2012 Course Listings
Explo courses are different. Active, hands-on, and fun, our 80+ courses and workshops will open you up to new challenges, showcase your talents, and let you explore new fields you've always been curious about.
First-Come, First-Served
Courses at Explo at Wellesley are numbered in the 300s and 400s. 300-numbered courses meet in the first period of the day; 400-numbered courses meet in the second period of the day.
Courses are assigned on a first-come, first-served basis. Class size, in most cases, is limited to 16 students. You will enroll in two courses per session. On your application choose six preferences for 300-numbered courses and six preferences for 400-numbered courses.The registrar makes every effort to assign you to one of your preferred choices. If a class is full, you will be assigned to another one of your choices.
Business, Law + Politics
| 301 | 401 | Explo Entrepreneur+ Creating a Business How would you like the freedom of running your own business? First, we’ll mine your imagination for a product to sell, basing our decision on market analysis results. We’ll look at supply and demand, current market share, and the process of market testing. Then, we’ll give you Explo venture capital to get your business off the ground. Working with classmates, you’ll invest in the durable goods needed to set up the business and the raw materials needed for manufacturing. Then, all we have to do is sell our product to the Explo community! Through group management and teamwork, we’ll learn the reality of bringing a product to market. |
| 302 | 402 | Crime Squad+ Criminal Investigations Solving a crime? That's the easy part. Getting solid proof for a court conviction? That's where things get tricky. Join our crime squad and discover the real-life techniques of criminal investigation. While working to crack a simulated case, you'll set up surveillance teams, seek out informants, and learn how to read a person's body language to understand what they're really saying. In our quest for truth (and evidence!), we’ll get warrants issued for search and seizure and practice strategies for criminal questioning. Once we've apprehended a final group of suspects, we'll use the Reid technique to snare a confession out of the guilty party. With such rock-solid evidence, getting a conviction will be a cake walk. And your criminal? We think he'll look great in stripes. |
| 303 | 403 | I Object!+ Mock Trial It's suspenseful. It's intriguing. It's controversial. It's mock trial! Here is your chance to fulfill all your legal dreams as we explore the American judicial system. In this course, you are the lawyers, the judges, the witnesses, and the jury. We will challenge each other in direct cross examinations and learn how to ask powerful and effective questions. In addition to showing you how to build a solid case, this course will help you to develop your public speaking and speechwriting skills. If you like to think quickly and want to know more about the inner workings of the American legal system, then mock trial is the place for you. |
| 304 | Who is Dow Jones?+ Economics + Ethics of the Stock Market Show me the money! You’re going to have to work to make a million dollars in the stock market, but you’ve got to start somewhere, right? Come join us as we learn to navigate the market by managing our own stock portfolio on the “Explo Exchange.” We’ll use newspapers and websites to track actual stock activity as you learn how interest rates, rates of return, stock dividends, and labor markets all affect stock prices and your portfolio’s bottom line. We’ll check out price fluctuations, debate ethical trading, and look at the history of the stock market to see how market surges and crashes have built up and taken down entire economies. Investing in this class may not make you a millionaire this summer, but it just might save you a bundle in the long run! | |
| 305 | Welcome to the World Stage+ Model United Nations On the floor of the United Nations, global leaders debate and decide tough issues every day. Their goal is to maintain international security and peace, develop friendly relations among nations on equal terms, and encourage cooperation to solve problems facing humanity. At the Explo UN, you'll represent a member nation and tackle these very issues. As we explore different nations' foreign policies and cultures, we'll debate current topics in our Security Council and draft international resolutions to solve world problems. If you are ready to make a difference, it's time to start at the top. Welcome to the world stage. | |
| 306 | Zombinomics+ Post-Apocalyptic Economics The Zombies are here, and they are hungry. The human race has been destroyed, and with them, the Zombie's staple food — human brains — has been all but eradicated. Fortunately, ingenious Zombie farmers have figured out how to grow brain substitutes by mixing salt water, toxic sludge, cadmium rocks, and Twinkies. Your tribe has settled in a land with some, but not all of these valuable resources — and now you must negotiate with other Zombie nations to get the resources you need to feed your minions. To maximize your efficiency, you'll assign Zombie labor — harvesters, farmers, educators (in search of more efficient brain-making technology) — and seek out new resources on Zombie Island. To maximize your brain production capacities, you’ll chart the supply and demand of commodities and try and predict the consumption and production patterns that will put you on top. Will your supply meet your Zombie’s demands? Come live the Zombie dream; a brain on every table never tasted so good. | |
| 404 | 30-Second Spot+ Advertising + Commercial Production A lot goes into making a a 30-second spot. A product, a marketing strategy, an advertising concept — and it all starts way before the first day of shooting. In this course, we'll review some of the most memorable ads of the last 25 years — spots by Apple, Nike, Burger King, and Energizer — asking, What made these ads unique? We'll then select a product of our own (soda, mp3 players, a car) and build an idea, script, and storyboard for a commercial that will sell it. Should our advertisement be funny or serious? To-the-point or mysterious? Should we focus on branding? Or on the features of the product? Finally, you'll film a prototype of your ad, producing a commercial that will do more than sell itself. | |
| 405 | E-20 Summit+ World Economics You’re the CEO of a Fortune 500 company seeking to maximize profit in the global market. Sweet! The hitch? China, your largest market for growth, is threatening to levy a tariff on your goods; shareholders are demanding that your company comply with fair trade practices; and a new competitor from Brazil has just entered into the market. Welcome to the global economy. Together with other CEOs and the heads of different G-20 nations, we’ll run economic simulations and debate how global economic decisions impact countries, industries, and individuals. Does globalization serve some countries' interests, and not others? Are we already living in a globalized world—or is there still more work to be done? Join us and discover how supply and demand are driving the global economy. | |
| 406 | Pigskin Payoff+ Business of Sports The stadium is brand new and the retractable roof is working perfectly. What’s missing? Your lineup for the 2012 season — and your budget to make it happen. As general manager of a football franchise, your job is to not only create a winning football team, but also maintain a healthy bottom line. Do you have what it takes to win in both arenas? Start by building your roster under budget. How high do you push the salary cap to bring in the best wide-end receiver — and can you get your star quarterback to renew his contract for less? Do you dare fill your needs with slotted rookie salaries in the draft? As you pit your roster against others in a season of fantasy football, you’ll have other considerations: how much will you charge for season and individual tickets? How can you maximize local promotion revenue? How much will you charge for a hot dog? a parking space? With the wisdom of a seasoned pro and the risk-taking spirit of a successful entrepreneur — can you lead your franchise to the Super Bowl AND fiscal success? |
Humanities, Language + Social Science
| 310 | 410 | You Talkin' to Me?+ Debate Strong debating skills elect presidents, close huge business deals, and help you get your curfew extended (or not). Whether you argue Supreme Court cases or just want to get your way more often, learning to organize how you use words to your advantage will help you achieve your goals. You'll utilize body language, vocal projection, and other public speaking techniques to construct an argument that anyone (except maybe your parents) would be hard pressed to dispute. No matter what you do later in life, having the ability to skillfully argue a position will help you reach your goals. |
| 311 | Rewriting Reality+ Fantasy Writing "Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time." From deep in the hobbit hollows of Lord of the Rings to the firebombed streets of Slaughterhouse Five, fantasy fiction takes reality and upends it entirely. If you were to write a fantasy short story where what goes up doesn't necessarily come down — or where whales save mermaids from evil French pirates, say — what would your fantasy world be? Would you send your heroine on a medieval quest to save her kingdom from the sorcerer's spell — or would your hero command a werewolf army to rid New York of vampires? As you weave an (alternate) world through your story, you'll chart the essentials of good fiction — mapping out your plot lines, structuring your story, and building cultures and characters — creating a world that is entirely your own. Ready to begin? Pack your bags — it’s time to create your universe! | |
| 312 | Where the Wild Things Start+ Children's Book Creation Do you think you could remake Goodnight Moon without the rabbits? How would you construct a story about moving your cat with only scissors, red construction paper, and three sentences? Can you come up with a truly fascinating alphabet book? (The world doesn't need another horrible one!) Come write, illustrate, and design your very own children's book from start to finish. Working with a variety of media — from charcoal and pastels to pencils and watercolor — we'll investigate storytelling techniques and understand how allegory can be used as a powerful device for introducing a moral dilemma or an idea. For instance, how would you explain loyalty to a three-year-old? A story about an inchworm and a heron might be a good place to start! As we paint, draw, and write, you'll discover how to use words and images to not only captivate children, but also help them develop and grow. And as you get ready to turn the last page on your story, you'll discover you haven't just made a children’s book — you've created magic! | |
| 313 | Sports Report+ Sports + Society Why do Bostonians lose so much sleep from spring training through the fall classic? When did Ron Artest move from the sports page to the front page? How come people can tell you the name of the Colts quarterback but not the name of the Secretary of State? Come explore the history of sports in our society, the effects of fan culture, and how athletes are portrayed in the media today. We’ll read articles about current sporting events and debate the moral and ethical issues surrounding coverage of men’s and women’s sports. As we look at local, national, and global sports stories — both past and present — we’ll begin to uncover how and why athletes have been escalated to star status, and look at the ramifications of sports journalism on society at large. | |
| 314 | Mind Bind+ Neuropsychology + Misdirection Lean in closer. Don’t get distracted. And whatever you do, do not take your eyes off the Queen of Hearts. To street hustlers, it’s Three-card Monte. To us? It’s the power of persuasion. (And a little misdirection.) Get ready to pull back the curtain and discover how you can influence the way people think, act, and react to the world around them. We'll look at how optical illusions work, analyze overt (and not so overt) messaging in advertising, and discover how to exploit the science behind Gestalt psychology (the concept that our brains always try to group items together). You'll bend spoons (or make it look like you have), perform the shell game, and master the double-lift slight-of-hand. But we're not going to stop at cheap parlor games. Oh, no. You’ll design a secret campaign of persuasion on campus, and see if we can change the behaviors of the Explo community. Before we’re through, you’ll have a better grasp of how your brain works — and how a little suggestion can have a dramatic effect. | |
| 411 | Write to the Point+ Short Story Writing What kind of story do you want to write? A plot-driven thriller, one with twists and turns and a surprise ending — like the work of Stephen King? Or maybe something that's spare, rugged, and epic, like the prose of Hemingway? Or maybe what you want to write is entirely different, like the dark, horror-driven, and maddening prose of Edgar Allen Poe — or something that teeters on the absurd, like the stories of Flannery O'Connor? Through writing activities focused on plot, dialogue, characterization, and tempo, you will play with words and experiment with style as you seek to develop a unique narrative voice. And with the support of your instructor and your peers, you’ll get the chance to develop your writing voice. With writing, practice doesn't make perfect; practice makes it your own... and this summer, you'll learn to make your writing your own. | |
| 412 | L'Avventura Italiana+ Italian Language + Culture On the hunt for a band of thieves, we come to a crossroads. Which way did the ladri go? North toward Naples or South towards Sicily? Our informant, Giovanni, knows the answer... but he won't tell us unless we deliver him a cannoli (that we prepare ourselves!). If you're looking for a madcap adventure through the Old Country — and would like to learn some Italian language and culture along way — you've found the classe giusta. Together we'll navigate the waterways of Venice, explore the museums of Florence, attend fashion shows in Milan, and arrive at football matches in Rome... all the while picking up the language, learning the history, cooking the food (al dente!), and solving thrilling challenges that will not only lead us to the criminali, but also solve the mysteries of their crime. | |
| 413 | House of Karaoke+ Japanese Language + Culture We're opening a house of karaoke! But this won't be just any karaoke den. No, we're going to make it a club that celebrates the cuisine, the clothing, (and the karaoke) of Japanese culture. We'll design kimono garments as we learn about the nation's heritage. And we'll analyze Manga comics and classic Godzilla films to gain insight into the country's pop culture. At the club, we'll design the lighting and decor while offering a catalog with all the hits (Journey's "Don't Stop Believing," anyone? ). Not only that, we'll prepare authentic Japanese dishes to serve — brewing green tea and wrapping our own sushi. We'll also practice writing and speaking the language by sketching Japanese calligraphy and learning basic phrases. So, sopranos and squealers alike (or those who just like to watch) — sign up now for your chance to host an authentic Japanese karaoke experience. | |
| 414 | Lasers, Dragons, Warriors + Wizards+ Role-Playing Game Design Role-playing games are an exciting way to engage others in a fantasy world that comes straight from your imagination. In this course, we will create our own role-playing games, giving you the freedom to develop characters and scenarios with unique powers, weapons, and characteristics. You will learn how to structure game play, work with teammates, and develop creative solutions for a multitude of precarious situations and battles. As you enter into a fantasy campaign with other students in the course, you will be encouraged to let your imagination, creativity, and acting skills really bring your character to life. This is the perfect course to let your imagination run wild, because in a role-playing game, anything is possible. |
Sciences
| 320 | 420 | Cracking the Case+ Forensic Science The police sit frustrated and clueless at the crime scene realizing that the only way they'll solve this one is with your help. Join our forensics team and help determine the value of criminal evidence by experimenting with chemical residue, "blood" spatter, fingerprints, and unknown fibers. To solve the forensic mysteries, we'll study hypothetical and real cases and look deeper into the abilities and limitations of forensic science. As we work our own crime scene, you'll act as scientist and detective and use newfound lab skills, deductive logic, and gut instinct to solve the case. |
| 321 | 421 | It's Experimental!+ Chemistry in Action Freeze bubbles, bend water, and juice up a human battery. Make each snowflake fall individually in a snow globe. Float a cartesian diver. Make a soda can implode. Chemistry is all about reactions and what influences them, and this is a class that is all about understanding those reactions by doing experiments, lots of experiments! In our lab, you'll change the freezing point of a solvent (soap bubbles) with dry ice and test the density of objects by floating (or sinking) them in water. As we experiment with and test various household items, you'll discover supersaturation, understand — really understand — how carbon dioxide is produced, and figure out how a fire extinguisher works. And, yes, there will be a few (controlled) explosions along the way — so grab your safety goggles as we make chemistry come to life. |
| 322 | 422 | So, You Want to Be a Doctor?+ Medical Careers Television makes the medical profession seem glamorous and your pediatrician makes it look fun, but this course will make the job real. Join us as an Explo medical intern as we rotate through fields such as dermatology, epidemiology, and neurology on our daily rounds. Each day, we will discuss different aspects of teen health and perform hands-on activities relating to various medical specialties. We will diagnose illnesses and prescribe treatments while reviewing such topics as medical ethics and proper medical procedures. If you are ready to think on your feet and care for others, skip the medical school entrance exams (for now) and join us in the Explo medical classroom! |
| 323 | 423 | Staying Alive+ Wilderness Survival Survivor? What a joke. Lost? Pssshhh. Jack Shephard has it easy. We're not going to have just one extreme adventure to escape from to test your survival skills, we'll go from the sweltering Sahara, to the frigid Arctic, to the humid Amazon, to a deserted island in the South Pacific. Your team will be pitted against others as you build shelters to stay dry, construct tools for hunting, scavenge local vegetation for food, and navigate the wild terrain with self-made maps. Each locale will come with its own unique challenges and unforeseen dangers a blizzard one day, a poisonous snake the next. You'll learn to predict weather patterns, read animal footprints, and use a variety of plant-life for medicinal purposes to increase your chances for survival. In the wild, it's not about outwitting or outplaying — it's all about staying alive. |
| 324 | 424 | Junk Punks+ Found Object Engineering Two teams. Two boxes filled with a random assortment of things. And a whole host of challenges. Welcome to Junk Box Wars, where your goal is to re-purpose everything in your box into a marvel of engineering. Craft a submarine that goes through a hole underwater and comes back up. Build a catapult that can launch a bouncy ball at a dart board and hit a bullseye. With some gentle guidance (and the introduction of a few key engineering principles), you’ll be encouraged to test, experiment, innovate, and realize your own creative solutions as you assemble the daily components of your junk box. Can you build a car that can ram into a wall and remain as intact as possible? Or design (and build) a skyscraper that can withstand hurricane force winds? Only one team will be crowned Junk Box Champions — do you have what it takes to build outside the “box?!" |
| 325 | Hook, Line, + Tinker+ Clothesline Racer Robotics You’re designing a new robot. Here are your parameters: It has to fit inside a 12-inch cube, weigh less than 3 pounds, and be able to race by zipping down (and up) a clothesline without falling off. Got it? This is Clothesline Racer Robotics, and we. do. not. mess around. (Though we will have a lot of fun trying.) You’ll experiment with different propulsion methods as you design, test, and redesign different clothesline racer prototypes with Styrofoam, rubber bands, propellers, balsa wood, and other materials. Then comes the real engineering magic. Using VEX robotics parts, you’ll build and program your robot racer to not only shoot down a clothesline, but also shoot back up. Choose your theme and ready your racers — it's time for the final challenge! Can your robot race to the finish — and back? | |
| 326 | Action/Reaction+ Hands-On Physics Walk on six dozen eggs (without breaking them). Design a space shuttle that will actually get us to Mars. Create a sound wave out of cereal, rubber bands, water, glass, and a tuning fork. As a member of our engineering design firm, what will you design to meet these situational challenges? And better yet, what materials will you use to make them structurally sound — and how would you combine them to make sure they’re perfectly in sync? Using principles of gravity, centripetal and centrifugal forces, the elements of sound, and different forms of energy, you'll discover what makes things work — and why they sometimes go wrong. With each project, our methods will be the same: design, build, test, redesign, rebuild, retest... and, most importantly, have fun. | |
| 327 | The X-Prize+ Aeronautical Engineering The goal: the X-Prize. The challenge: build a better rocket. And we're not talking about those dinky, run-of-the-mill, store-bought model rocketry kits. In fact, we're not talking kits at all! You'll develop compressed air rockets that fly straighter and longer, stabilize pencil rockets to hit a target, and engineer staged rockets that fire additional engines mid-flight (to shoot them even higher into the stratosphere). You'll be let loose in our rocket laboratory where you'll apply the science of aerodynamic lift, drag, and thrust to alter the design, dimensions, shapes, and sizes of a growing fleet of specialized ships. Can you give your team the boost it needs? The X-Prize is yours for the taking. The question is: are you up for it? | |
| 328 | Level Up!+ Video Game Level Design "Bigger. Better. More Fun." You've been given three weeks to design an awesome, old-school, platform-style video game, and those are your instructions. Now it's up to you and our game design team to make it happen. We'll investigate (and playtest) the game mechanics that have made classic platform-style games successful, like the element-themed levels, power-ups, and "Bosses" of Super Mario Brothers, the barrel jumping and vine-swinging of Donkey Kong, and the brainy puzzles of Braid. As we piece together the elements and story-lines that will make up our game, we'll use a drag-and-drop computer application to program actions and controls for our central cast of characters. Then you'll break into smaller teams to design different levels (a lava level? a banana level?) and we’ll actually build a working video game. So jump on board, Boss... if you build it, they will play. | |
| 329 | Peak Performance+ Nutrition + Exercise Physiology How much force would it take to break your femur? And how much energy would you need to swim a 50-meter sprint — at the Olympics? In the universe of nutrition and exercise physiology, food is fuel and energy is measured on whether or not athletes can go the distance. Your job: make sure our Olympic athletes are performing at their peak. Are they taking in enough energy? We’ll chart their protein, carb, and caloric intake, and learn to prepare healthier versions of their favorite dishes (healthy brownies, anyone?). You’ll run exercises to test muscle fatigue, check your blood pressure and heart rates at rest and at play, and practice static and dynamic stretching techniques to see how they limber up your muscles. By understanding the body and how to take care of it, you'll not only give athletes the tools they need to succeed, but also give yourself the tools you'll need, too. | |
| 425 | BotWars+ Robotics The lights come on, and the stands are crowded with rowdy spectators. It’s just you, your opponent, and your robots in the ring: think you can design the one that will become BotWars Champion? Starting with a VEX Robotics kit, you and your team of engineers will design and build robots using variable speed motors and various light, touch, and sound sensors. Put your robot in the ring: can it outmaneuver another robot in a maze or dig a hole big enough for another robot to fall into? In this team competition, each challenge will be tougher than the one before — and each will demand that you channel your creativity into an innovative technical design. You’ll do “battle” in the Robot Thunderdome and launch projectiles into your opponent’s field. Can your robot charge a straight line toward enemy territory? Move on and you accumulate points. Get stalled — and you'll be left in the dust. This summer, find out: Are you up to the challenge? | |
| 426 | Building Better Bogeys+ Physics of Mini-Golf The physics behind a truly great mini-golf course is as mystifying to the untrained eye as it can be maddeningly fun to play. In this course, we’ll build, test, change, and modify our own amazing mini-golf course. To change the force and direction of ricocheted balls, you’ll test and develop angled “collision” walls from different materials. You’ll build a “loop-de-loop” that requires a balance of force and gravity, or a windmill that shoots each ball that enters its tunnels out a different hole. Can you turn a 4-par hole into a 2-par hole — and vice-versa? As you test out different ramp angles and designs to see which are the best fit, you’ll create a course of difficulty, dexterity, and speed that will have your classmates lining up to tee-off. | |
| 427 | Death Valley Road Rally+ Off-Road Vehicle Design "Slippery when wet." "Beware: falling rocks." "Alert: monsoon-blizzard-tornado ahead." If you're the kind of driver for whom signs like this aren't a caution but an invitation, this course is for you. We'll build model electric roadsters that run across any terrain (dirt, sand, mud, oil, water) and in any condition (winds, rain, snow). You'll modify a stock design — does it need a wider base? more wheels? less surface area? — to make a car that's more aerodynamically efficient. And you'll manipulate gear ratios to find the ideal proportions of power and speed for each leg of the Road Rally obstacle course. In this class, being the best racer means being the best engineer. Because it's not only a race to the finish line, it's also a race of technology. | |
| 428 | Processing Makes Perfect+ Computer Programming Interested in learning how to program? Intrigued by cool computer graphics? Then Processing, an easy-to-pick-up programming language that specializes in electronic arts, is just for you. Think of it as an interactive sketchbook — one that lets you draw complex shapes and figures; incorporate keyboard and clicking functionality; and animate short action sequences... all in a snap. Designed by the MIT Media Lab, Processing lets you create images and integrate on-screen interactivity far more easily than is possible in Java or C languages, while at the same time teaching you logic and syntax fundamentals that apply to all programming languages. You can make a digitized, pixelated image of your face... a raceway with cars whooshing and whizzing by... or an army of worm-monsters that swarm to your mouse. With Processing, you'll be programming like a pro, pronto! | |
| 429 | Manufacturing Mario+ Conceptual Video Game Design Pacman, Super Mario, Zelda, The Sims, Halo. Each teemed with bold characters; each featured easy-to-learn gameplay; each redefined what a video game could be; and each is an undisputed, hall-of-fame, no-doubt-about-it video game classic. In this course, we will replay the history of video gaming, from Atari to the Wii, studying the evolution of gameplay as it unfolds before our fingertips. We'll explore what makes a game successful — classic, even. And then, armed with research notes and a team of co-designers, you will plan and propose a video game of your own. What is the plot? Who are the characters? What makes your game unique? Your proposal will include level mock-ups, character and setting sketches, and user interface designs. The goal: to create the next classic. Do you have game?
[This is a conceptual video game design course. Students will not create playable video games.] |
Cooking + Food Sciences
| 330 | 430 | Cupcake Armada+ Cupcake Challenges Arm yourself! Grab some beaters. A couple of whisks. A wooden spoon. Don't skimp on the baking soda. And, definitely, don't forget the measuring cups! This is war we're talking about! Your opponent's cupcakes will be delicious, beautiful, inviting. To win the battle, you must do better. They bake a ginger and cherry cupcake? Counter with chocolate and hot pepper. They defy gravity with a butter cream frosting? Ice them down with rich fondant. In our battlefield you'll be outfitted with innovative baking techniques, an arsenal of common and exotic ingredients, and the scientific know-how to understand how everything fits together. What's missing, of course, is you. How will you "Create a cupcake that reminds you of being five-years-old"? Or "A treat perfect for cold weather"? Or "The season's best cupcake"? Sign up for the sweetest battle on Earth and find out! |
| 331 | Cooks Unhooked+ Cooking Challenges Create a savory dessert (with strawberries and bacon). Build a four-course meal (on a one-course budget). Make meatballs (without the meat). We're serving up cooking challenges left and right. Do you have what it takes to plate them (in under 60 seconds)? Don't worry, we'll show you the ropes — from knife skills and cooking techniques to flavor pairings and presentation concepts. As you and your teammates try on different (chef) hats, you'll go face-to-face against other teams in a variety of extraordinary challenges, like cooking a pizza (that represents happiness) or making a delicious entrée (with every color in the rainbow). You'll be sous chef, grill chef, and saucier — but do you and your teammates have what it takes to be earn your toque? You know what they say: If you can stand the heat, get in the kitchen! | |
| 431 | Makin' Dough+ Restaurant Management Have a taste for the restaurant business? Together, we'll plan, create, and operate a French bistro this summer. And you'll be involved in every part of it — from conceiving the restaurant's theme and designing a logo to managing the budget and setting prices. Oh, and there will be cooking too! We'll create entrees (think: chicken cordon bleu), appetizers (pâté en croûte, anyone?), and delectable desserts (apple tarts... mmm), and learn how to present our dishes with garnishes like chocolate swirls and citrus knots. At our bistro's opening, you'll not only prepare the food, you'll greet, seat, and serve the customers — for a full restauranting experience that will keep you (and your patrons) coming back for more. | |
| 432 | Cooking with Chemistry+ Molecular Gastronomy Wanna add a little science to your soufflé? Or maybe a dash of chemistry to your couscous? Put on your lab coat and your chef's hat, because we're going to turn the Explo kitchen into a culinary laboratory. We'll torch the tops of crème brûlée, shrink carrots using the power of osmosis, and inject air into foods (think whipped cream... even whipped peas) to see how it changes their taste. You'll investigate how to use chocolate dispersion to create a flourless cake, how to make cheeses with different pH levels, and, most importantly, how to attain instant dessert gratification by making ice cream with dry ice. Want to bake your cake and explore it too? Then this is the class for you! |
Art + Design
| 340 | 440 | Splat!+ Abstract Painting Studio Brush it, throw it, press it, spin it, work it, smooth it. Contemporary painters are constantly exploring the nature of paint and painting. In our studio course, we'll join the investigation. You'll create large-scale splatter paintings in the style of Jackson Pollock, pump out dozens of Warholesque silkscreen portraits, and create depth, space, and movement with fields of colors like Mark Rothko. From Picasso to Pop Art, we'll explore a range of painting styles and produce an eclectic portfolio of abstract and nonobjective work. If you're interested in pushing (prodding, mixing, stirring, pouring) paint to the next level, then join us as we discover what abstract painting is all about. |
| 341 | 441 | Corrugated Comfort+ Cardboard Furniture Build a cardboard table, create a coat rack, or assemble a surprisingly comfortable chair — out of compressed cardboard and shipping tubes. Seem improbable? It's not. In this course, you’ll construct lounge chairs, step stools, sofas, and tables out of cardboard. You’ll test out the structural strength, stability, and plausibility of your designs by building scale models out of paper. Then, by stacking and bolting sheets of corrugated cardboard together, you'll determine which configurations are the strongest — upright, triangular, or your own invention — and which building conventions are more suited to making a table versus a couch. You and your classmates will not only assemble incredibly well-crafted pieces of furniture, but will leave with the knowledge and design chops to build your own awesome cardboard furniture at home! |
| 342 | 442 | Mansion Makeover+ Interior Design Ten-thousand square feet. Four walls. One client. While there are over one-hundred-million different ways to design the space, only one will perfectly match your client's tastes and needs. Do you have the vision it takes to put it together? As you work on a design concept for a fictional client, you'll learn how to draft floor plans, select furnishings, and create a complementary palette of colors and textures. Together, we'll investigate color psychology and learn how to incorporate the concepts of Green Design and Feng Shui into your plans. By the end of the course, you'll earn rave reviews from your client and will have developed a set of interior design skills that you can take with you to redecorate your own space at home. |
| 343 | Sky Scraping+ Commercial Architecture Think big. Think breathtaking. Think monumental. Think Guggenheim Bilbao. Think Dubai's Burj Khalifa. Think of the most fantastic architectural dream possible and — with a client on board — commercial architecture can make it possible. Of course, we’ll start off small, introducing you the tools of the trade: drafting pencils, T-squares, scaling devices. As we analyze storefronts, stadiums, malls, skyscrapers, and museums, you’ll read and draw blueprints, and learn how to conceptualize space. Then, working with ambitious clients, you’ll conceive, draft, and build amazing scale models of your commercial plans. Will you design a cultural institution with an undulating form — à la Frank Gehry — or does the client require something on a more human scale, like the Santa Monica Promenade? With models and blueprints in hand — you’ll make a final client pitch to get your building made. Here’s our suggestion on that pitch: make it big! | |
| 344 | Perfect Pixels+ Intro to Digital Photography Are you ready to harness the power of digital photography? We'll start with the basics — learning how to frame better photos in your viewfinder or digital display using the "rule of thirds" and other compositional tricks. You'll discover how aperture, shutter speeds, and image compression affect the quality of your digital files and once we move into the editing room, you'll get into the nitty-gritty of image manipulation using Photoshop Elements. If you've ever wanted to superimpose a dog's head on a human body (and make it look real), or simply wanted to have better control of digital darkroom tools, this is the course for you. You'll soon learn that in digital photography, taking the picture isn't the end — in fact, it's only the beginning! | |
| 345 | Move On, Vuitton+ Intro to Handbag Design Are you interested in style and learning how to make fashion pieces for yourself? Then join us for a course in the fundamentals of fashion handbag design. Along the way, you'll learn to hand- and machine-sew and get valuable practice cross-stitching, blanket-stitching, and tack-stitching. You'll cut and sew your bag, and then, with designs you'll sketch yourself, add embellishments like buttons, bows, handles, clasps, and closures. With a vast collection of patterns and materials to choose from, you'll be able to carve out a unique and personal direction for your handbag. By the end of the course, you'll not only walk away with a fantastic bag of your making, but also a great foundation of fashion skills to take with you.
[This course is intended for students with little to no fashion design experience.] | |
| 346 | S P A R K+ Creativity Challenges You know how the best classes are the ones where you never know what's going to happen next? Well, this is that kind of class — for every exercise, every challenge, every day. You might write a play using five random nonsensical phrases. You might deliver flying cargo using nothing but helium balloons, rubber bands, popsicle sticks, and string. You might reenact a scene from The Lord of the Rings using the characters from Scooby Doo. Or you might have to design album cover art for a fake heavy metal band. Really, there's no telling what awaits you in this class... So what's the point? To cultivate your creativity. You'll learn to invent, to collaborate, to experiment, and to envision — on the fly. This summer, we'll not only be imagining new possibilities, we'll be creating them. | |
| 347 | Black + White + Read All Over+ Illustrating a Graphic Novel Like all great graphic novels — Persepolis, Maus, Sandman, or V for Vendetta — yours will start with an idea and a few rough sketches. Beginning with simple shapes and structures, you’ll build characters, design settings, and create a narrative arc for your novel. To build your skill set, you’ll illustrate a simple story without using words and write dialogue for untranslated passages of Japanese manga. As you decipher how line weight, perspective, and character expressions can help capture the right mood, you’ll map out layouts that will work best for different aspects of your tale — a set of square panels or perhaps one large panel to highlight an important moment? You’ll illustrate a test passage (or two) of your story — creating a visual and narrative framework for the completion of your graphic novel — and will leave the course with all of the skills you’ll need to help you finish it. Now, what story will you draw? | |
| 443 | Designing Your Dream House+ Residential Architecture You'd like a lazy river surrounding your dream home like a moat? You've got it. You want a roof deck with a Jacuzzi and an Olympic-sized swimming pool? It's yours. This is the place to turn your dreams into real architectural plans. As an introduction to architectural design, we'll teach you to read blueprints and conceptualize space. You'll learn to use T-squares, drafting pencils, and scaling devices to draft plans and draw elevations as you design and build a 3D model of your dream home. Join us at the drafting table and determine every aspect of interior and exterior design while creating a house made just for you... by you. And, yes, you can have a room with an indoor bungee jump. But only if you design it. | |
| 444 | More Perfect Pixels+ Advanced Digital Photography With Photoshop, anyone can be the next Ansel Adams, right? Wrong. Good photography starts with your eye and with your camera — and so will this course. With digital SLR in hand, you’ll explore how simple adjustments to your ISO, focal length, aperture, and shutter speed dramatically alter identical views of the same subject. As you shoot self-portraits and landscapes, we’ll let you in on compositional secrets like those in Walker Evans’ urban landscapes and Dorothy Lange’s portraits. By taking compelling images, you’ll earn a seat in our “digital darkroom” where we’ll explore advanced Photoshop techniques like making and refining selections using color channels and shape masks, adjusting tonal ranges with curves (versus levels), understanding the utility of layers, and mastering different blending options. Through daily peer review, you’ll learn how to critique in a constructive way, and will use constructive feedback to make your images stronger, richer, and gallery-ready! Ready for your next shot?
Please note: To register for this course, students must submit 10 digital photos online (web resolution) for evaluation to intermediate@explo.org. Students must also come equipped with their own manually-adjustable digital SLR camera and storage media. | |
| 445 | Skirting Fashion+ Intermediate Fashion Design You already know fashion sewing basics. Now it's time to put those skills to the test. Join us in our fashion design center as we transform basic skirt patterns into custom-fit, custom-styled works of art. You'll build and stitch together a basic outline of a skirt in muslin, and then — as you draft ideas and draw sketches for ways to modify your skirt — will fashion the design into an entirely new pattern (with a custom fit). As you assemble your final garment from our vast collection of textiles and adornments, you'll practice a variety of fashion-making skills: matching fabrics, layering materials, and custom fitting your design for the perfect drape. So if you're ready to build on your fashion skills — and start designing your own clothing — then what are you waiting for? You're tailor-made for this course!
[This course is intended for students with some knowledge of machine- and hand-sewing.] | |
| 446 | Rebels Without a Canvas+ Guerrilla Art Guerrilla art is not your regular paint-mountains-and-a-stream-on-a-canvas kind of art. For one thing, sidewalks, billboards, and the sides of buildings — those are the canvases for guerrilla art. For another, guerrilla art isn't about artsy, nature-y things like mountains and streams. So what is guerrilla art? Guerrilla art is irreverent. It's funny. It looks at the mainstream and says, “Really? Seriously?” Guerrilla art is a painting of a caveman walking with a tray of McDonald's. It's flash mobs, parades, and rallies — and flash parade-mob rallies. It's about questioning anything that we take for granted. It's about creating a work of art that's so unexpected that it literally makes you stop in your tracks. It's about seeing things in a different way and challenging accepted norms. Join us this summer, and you'll make your own guerrilla art. | |
| 447 | Figure This+ Figure Drawing + Portraiture If you can see it, you can draw it. Seriously. By sketching the human figure, you will notice things that only a true student of the human body can: where fingertips fall on the leg, the placement of the eyes on the face, the way a hairline folds over the ear. Together, we will practice an array of drawing techniques, from short gesture drawings to longer figure studies, training our eye to see the body as a series of interconnected lines of different magnitude and weight. Through technique and observation exercises — and just plain drawing — you will develop a diverse portfolio of work that will reflect a new mastery of the body and the line. | |
| 448 | All Work + No Clay!+ Non-Traditional Sculpture Ping-pong balls, wood, rubber bands, plastic wrap, you name it — this summer, we're going to make sculptures out of any and everything — except clay. We'll make a facial replica of Jack Sparrow out of jelly beans and body replicas out of plastic wrap. By cutting, twisting, folding, and stacking, we'll turn a pile of twisty-ties into miniaturized castles, dinosaurs, and skeletons. We'll make large-scale animals out of string, cast shoes and shirts with plaster, and build aluminum foil limbs and torsos to hang from trees or off the sides of buildings. You'll investigate the nature of materials as you construct non-objective works from a piece of chewing gum, a bust from a box of paper clips, and a monument from found objects on the campus of Wellesley College. The art we make will not only be unconventional — it will also be the kind of art that people will never forget. |
Performing Arts
| 350 | 450 | Say Yes to Improv+ Improvisational Acting Come explore both your silly side and your dramatic nature through a variety of improvisation games. In addition to improving your improvisational skills, you'll learn how to become more aware of your fellow actors and how to move and use your body and voice more comfortably. Teamwork and positive support of your fellow actors is key, so when your scene partner asks if you are the two-headed, purple haired clown who likes to eat chocolate ice cream on hot dogs, of course what you say is, "YES, and on Fridays I like to eat them with mint chocolate chip ice cream, too!" |
| 351 | Give My Regards to Broadway+ Musical Theater Do you belt out songs from Grease when you're alone in the shower? Have you dreamed of being in Oklahoma or wished you were haunting the stage in Phantom of the Opera? Well, stop dreaming and start living the life of musical theater! Working in ensembles and solos, you'll perform in a variety of roles while we enact scenes from musicals such as Chicago and Wicked. As we sing and dance our way through class, we'll develop musical theater techniques including character portrayal, voice projection, and improvisation. For our final performance, you'll be costuming, choreographing, and performing a medley of show tunes that will storm the Broadway stage. | |
| 352 | School of Rock+ Learning, Writing, + Playing Rock Music Step 1: Meet your classmates. Step 2: Form a band. Step 3: Rock. There are other steps along the way — like paying homage to the history of rock and writing your own songs — but those three steps are the gist of it. Working with a group of musicians of varied interests and talents, join our crash course in rock music as we investigate music theory by listening to and playing the music you want to hear. You’ll learn the finer points of song composition (like how to build a chorus, refrain, or bridge) and will have the chance to perform your songs live at Explo. Get ready to rock!
[Students should bring their own instrument (e.g. electric guitar or bass — we will provide a drumset) and know the basics of playing.] | |
| 353 | Sing It? Bring It!+ Pop Choir Music You may have never set foot on a stage, or tested your (singing) pipes anywhere outside the shower. But you know it — you've got talent in spades. Are you ready to get your Glee on and belt it out like you're at the top of the charts? Then it's time to step up on stage and sing! Join us as we perform popular rock, R&B, and — yes, pop songs — in a dynamic performance for all of Explo. You'll learn to play with different vocal harmonies and melodies, as we craft arrangements that will showcase our cast's vocal strengths. And as you choreograph dance moves with your team, you'll not only master rhythm and syncopation, but also create a show that will absolutely rock the stage at Explo. The spotlight is waiting — will you answer the call? | |
| 354 | Win the Moon Man+ Music Video Production Beyoncé started a dance craze with “Single Ladies.” Coldplay combined stop-motion animation, hundreds of elaborate chalk drawings, and a city sidewalk to create the unprecedented “Strawberry Swing.” Do you have the vision it takes to produce the next great music video? This summer, we’ll review and break down clips of some of the best music videos of all time. And then, as we direct, choreograph, and produce our own video, we'll learn how to storyboard a concept and use lighting and camera angles to bring life to our artistic vision. In post-production, you’ll cut and splice your footage and add any necessary special effects. When the video we make is bigger than the song — that’s how we’ll know we’ve made a hit. | |
| 355 | Havana Nights+ Latin Dance What if you could move like Beyoncé or groove like Shakira? Here's your chance: Come discover the moves that have been heating up the streets from Havana to Rio for decades. Moving to the rhythms of the Caribbean, you'll dance the salsa and the merengue, and other Latin dances like the lambada and the bachata. While we'll touch on the origins of these dances and how they've evolved into their modern forms, most of all, we'll dance! As you learn the fundamentals of Latin rhythm and movements, you’ll work on improvisation and choreography in order to develop our own dances in small groups. For our final performance, you’ll choose the music and we’ll showcase all of the dances we have learned in a medley that will light the Explo stage on fire. | |
| 451 | Actors' Studio+ Acting Acting is not about pretty faces and delivering lines. It’s about emotions, feelings, and transporting an audience to a different time and place. With study, practice, and patience, you’ll be able to become the part of a dramatic (or comedic) character and move others to tears (or laughter). We’ll explore both character and method acting techniques and learn exercises to improve your voice projection and enunciation. From monologues, to simple dialogue, to ensemble acting, we’ll help you overcome stage fright and prepare you for all the elements of theater. During our final performances, you’ll perform soliloquies, scenes, and skits that will have the Explo audience on the edge of their seats. So step up to the stage and join our actors’ studio. | |
| 452 | EXPLO Unplugged+ Beginning Guitar + Songwriting A crowd of friends. A coffee house setting. You. On stage. Performing covers and originals on an acoustic guitar. Never picked up a guitar before? No problem, this course is for beginners. Together, we’ll learn basic chords and strumming techniques as we investigate the craft of the singer-songwriter. We’ll mine the catalogues of artists ranging from The Beatles to Gnarls Barkley as we explore song structure and subject matter. We’ll workshop your first foray into writing an original song — honing verses, rhyme patterns, and choruses—and prepare you for an unplugged final performance, featuring music that you’ve stamped with a trademark that is uniquely you.
[Students should have little or no experience playing guitar. We will provide guitars.] | |
| 453 | Laugh Factory+ Sketch Comedy "Use your outside voice!" "D'Oh!" "I have a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell!" Do you know a good punchline when you hear it? Think you can do better than the writers at The Simpsons, SNL, and Mad TV? Have a hankering to write — and perform — comedy sketches? Then join our comedy crew and put your best sketch ideas to the test — on the page and on the stage! In preparation for our big show, you'll practice improv with other actors, physical comedy and "falling" on cue, and the cadence of joke delivery. As we flesh out your comedy skits, you'll learn how write and set-up punchlines so powerful they'll have our students bucking in laughs and spitting noses out of their milk. Conan's gonna have your number on speed dial, so [INSERT PUNCHLINE HERE]. | |
| 454 | See It, Make It, Watch It+ Video Production Have you ever dreamed about filming your own movie? Why not do it this summer? In this course, you will cover the entire process of video production, beginning with the fundamentals of screenwriting and ending with post-production techniques. After our class has developed a working script, we will learn a variety of camera techniques so that we can begin shooting footage for our film. Once we have all of our raw footage, we will begin to explore the postproduction editing process as we splice and seamlessly intertwine our footage into a full-fledged movie. You will leave the course with a finished film and a great introduction to the world of video production. | |
| 455 | Hip-Hop, Ya Don't Stop+ Hip-Hop Dance We've got moves, beats, rhythm, and soul. All you've got to do is supply the desire and we'll spark a hip-hop dance revolution. We'll study the top hip-hop dancers, dissect their best moves, and work them into our own routines. Starting with basic dance steps and forms, we'll advance into more complex group choreography. You'll stretch, exercise, and workout through each class, learning to get down and funky in our hip-hop studio. We'll finish the class off by choreographing and performing an extended dance number that will have Explo screaming for more. | |
| 456 | The Lyin', the Wig + the Wardrobe+ Costume Design + Theater Make-Up Do you think you could make Angelina Jolie look like the Wicked Witch of the West? How does Johnny Depp become Captain Jack Sparrow? If you’ve ever wanted to try your hand at the magic of make-up artistry and costume design, this course is for you! We’ll practice dramatic make-up techniques — building scars and bruises, attaching prosthetic noses and facial hair, painting on age and beauty. Through character analysis, we will develop unique costume designs including sketches, renderings, fabric/material samples, as well as other details that complete the look for a range of characters. At the end of the course, you’ll have a collection of make-up head shots and costume design concepts that will make Hollywood drool. |
Boarding School Search
| 360 | Boarding School Search Concentration ($195)+ Is boarding school right for you? What’s it like to live where you go to school? What kind of kids go to boarding school in the first place? You'll be surprised by how incredibly different boarding school experiences can be in the United States. Through visits with admissions officers, boarding school deans, and tours of nearby boarding schools, you'll learn whether boarding school is for you. As you continue exploring your options, you’ll discover key elements to look for when scouting boarding schools, and you’ll have a list of schools that could be good matches for you and your learning style. In addition, you'll learn strategies for taking the SSAT, practice mock admissions interviews, and get advice on writing application essays. So come discover what boarding schools can offer that day schools and public schools often can’t — and leave with a clearer picture of what boarding school is like, and if it’s the right fit for you. Please note that the Boarding School Search Concentration requires some additional time outside of the classroom for one-on-one counseling and admissions work. In addition, students signed up for the Boarding School Search Concentration will be automatically enrolled in a Week 1 afternoon workshop to allow time for boarding school visits. Because of the Week 1 workshop, students signing up for the Boarding School Search Concentration may not sign up for the three-week Princeton Review Study Skills workshop. Also, Day Students should be prepared to stay late during the first week of the concentration, as some afternoon trips will return to campus after regular Day Student pick-up. There is an additional fee of $195 for the Boarding School Concentration. |