The Cornerstone block is the first course that all students take upon entering Quest. The purpose of Cornerstone is twofold: to introduce students to Quest, and to investigate a significant question through a variety of academic perspectives. This year, the question for Cornerstone is: what is knowledge? By investigating this question, we explore the unexamined principles and assumptions that underpin our views on science and culture. When we classify something as knowledge, we are implicitly appealing to a system of values: what is knowable is worthwhile, if not for its own sake, at least for its utility. For example, we believe that astronomy expands what we know, but astrology does not. But why? To respond that the former is science while the latter is nonsense merely reiterates the view that the one is knowledge and the other not, and so fails as an answer. We make progress on this question by investigating three sub-questions: (i) what assumptions do we have about knowledge; (ii) what is scientific knowledge; (iii) what is knowledge itself? In answering each of these, we are better able to say what knowledge is.
After the Cornerstone block, all students take a required block in Rhetoric. The theme for the Rhetoric block varies according to the individual Tutor, but all sections of this block are designed to give students the opportunity to work intensively on good writing and effective public speaking at the outset of their Quest career. Skills involved include: 1) The ability to respond to texts with attention to their strategies, effects, assumptions, and other aspects of rhetorical situations; 2) Identifying the writer's craft in a range of genres with attention to purpose, audience, and aesthetics - emphasizing techniques for writing cogent, persuasive, university-level papers; 3) The understanding of and practice in writing and research processes as well as peer review and citation practices; 4) Attending to both cognitive and social dimensions of writing; 5) Increased versatility as a reader and writer in order to analyze diverse contexts for writing and respond to them effectively. Students are also given the opportunity to create and deliver effective presentations in front of their peers. The lessons of both cogent writing and oral presenting will serve students throughout their university career and lives.
Toward the end of their Foundation Program, Quest undergraduates work with their course instructor and a faculty mentor of their choosing to develop a statement of their Question: a proposal for how they will study a topic of special interest to them. The Question guides students' attention in a sustained and rigorous intellectual inquiry during the final 16 Concentration blocks. During Question block, students reflect on their educational experience and set goals for the coming years. They begin their inquiry into their Question topic, and craft a comprehensive proposal that outlines their future area of study, courses, and touchstone readings. Questions range from the broad to the focused - What is honour? What is beauty? What are the elements of successful habitat restoration? How can we manage infectious disease outbreaks? - and are often framed in terms of several disciplinary approaches, key works and thinkers, or subquestions that will be addressed. By designing their own Questions, students construct an academic program that suits their intellectual interests, allowing them to cross disciplinary boundaries. We expect there to be as many different questions as there are Quest students.
Self, Communities and the World: Social Sciences
Democracy and Justice
Democracy and Justice examines the ideas of leading thinkers in the history of political thought and the questions they raise about the design of the political and social order. It considers the ways in which these thinkers have responded to the particular political problems of their day, and how they contribute to a broader conversation about human goods and needs, justice, democracy, and the relationship of the individual to the state.
The aim of this course is to orient the student toward contemporary problems around the world. Themes may include intercultural communications, globalization and development, international relations, and global social issues such as AIDS, poverty, and environmental degradation. It helps students become more conscious of how people can converse across cultures and ethnicities, step outside of their own experiences, and appreciate the positions of citizens from a variety of origins.
This course imparts students with a deeper understanding of economic life and government's role in it. It introduces students to economics and economic policy-making and explores the fundamental principles of capitalism. The course connects capitalist economic decision-making to both political liberalism and religious and cultural practices. Students learn fundamental economic terms and concepts as they explore the development of modern economies.
Self, Culture & Society
Students reflect upon psychological, anthropological, sociological, and geographical issues in human populations. The guiding question for a particular block could be, "What does it mean to be civilized?" In order to explore this question, we consider a range of topics investigated in the social sciences, beginning with definitions of self, culture, and society along with issues of power, rights, and responsibilities.
Imagination and Expression: Arts and Humanities
Dimensions of Music
Music has served in all known cultures as a means of social bonding and identity creation, and as a powerful medium for the communication of ideas and emotions. In this course, students develop a vocabulary for discussing music before exploring topics such as the history of Western classical and popular music; the traditional music of non-Western cultures, and the roles of music in social conflict and rehabilitation. Students also have the opportunity to create and perform their own compositions.
Fate and Virtue
In this course, we study a work of the first and greatest poet (Homer), two of the greatest philosophers ever to put pen to paper (Plato and Aristotle), and other texts from the ancient world. We examine the question "How should we live our lives?" with a particular focus on the themes of fate and virtue. And we discover why every generation before ours has struggled with these authors, and develop our own relationship to their ideas.
Identity and Perspective
What does it mean to be human? That question underlies much of what we do in the humanities - in literature, philosophy, history, and the fine and performing arts. In this course, we investigate changing notions of what it means to be human, focusing broadly on the notions of "identity" and "perspective" in the modern world. We ask what it means to have an "identity": who are we? Is our identity defined individually or collectively? We think critically about "perspective": about our own perspective on ourselves, our perspective on others, and the variety of perspectives on the human condition. Authors may include Marx, Freud, Woolf, de Beauvoir, Levi, and Morrison.
We are increasingly a global community; good world citizens should therefore respect, understand, and be able to work with communities different from their own. One of the ways to achieve this goal is to gain familiarity with a foreign language. All students must take one block in a non-native language at Level 2 or higher. Currently, Quest offers courses in French, Spanish, and Mandarin, and there are opportunities for language immersion programs abroad.
Reason and Freedom
This course emphasizes the foundations for, and the problems with, making moral choices in the modern world. Reason and Freedom develops the self-conscious nature of modernity and its belief in reason, and explores the paradoxes of our position in history. Authors may include Montaigne, Galileo, Montesquieu, Kant, Wollstonecraft, Dostoyevsky, and Nietzsche.
Religions - such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Sikhism, Shinto, Judaism, Christianity, First Nations beliefs and Islam - offer distinctive perspectives on important issues in our university curriculum. To identify these issues, students examine a selection of religious foundational texts, historical developments, and contemporary practices. The study of religion at Quest aims to understand the unique characteristics of different religions; to articulate the principles of a responsible and objective study of religion; and to explore the dynamic interaction of religion and culture in its diverse expressions.
Science, Technology and Society: Physical Sciences
This course introduces students to the workings of different aspects of the Earth system, from the Earth's core to its outer atmosphere, and emphasizes their inter-relationships and the connections between our planet and our species. Quest's unparalleled location allows us to use the Coast Mountains, the Squamish River basin, and Howe Sound as natural laboratories. The course relies heavily on field trips, first-hand observations, real geophysical datasets, satellite images, and remote observations of the Earth and other planets. Topics may include the co-evolution of life and the atmosphere, formation of the planetary bodies, plate tectonics and climate, the carbon cycle, and natural resources including water, energy, and materials.
Energy and Matter
This course introduces students to two of the most powerful intellectual achievements in the physical sciences: thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. Thermodynamics was articulated in the mid- to late 19th century, but still forms the fundamental basis for modern work in chemistry, materials engineering, atmospheric physics, among other fields. Quantum mechanics and quantum chemistry frame our understanding of how observable material properties follow from fundamental first principles. Beyond introducing students to some of the most powerful sets of ideas in the history of science, this course applies these ideas to the frontiers of science today, including nanotechnology, computer science and developing sustainable sources of energy.
Life and the Natural Environment: Life Sciences
How does evolution happen and how do we know? What and how can we learn about events that happened millions of years ago? How is evolution relevant to climate change, disease transfer, and antibiotic resistance? Students answer these questions and many others by studying the major lines of evidence for evolution, including the fossil record, natural selection, DNA replication and cell division, gene expression, mutation, heredity, and the formation of new species. Emphasis is split between learning core concepts and applying those concepts to real-world examples. Students practice the method, write and communicate science, read and critique literature, and conduct laboratory studies.
Biodiversity of British Columbia
The natural world is a complex and captivating place. From the ocean to the alpine, the forest to the this course introduces students to the organisms and ecosystems that surround us. While accessing the wide variety of habitats found near Squamish, we explore the causes and consequences of biological diversity, by documenting patterns in the and linking them to underlying processes. We immerse ourselves in the empirical and theoretical science that strives to make sense of this ecological complexity. Students are challenged to collect and analyze data, and to engage their curiosity and creativity to test hypotheses about natural phenomena across organismal, population, community, and ecosystem scales. We practice the method, write and communicate science, read and critique literature, and conduct studies.
What is Life?
Biology is the study of life, but what is life? What are its origins? How does life persist and perpetuate itself, and what is the future of life? These deceptively simple questions underpin the Life Sciences, and provide us with an opportunity to investigate both historic milestones and cutting edge innovations across all scales of inquiry, from molecules to biomes. To examine how living things work, we consider the key processes of birth, metabolism, reproduction, and death, and the physiological and behavioral mechanisms by which they are achieved. Students practice the scientific method, write and communicate science, read and critique literature, and conduct field and laboratory studies.
More than numbers and symbols, mathematics is an exercise in recognizing and articulating patterns. Students in the mathematics Foundation course engage in a mathematical inquiry that is off the beaten track of the standard math curriculum, one that allows students to develop skills of logical thinking and rigour inside of meaningful and engaging topics. Our unique set of mathematics courses from which students choose include: Mathematical Problem Solving, Spherical Trigonometry, Visual Mathematics, History of Mathematics, Modelling our World with Mathematics, and What is Mathematics?
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