoclasts like Nietzsche; and contemporary philosophers, before producing their own philosophical theses on the topic of their choice.

Photographers of all levels of expertise spend much of their time in the field, pursuing assignments designed to improve their landscape, portraiture, art, and fashion photography skills. Students exhibit their best work at the end of the program. They require their own DSLR camera with USB cable, charger, manual, and at least one 8 GB memory card.

Materials fee of $75 US for the Minor.

Oxford's famous undergraduate degree, Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (PPE), is adapted for our students. They examine the governing institutions and policies of modern Britain and contrast the British, American, European, and East Asian approaches to global problems. Students engage in practical exercises, such as a fantasy stock portfolio competition, and complete the course by participating in a mock Parliament.

This syllabus is built from the course typically taught on MBAs. Students learn to organize their lives, to create realistic schedules, to manage time-tables, and to define priorities. They learn how to collect and manage information, how to take notes, and how to condense and file them. They learn how to build their profiles, in order to leverage their growing experience and expertise as they take their first steps into the job and university markets.

This course focuses on behavior and development in a social context. Students are introduced to major themes, including stereotyping and prejudice, cross-cultural differences, the dynamics of cooperation and conflict, conformity and persuasion, attraction, and the role of the individual in the crowd. Through case studies and interactive experiments, participants gain an introduction to psychology and the ability to analyze their own peer-group dynamics.

Students explore major debating styles and strategies, engage in daily speaking exercises, orations, and dialogues, and prepare and present regular debates. The culmination of the course is a formal debate in the historic debating chamber of the Oxford Union Society, founded in 1823 and one of the oldest university debating societies in the world.

Designed for all levels of expertise, this course explores a variety of media through which students engage imaginatively. They receive formal instruction in, oils, watercolor, pastel, pencil, charcoal, clay, video, photography, and collage, among others, and spend most of their time outside the studio, capturing Oxford. Students exhibit their best pieces at the end of the program.

Materials fee of $150 US

Taught by actors and directors and working with individuals in areas as diverse as theory, technique, improvisation, voice, mime, movement, and script analysis, students discover and master the nuances of different genres as they prepare for a class performance at the end of the program.

Production fee of $200 US for the Major; $50 US for the Minor

HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis are thought to result in ten percent of all deaths every year around the world. Students will explore the biology of disease, using case studies of current outbreaks of diseases such as Ebola, SARS, and Zika. This interdisciplinary medical course investigates the biology of disease. Topics include animal models of human disease; cancer; conventional therapy and treatment strategies; the genetics of complex and simple traits; the interaction between environment and genetics; Karyotypic analysis; the molecular and cellular basis of genetic diseases; and the role of oncogenes in tumor initiation and treatment.

War has been one of the greatest forces for change in human history and continues to shape the world. Violence in the Middle East and Africa, guerilla conflicts in South America and the Far East, and the global 'War on Terror' are the most recent examples of mankind's long history of conflict and combat. While covering military history, this course also examines war from other aspects: the political, economic, social, ethical, and psychological. It examines how and why wars are fought, what has changed, and what has remained the same, from conflicts in Ancient Greece to the war in Syria.