The Courses
What courses am I likely to take as part of my CP/CS program?
Creatively solving complex problems requires knowledge and perspectives from multiple disciplines — what is sometimes called "kaleidoscope thinking." The CP/CS curriculum spans both your first and second years of study at Bentley. It consists of a total of 12 different courses, with six in the first year and six in the second year. The courses are degree requirements, so you are not required to take additional courses or limit your options for majors, minors, the Liberal Studies major, or service-learning.
In addition, CP/CS is integrated into both your business and arts and sciences courses. Specifically, we offer you CP/CS-designated sections of four General Business Core courses (two in the first year and two in the second year) and eight General Education Core courses (four in the first year and four in the second year). This design is intended to provide you with a dozen different ways to creatively attempt to solve the complex problem of unintended consequences of consumer choice about electronic products.
Course options vary slightly each year. A sample of the first- and second-year courses for students currently enrolled in CP/CS includes:
GB 110: The Legal and Ethical Environment of Business
The course provides an introduction and overview of the legal environment of business and e-commerce, with an emphasis on legal, governmental and ethical issues. Ethics will be introduced in the beginning and then crosscut through all the material. The course covers the legal system, the constitutional law, business crimes, torts including product liability, contracts, employment law, intellectual property, business organizations, government regulation of business, securities law and Sarbanes-Oxley, professional responsibility, environmental concerns, and international law. The course also will examine the impact of law on e-commerce.
GB 112: Tools and Concepts in Accounting and Finance
The primary objective of this course is to provide a foundational understanding of accounting and finance concepts and tools. This course takes students from double-entry accounting through to an elementary understanding of how to construct financial statements. It introduces the use of these statements as the basis for ratio analysis and budgeting. Students begin their study of the basic time value of money concepts that are the foundation for basic valuation techniques for both financial securities and projects valuation.
GB 214: Marketing-Operations Fundamentals
A strategic competitive advantage is how a company creates value for its customers. This is accomplished through five primary value-adding activities: designing goods and services; providing logistics; adopting operational processes; developing marketing and sales strategies; and providing goods and services that meet or exceed customer requirements. This course integrates the marketing and operational disciplines, introducing fundamental concepts and processes of marketing and operations management and demonstrating how effective coordination between these two organizational functions creates value for the customer, the company, and society at large.
GB 215: Human Behavior and Organizations
This course examines the behavior of people in organizations and the relationship between this behavior and organizational effectiveness. Particular attention is given to issues and dynamics that result from the increasing diversity of the workforce and the global contexts in which people work. The course introduces students to analytical frameworks for understanding and influencing individual, group, inter-group and total organization dynamics. Through case studies, self-reflection, excercises, lectures and readings, students gain the skills for working effectively with diverse people in complex environments; diagnosing managerial problems; and developing action plans that account for the impact of external stakeholders on internal organizational dynamics.
PH 101: Problems of Philosophy
This course seeks to help the student think rationally and critically about basic questions concerning the meaning of human life and our place in society and the universe, and to recognize the bearing of these questions on contemporary social issues. It exposes students to both classical and contemporary philosophical problems. Among problems for possible discussion are the existence of God, freedom and responsibility, human nature and happiness, appearance and reality, ethics and the environment, abortion and individual rights, affirmative action and equality, love and sex, and law and authority.
HI 399: American Environmental History
This course examines the interactions between human societies and the natural world in what is now the United States. Its principal goal is to introduce students to the major themes, events, scholars, and ways of thinking that together make up American Environmental History as an academic field. The course will proceed chronologically, beginning with Indian environmental practices and continuing until present day. You will be encouraged to think about environmental history as the intersection between landscapes, ideologies, and technologies. Adopting such an approach will allow you to perceive connections between disparate events and time periods.
IT 101: Information Technology and Computer System Concepts
This course provides a comprehensive and current introduction to information technology in general and computer system concepts and personal computers in particular. It focuses on the role and underlying concepts of computer technology in the information age. Personal, organizational and social implications of information technology are explored. Problem-solving skills using Microsoft Office software and the World Wide Web are also developed. The World Wide Web will be extensively used as the platform for conceptual understanding.
PS 266: Psychology of Adjustment
The course focuses on the major theories and psychological principles of human adjustment across the lifespan, including self-concept, development, motivation, stress and anxiety. It also considers human values in relation to interpersonal relationships and examines intellectual and emotional resources for personal change and growth.
EC 111: Principles of Microeconomics
This course provides students with an understanding of fundamental economic principles and tools. It presents economic analysis with respect to demand, supply, market equilibrium, costs of production, and resource pricing. The course also examines the market structures of pure competition, oligopoly, monopolistic competition and monopoly. Students will analyze the markets for labor and capital.
Expository Writing II: Advanced Inquiry in Writing
This course reinforces and advances the lessons of Expository Writing I, leading students toward understanding and mastery of the processes involved in sustained inquiry: questioning, hypothesizing, testing, re-hypothesizing, and re-testing. Students undertake an ambitious intellectual project that culiminates in a final paper in which they report on the progress they have made through extensive, in-depth inquiry. Projects may draw on library and Internet sources and/or may entail original research such as interviews, observations, surveys, and service-learning experiences.
NASC 122: Environmental Chemistry
This course provides a secure foundation of the principles of chemistry as they are applied to environmental concerns. Students explore the impact of major air pollutants on our environment and examine the causes and long-term adverse effects of greenhouse gas emissions, the depletion of the ozone layer, and the nuclear winter hypothesis. Major water pollutants are examined with special emphasis on the quality degradation of this vital natural resource. The eutrophication of water, thermal pollution, and the possible magnification up the food chain of various water pollutants is considered. The treatment and disposal of wastewater and solid waste are presented as a challenge to existing technology. Laboratory analyses of student-supplied environmental samples and and an environmental study of a local site will be undertaken.
