During this program, Brown faculty and coaches open their classrooms and athletic practices to colleagues interested in exploring teaching strategies and techniques across the university. The Fall 2024 Open Classroom Weeks are now complete.

If you have any questions regarding Open Classroom Weeks, please email: sheridan_center@brown.edu.

Athletics

Course:  Women’s Rugby Practice
Who is the coach?  Rosalind Chou
What will I experience?  Rugby is the only full contact team sport in the world with the same rules and equipment regardless of gender and we invite you to join us for a training session with Brown Women's Rugby. You will witness an empowering game of physicality and tactical mastery as the team prepares for a game the next day, so visitors will observe rehearsing attack, sharpening defense structure, and game-like scenarios being solved in real-time. 
What is the open date and time?  Friday, October 11, 3:15 - 5:00 pm

Course:  Men’s Soccer Practice
Who is the coach?  Chase Wileman
What will I experience?  Observe the men’s soccer team’s practice.
What is the open date and time?  Friday, October 4, 3:30 - 4:45 pm

Course:  Women’s Volleyball Practice
Who is the coach?  Taylor Virtue
What will I experience?  Observe the women’s volleyball team’s practice.
What is the open date and time?  Monday, September 30, 5:45 - 7:45 pm

Course:  Men’s Water Polo Practice
Who is the coach?   Felix Mercado
What will I experience?  Observe the men’s water polo team’s practice.
What is the open date and time?  Wednesday, October 9, 2:30 - 5:00 pm

Brown Learning Collaborative

The Sheridan Center’s Brown Learning Collaborative provides opportunities for undergraduate fellows to collaborate with faculty and peer partners in key academic areas: Data Science, Problem Solving, and Writing.

Course:  Data Science Fellows (DATA 1150)
Who is the instructor?  Linda Clark
What will I experience? Data science is growing fast, with tools, approaches, and results evolving rapidly. This course is for students with some familiarity with data science tools and skills, seeking to apply these skills and teach others how to implement and interpret data science. 
What is the open date and time?  Tuesday, October 1, 1:00 - 2:20 pm 

Course:  The Teaching and Practice of Writing: Writing Fellows Program (ENGL 1190M)
Who is the instructor?  Jenna Morton-Aiken
What will I experience? Visitors will be invited to participate in or simply observe fifteen minutes of joyful writing (self-directed) for the first fifteen minutes of class, followed by a brief discussion and active class warmup/icebreaker. We'll then move to class discussion, possibly including Hypothesis or other multimodal learning, to discuss impressions and takeaways from the assigned reading.
What is the open date and time?  Thursday, October 3, 1:00 - 2:20 pm 

Course:  The Theory and Teaching of Problem Solving (UNIV 1110)
Who is the instructor?  Christina Smith
What will I experience? What is a problem and how do you solve one? What relationship exists between problem-solving and teaching? This course is designed for STEM focused students (but it is open to all) who are teaching/will teach and are interested in improving their problem-solving and teaching. 
What is the open date and time?  Thursday, October 10, 1:05 - 2:20 pm 

Humanities

Course:  Writing the Family (ENGL 1050Q)
Who is the instructor?  Emily Hipchen
What will I experience? This class examines how authors (authorized or not) use their families as subject matter, storying family and family life. Over the term, we’ll work on developing a practical and theoretical ethics of family-writing while contextualizing and practicing writing nonfiction about the family.
What is the open date and time?  Monday, September 30, 8:30 - 9:50 am 

Course:  Advanced Spanish Through Literature & Film (HISP 0650)
Who is the instructor?  Alejandra Rosenberg Navarro
What will I experience? In this special class, students from Advanced Spanish Through Literature & Film will visit the John Hay Library and, guided by curator Patricia Figueroa, have a hands-on experience with archival materials. Specifically, students will be studying Latin American zines and "cartonera" editions and analyzing how ephemeral materials are sites of art, knowledge, and culture.
What is the open date and time?  Thursday, October 10, 10:30 - 11:50 am 

Social Sciences

Course:  Investments I (ECON 1710)
Who is the instructor?  Sylvia Kuo
What will I experience? This class will be lecture-based with blackboard writing of equations and graphs. It is describing the (theoretical) optimal choice for an individual, which conceptually illustrates why an older person (who is less able to tolerate risk) will choose to invest in less risky assets than a student who can tolerate much risk. I attempt to provide as much intuition as possible to help students understand what is going on and try to pan out from the graphs/equations.
What is the open date and time?  Friday, October 4, 11:00 - 11:50 am

Course:  Corporate Finance (ECON 1720)
Who is the instructor?  Bradford Gibbs
What will I experience? This course focuses on addressing how companies raise and deploy capital. On October 7, we will be discussing, by way of an extended case study, how to value a company using "discounted cash flow analysis" and how changes in how one finances a company can change the implied "weighted average cost of capital."
What is the open date and time?  Monday, October 7, 10:00 - 10:50 am

Course:  Data and Evidence in Education (EDUC 0750)
Who is the instructor?  Emily Kalejs Qazilbash
What will I experience? Recent years have seen an explosion of empirical education research, requirements that policies be evidence-based, and rapid expansion of the use of evidence in school settings. This course will introduce students to a range of methods used to generate evidence in education. 
What is the open date and time?  Tuesday, October 1, 10:30 - 11:50 am

Course:  Strategic Management of Organizations (EDUC 2367)
Who is the instructor?  Emily Kalejs Qazilbash
What will I experience? This course will develop a range of professional, leadership, and management skills, build knowledge and understanding about how organizations work, and offer a place for critical reflection about the internship experience. It will employ case studies of organizations and reforms and draw from the experience of practitioners from the field. 
What is the open date and time?  Tuesday, October 8, 4:00 - 6:30 pm

STEM

Course:  Nonlinear Dynamical Systems I (APMA 2190)
Who is the instructor?  Bjorn Sandstede
What will I experience? APMA 2190 is a graduate-level dynamical systems course aimed primarily at our incoming PhD students. I will rely on blackboard writing and brief classroom activities for this class. 
What is the open date and time?  Tuesday, October 8, 2:30 - 3:50 pm 

Course:  Biochemistry (CHEM 1240)
Who is the instructor?  Jesse Morin
What will I experience? CHEM 1240 is an advanced biochemistry class whose focus is understanding the reaction mechanisms of enzymes, including how they are investigated experimentally. In this class period, we will be learning about a new class of enzymes, metalloproteases, which builds on students' prior knowledge of unrelated enzymes that catalyze the same reaction. This lesson will use small group problem solving and interactive whiteboards.
What is the open date and time?  Tuesday, October 8, 9:00 - 10:20 am 

Course:  Localized Food Systems and Urban Agriculture (ENVS 1555)
Who is the instructor?  Dawn King
What will I experience? Urban Agriculture and Local Food Systems is an intermediate lecture and discussion based course. As a CBLR course, each student is placed into one of seventeen engaged scholar projects - where they work with a community partner to help solve some of Rhode Island's most pressing food and agriculture related issues. On Oct 8th, we will be discussing food access and inequality. The beginning of the class will ask the students to break into groups to discuss a question, and we will then regroup for a lecture on the topic. 
What is the open date and time?  Tuesday, October 8, 10:30 - 11:50 am 

Course:  Linear Algebra (MATH 0520)
Who is the instructor?  Jordan Kostiuk
What will I experience? Linear Algebra is taught with Team-Based Inquiry Learning and visitors will be well-positioned to observe what this environment is like from the perspective of the instructor and students. During this particular week, we are working to build fluency in central geometric concepts. The lesson will reveal different student perspectives on these concepts and reveal the challenges that come with learning new concepts and terminology, as well as connecting them to each other.
What is the open date and time?  Wednesday, October 2, 10:00 - 10:50 am 
Note:  There likely will not be seating available, but there will be space to sit on tables that have been pushed to the side along the wall.