We’ll be doing a deep dive into the video game industry ranging from game engines to how well-received indie games have been!
We’ll be looking at the history of indie video games and some major wins and major loses, let’s dive in!
We’ll try to play these games together during class:
Braid (2009)
The Silent Age (2012)
Undermine
Plants vs Zombies
Nancy Drew Her Interactive Franchise
and others!
All games are family friendly


Prerequisites
Please bring a laptop if possible.

Learn how to tie your own ties! Interested in business attire or formal etiquettes? Look no further than BENVI. Here we welcome all individuals, whether you are a beginner or not.


Prerequisites
None

This class aims to introduce students to the art of encrypting and decrypting messages using both original and standard ciphers. Students will learn basic vocabulary and complete cryptography-based activities and puzzles.

Explore debate, negotiation, and decision-making through an ethical dilemma! This class will be highly collaborative. No prior knowledge or skill is required.

While national media headlines focus on Congress’ budget, most Americans receive their daily government services through their local government. Clean drinking water, trash removal, police services, and paved roads all ultimately come from local municipalities. In this course, students will learn what services local governments provide and create their own budget for their fictional city. Taught by a current city councilman and Cornell student, this course will use the City of Ithaca an example budget and will have students decide what services they want their government to include, the quality of their services, how to pay for it, and how to compromise with other students in creating one city-wide budget.

Are you interested in learning a foreign language, but aren't sure which one? Have you traveled to a French-speaking country (or would like to in the future) and wanted to be able to communicate with the locals? In this class, we'll go over the basics of the French language, and hope you'll find it "interessant"!

Have you ever wanted to learn how to knit? Now's your chance! Come and learn how to do the knit stitch and more. Leave the class with some of your own knitting and a foundation for future exploration! No prior experience required.

Welcome to Sewing Pattern Analysis! We’ll be taking a look at some sewing patterns and learn how to visualize patterns in a 3D space. We’ll cover the basics of seams and darts and basic tips and tricks for garment construction. This class heavily emphasizes pattern analysis– meaning we’ll be spending most of our time drawing and discussing patterns.

Learn how to improve your graphic design skills and learn Figma with the business members of Cornell Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (CUAUV)!

In this class, you will be learning about how 0s and 1s can be used to create different logic gates such as the Not, And, and Or gates which when combined together help to make the processors of your computers. We will start with basic logic gates and how they work and by the end of the session, we will run a simulation to show how these gates work together to help the computer add and subtract.


Prerequisites
None

Synthetic biology is awesome, and no, it doesn’t just have to do with genetically modified organisms. If there’s a problem out there, synthetic biology has a solution! Come learn exactly what synthetic biology is while getting to know the major women scientists who have paved the way in the history of biotechnology! From the discovery of DNA structure to editing the genome, you will explore the plethora of unbelievable discoveries women in STEM have made! The class will be an active learning experience, with hands-on stations where members of the award-winning Cornell iGEM (Genetically Engineered Machines) team will teach you about these women who cultivated the field of synthetic biology. No prerequisites required.

Want to know how objects get 3D printed? In this class, we will learn the basics of CAD (computer aided design)! Using CAD, we can create 3D models of objects in a virtual environment to visualize what we're working with before manufacturing or 3D Printing! We will be using Onshape in class.


Prerequisites
None

Are you a lover of plants or the outdoors? Join student Garden Ambassadors on a tour of Cornell Botanic Gardens and its many purposes in the Cornell and Ithaca community. The class will include both a tour of the gardens and an interactive activity.

Enjoy a break for lunch with your friends! Please register for at least one lunch period on each day of the program.

This course is an introduction to coding using Javascript. Students will learn the history of computer science and complete their first program, a customized snowman! We’ll review variables, operations, and basic loops, no experience is necessary.

This will be a lecture attempting to teach basic type theory, emphasizing the shared structure between collections (as in set theory) and propositions (as in logic). I will begin with the main idea and utility of type theory, then dive into inference rules, intuitionistic sequent calculus, typing rules, computation rules, and the propositions as types interpretation. If time allows, we can talk about dependent types and/or inductive types.

Have you ever wondered how math can be useful in the real world, if at all? Do you wonder if there is more to math than just equations and formulas? Are you simply curious about interesting math problems?

This course will answer those questions and more. Through interactive problem-solving and activities, students will be exposed to a wide range of topics in math in an easy-to-follow format. Students will learn how math can be used to solve complex, real-world problems and be exposed to some mind-bending paradoxes.

While the goal of this course is to give students a taste of mathematics beyond high school, no advanced math background is required. This course aims to provide students with a new perspective on math, so students of all backgrounds, from those who absolutely hate math, to those who are interested in majoring in mathematics, are encouraged to register.

We will teach a short introductory course on using Python for controlling an agent through a simulation of the situations similar to the ones that CUAUV deals with. We will use Python and the Turtles library to set up the environment in which students will write code to control a virtual submarine in order to complete virtual tasks, through the use of an online Python interpreter.

In this class you will get shown my workflow for using the personal knowledge management app, Obsidian, to bring joy back into your notetaking. I will show you how I use Obsidian for four main things:
1. Knowledge Management
2. Journaling
3. Schoolwork
4. Content Creation

This class will be an introduction to pandas, a python package used to manipulate spreadsheets, compute calculations, and make graphs of data. We may also use plotly express, an easy tool to make interactive graphs. We will be working on Google Colab Notebooks, so you will not need to install anything before coming to class. No coding experience is necessary.

At the beginning of the class, I’ll ask each person to complete a simple google forms with questions like: What is your favorite tv show? What is your shoe size? How many siblings do you have? etc. And then I would like to show you how you can analyze the class data using python.


Prerequisites
Please bring a laptop. No coding experience is necessary.

In 1818, Mary Shelley demonstrated the issue of ethics in science with her text Frankenstein. A monster, created entirely by the hands of a scientist, develops his own emotions and life and yet he is held back by the grasps of his development. A metaphor for the overwhelming ethical dilemmas being proposed by the developing scientific technology, inventions, and observations, Shelley’s Frankenstein launched a much needed conversation about how and when ethics should be imposed on scientific communities. This course will explore the question: at what point does ethics become a barrier to scientific research, and how can ethics be applied to science without potentially limiting new discoveries?

Learn about plants growing on Cornell's campus and how your observations can contribute to scientists' research! The course will include an introduction to plant classification and how to identify species from physical characteristics. Students will also have the chance to explore plants outside the classroom and make scientific drawings and leaf prints of their observations!

Are you interested in how DNA encodes the genetic information of all living things and how we can extract DNA? Join us for our class where we will be extracting DNA from bananas and learning about the science behind DNA!


Prerequisites
Introductory Biology

Drugs are well-known for changing our perceptions of conscious experiences, but how exactly does that take place? What neurochemical processes underlie a “high”? In this class, we will be exploring how the brain carries sensory information and how different drugs interfere with these processes.

Are you interested in medicine and healthcare? Turns out, there are a lot of different careers other than your traditional physician or dentist. Come learn about pre-med, pre-dental, pre-PA, healthcare consulting, health policy, public health, and others from some of the brothers of Cornell’s only co-ed pre-health fraternity, Alpha Iota Gamma!

In this course, there will be two parts: a discussion-based portion at the beginning where both brothers and participants will be sharing their healthcare interests through a fun, interactive game and then stations for mock coffee chats and resume/Linkedin workshops for the latter half. This course will expose you to the vast selection of health-related careers and develop your professional skills to help prepare you for the future.

Ever wonder what it would be like to live in a society made more efficient by the introduction of systems that mimic human intelligence? In this course, we will be going over the fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology and its applications to the real world, specifically in the healthcare field. This class will include an introductory section complete with polls and brain teasers followed by a brief lecture. The class will culminate in a fun group activity and presentation. No prior knowledge on the topic is needed.

Who did it? One day you walk into the Krusty Krab to grab a cheesy, juicy Krabby Patty. But, you see a wet sponge plopped on the floor... oh no! It is Spongebob! A spatula is stabbed right through his heart -- he does not have a pulse. You can't forgive whoever did this as the murderer killed your favorite burger maker. Was it cynical Squidward, crabby Mr. Krabs, sneaky little Plankton, Sandy Cheeks, or even seemingly-dense Patrick Star? You are determined to carry out an investigation. Who killed him? and how? Learn about DNA, fingerprint and blood type identifications, blood spatter analysis, and more.

Come join us as we explore the world of microorganisms through the sourdough starter fermentation process! Students will be able to bring home their own little jar of sourdough starter and in instruction sheet as to how to take care of it.

Ants are all around us constantly, yet they go unnoticed most of the time! But what do these small animals get up to? How diverse are they? What are some wild and crazy ants that live in the world and in the Ithaca area? All of these can be answered in a fun 50 minutes of ant knowledge.

How do the lines of chemistry and biology interact with one another? Find out in this lecture on the fascinating stories of scientific discovery and the evolution of the field of chemical ecology focusing on arthropods mostly.


Prerequisites
Chemistry knowledge

We will be teaching students how to propagate their own plants. It is a fun introduction to the world of horticulture. They will be able to bring home their own propagated plant.

How did the ancients understand what they saw when the looked up at night? What do we know now that they couldn't have imagined? Come take a look at our immediate cosmic neighborhood.

Do you like to win? From the NBA to the CIA, huge corporations around the world use game theory to help them make their decisions. In this class we'll learn about how simple games can be used to model life. Using some simple logical thinking, we can figure out how to analyze these games for a clear winning strategy that can then be translated to a dominant winning strategy in life. Bring a computer/smart device and come along for the ride!