Through SHAPE, students will encounter the humanities, arts, and sciences and examine the power each holds as a means of responding to our world…
SHAPE — Science, Humanities and Arts: Process and Engagement
In partnership with the Mondavi Center, University Honors Program, First-Year Seminars, and the UC Davis Humanities Institute, we developed SHAPE in response to Mellon’s invitation to “create new curricular and research models…demonstrating the significance of the performing arts to the teaching and research mission of your university.”
Piloting a new approach within the undergraduate curriculum, SHAPE is built around team-taught seminars in which students will encounter the science and engineering and the humanities, arts, and humanistic social sciences, integrated to express, and examine the power that each of these holds as means of responding to our world and addressing critical issues. With the SHAPE project, we are moving away from the too‐narrow specializations and knowledge sets that our disciplinary‐driven undergraduate education system can produce. We believe that participating students’ exposure to cross‐disciplinary analysis and problem‐solving will better prepare them to enter our complex world.
Upcoming SHAPE seminars for FYS
- SPRING 2021 — Envisioning Climate Futures
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Prof. Elizabeth Miller and Prof. Andrew Latimer
This seminar brings together literary and scientific ways of imagining the altered future we face. With guidance from a climate change ecologist and a scholar of literature and the environmental humanities, students will interrogate scientific works and literary works side by side. Through hands-on observation and interaction with a changing landscape, students will take the discussion of the classroom out into the real world and have a chance for sustained reflection and conversation.
Andrew Latimer, Department of Plant Sciences 
Fry Street Quartet 
Elizabeth Miller, Department of English - FALL 2021 — Slow Listening: The Art and Science of Performative Speech
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Prof. Marit MacArthur and Prof. Lee Miller
This seminar provides students with basic background in audio signal processing, the neuroscience of speech perception, and voice studies theory- including questions of implicit bias around perceived identity and auditory stereotyping. Students can benefit from thinking critically about their assumptions about cultural norms and perceived identity as listeners, and about how they adjust their manner of speaking according to context, consciously or not.
Marit MacArthur, University Writing Program and Performance Studies Graduate Group 
Lee Miller, Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behaviour - WINTER 2022 — Physics and Music
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Prof. Henry Spiller and Prof. Shirley Chiang
This seminar introduces students to the basics of the fields of physics and ethnomusicology, general discussions of the physics of music sounds, and more specific investigations of the physics and meaning of musical instruments, room acoustics, and electronic reproduction. Each student in the course will conceive of, design, and build some sort of musical instrument that demonstrates their new insights into both the physics of musical sounds and the cultural significance of musical sound systems and of musical instruments as cultural artifacts.
Shirley Chiang, Department of Physics 
Henry Spiller, Department of Music - SPRING 2022 — Enhancing the Body: Wearables for the Future
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Prof. Gözde Goncu Berk and Prof. Mitchell Sutter
This seminar explores the design of wearables using a critical perspective to envision the future of human, product and environment interactions. Students will explore design of wearables for a far future focusing on new use and interaction scenarios with an emphasis on social, ethical and environmental consequences. The goal of this seminar is multifold, 1) to introduce the recent innovations in wearables, 2) to explore their socio-ethical aspects, 3) to introduce creative idea generation methods in conceptualizing new wearable ideas.
Gözde Goncu Berk, Department of Design 
Mitchell Sutter, Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behaviour - SPRING 2022 — Problem Solving: How to Respond to the World in a Time of Crisis
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Prof. Katie Peterson and Prof. Meera Heller
This seminar, a collaboration between a poet and a veterinarian, poses the question “what can we learn about problem solving by investigating how different disciplines consider, and solve problems”? Is problem solving always solutions-based, or do certain modes of problem solving encourage a more descriptive, or expansive approach? Students will explore ways of expressing and examining problems, solvable and unsolvable and explore how "a problem" is posed in different disciplines such as science (the scientific method), medicine, poetry, politics, and the visual arts, collaborating with poet Forrest Gander and Indian sculptor Ashwini Bhat.
Pullitzer prize winning American poet Forrest Gander and Indian sculptor Ashwini Bhat. 
Meera Heller, School of Veterinary Medicine 
Katie Peterson, Department of English - SPRING 2022 — Promoting Trans-Disciplinary Scholars for the California of the 21st century
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Prof. Caporale and Prof. Deeb-Sossa
This seminar will place student learning and responsibilities as scientists in the larger context of the challenges and needs of society in the 21st century. Students in STEM, Humanities and Arts rarely have the opportunity to share a classroom and exchange perspectives on issues that affect every one of us in a variety of ways, to work together to try to develop transdisciplinary solutions (e.g. from the societal and ethical implications of advances in assisted reproduction, to the need to understand and combat global warming).
Natalia Deeb-Sossa, Department of Chicana/o Studies 
Natalia Caporale, Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior
About SHAPE seminars
- Two types of SHAPE courses: First-Year Seminars or University Honors Program courses. For more information about the University Honors Program SHAPE courses visit the “SHAPE Courses” tab on the SHAPE website: https://shape.ucdavis.edu
- Foundation funds make co-teaching possible: Each course is fully co‐taught by one faculty member from science/engineering and one faculty member from arts/humanities/humanistic social sciences; SHAPE funding complements University resources, to enable both faculty members to participate fully in the course for the entire quarter.
- SHAPE puts the resources of a major performing arts center at the disposal of cross‐disciplinary teaching teams: With the guidance of the Mondavi Center, each teaching team is able to choose a performing artist or ensemble whose work is integrated into the course curriculum during a custom-designed residency and will perform for the public at the Mondavi Center. Teaching faculty participate with the artists in public enrichment activities—lectures, symposia, Q&A’s—helping to communicate the learnings of the SHAPE courses to a wider audience.
- Courses are built around major societal issues: With UC Davis’ emphasis on an education that prepares students to address “the needs and challenges of a diverse and changing world,” faculty built seminars around issues of importance in today’s world.