Summer Quarter 2024

This course is an introductory-level course for students. Its intent is to give an in-depth understanding of the differences between—and similarities of—leadership and management. The course focuses on the major traits of leaders and managers, and augments these with examples of great historic leaders, including George Custer and Jesus Christ. The course also studies the many leadership traits of Abraham Lincoln and looks at how these can be applied in modern business to improve management techniques. As part of the learning process, students give summaries of Lincoln’s leadership lessons, using short, Power Point presentations.

Building on game design concepts learned in Fundamentals of Game Design, this course focuses on creating digital prototypes in order to test and evaluate gameplay mechanics, aesthetics, and control schemes. Prototyping for specific audiences such as investors, publishers, and churches will also be explored.

This course examines major theories concerning the organization of society and the role of government. The relationship of philosophical concepts to the governing of society are carefully explored. Key ideas discussed include justice, natural rights, the role of education, the role of religion in society, the meaning and purpose of freedom, and the responsibility of members of society to themselves and one another, beginning with ancient sources such as the Code of Hammurabi and Aristotle’s Politics, continuing in Thomas Aquinas’s On Kingship, moving into the pre-modern period with works such as Machiavelli’s The Prince and the modern period with selections from Hobbes’s Leviathan and other authors.

This comprehensive studio class will allow students to produce and polish their portfolio content. Several in-class progress milestones, qualitative portfolio reviews by the industry professional guest speakers, and peer critiques will enhance students' experience, and provide maximum guidance to improving the overall quality of students' artwork.

This class fosters the skill of creating a character with little or no preparation, as is often the case in television audition situations.

This course is a continuation of the Media Capstone sequence of courses, and is intended as a pathway for transfer or off-cylcle students to complete their Senior Project requirement.

This course is a continuation of THEO100. Whereas THEO100 focuses largely on the Gospels, this course takes a closer look at the major figures and events of the Old Testament. After a discussion of the literary and historical issues relating to biblical study, students learn the basic structure of the story of salvation history, surveying the books of the Old Testament. Special attention is given to the way the Old Testament books relate to those in the New Testament. As in THEO100 students also focus on how Scripture study relates to the life of prayer.

A thorough breakdown of the process of creating from initial concepts to final design taught by professionals in the design industry.

This course teaches students to meet and resolve objections and conflicts that result from written and oral proposals and pitches. Emphasis is on resolving customer obstacles before addressing your own. Topics covered include: Wants vs. Needs, Win-Win Strategies, Best Alternatives to Agreement, Schedule vs. Quality vs. Cost, Progress vs. Perfection. The class progresses through carefully structured, progressively more complex negotiation exercises. Students learn how external and internal negotiation has become a way of life for effective managers in a constantly changing business environment.

Students study in detail the significant legal considerations involved with forming and operating a sustainable small business, becoming acquainted with real-world examples of incorporation issues and trade-offs, taxes and tax liabilities, human resource commitments and limitations, advertising issues and implications; contract law; patent, copyright and trademark law; and digital rights management.

Advanced study in character animation that revolves around 3D CGI character performance.

The first in a sequence of three 3-unit classes offered to upperclassmen, generally seniors. This course explores market opportunities and needs, competitive market landscapes, skill competencies and gaps, and the process of creating a financial forecast model.

This course will give students the opportunity to screen and discuss various content projects with media professionals who played a significant role in the creation or distribution of that content. Each session may include screenings, presentations, or panel discussions with key creative, marketing, or distribution professionals associated with the content screened.

Picking up where Writing Short Fiction I leaves off, this course affords advanced students additional instruction in the demanding art of short story writing.  The workshop model continues to serve discussions of original student work, and during other class discussions particular stress is laid on finer aspects of craft and sincere engagement with more recent masters of the form. 

In this class, students will reflect on their future career goals. Specifically, they will: determine their ideal career goal and put a concrete career plan in place now to accomplish it; learn to network in the professional community that you want to join; create a professional resumé and an equivalent LinkedIn profile, where the student will connect with 100 professionals in their immediate field of interest; form a team of 4-6 students to arrange group meetings with professionals in a field relevant to the student group; get an internship that could transition into a part-time job prior to graduation and into a full-time job after graduation; reflect on their personal strengths and weaknesses; create a personal Plan for Success; and create a 30 second Elevator Pitch.

In this class, students will explore various techniques for modeling and sculpting organic assets using Maya and ZBrush. Students will produce low and high-poly animals and humans for animation and games. In addition, complementary techniques such as box modeling, edge loop modeling, UV layout, and texturing will be explored.

The Producer:  Planning for Production provides a theoretical and practical introduction to the role of the film producer in five principle areas: 1) creative development, 2) packaging, 3) financing, 4) budgeting, scheduling and hiring, and 5) marketing and distribution.

This course follows Advanced Writing Seminar I and provides additional advanced writing experience for students who have completed multiple scripts for the screen. Assignments will be individualized based on student experience, interest, and skill, and may include development and writing of feature film scripts, television episodes or pilots, short film scripts, and scripts for web-based distribution. Students may also rewrite existing works for which they've written earlier drafts. Students will read and lead discussions of numerous screenplays. Students will pitch their stories, and may be asked to pitch to students in other courses. Students will critique one another’s work in large and small groups, with instructor supervision and guidance. They may also be asked to supervise the script development work of underclassmen. The knowledge, skills, and experience gained in this course will serve aspiring writers, writer-directors, and writer-producers for film, television, and new media. Considerable time will be required for students to write and develop scripts outside of class.

An analysis of music and social structures surrounding 20th Century American Music, including jazz, rock and roll, and hip-hop.

This seminar explores the development of the novel across the 20th century. By grounding their exploration in essential modern texts from varying times and places, students will be positioned to access a range of human experiences and worldviews, even as they track large-scale cultural movements and the consequences of increasing secularization.

Just because you have finished a film doesn't mean your work is done! In this concluding class to the Senior Project experience, students will develop and implement a marketing strategy for their senior project films. They will research film festivals appropriate for their film, develop a strategy and schedule for submitting to those film festivals, develop marketing materials for their films (including posters and taglines), craft documents that will enable strong consideration (including Director's Statements and personalized letters), and budget their senior project financial resources to implement their strategy.

This course tracks the development in European art and thought during the transition from the High Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Special attention is paid at the outset to the tensions arising from, surrounding, and even effecting this epochal shift, especially as evidenced in Dante’s Divine Comedy. When the course later shifts its focus to texts produced by Shakespeare and others in Renaissance England, students find these tensions now located in increasingly realistic and complex human figures and dramas. Through these explorations students come to see the distinctive groundwork being laid for what will later be recognized as the modern period.

While mainstream 21st century life operates in the arbitrary and meaningless condition that Pope St. John Paul II called a “culture of death,” the Catholic tradition holds out the enduring reality of human nature and its supernatural vocation to beatitude. Starting from Part Three of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, this course introduces the Catholic vision of morality centered on the virtues and the attainment of the beatific vision. In his “theology of the body,” our university’s patron insists that the Catholic view of moral action centers on the meaningfulness of the human body. As such, the course gives special attention to JPII’s teaching on the “nuptial meaning” of the body as an alternative to postmodern voluntarist individualism.

An advanced seminar on a topic or author based on faculty selection. Course may be taken multiple times for credit.

This course tracks the development in European art and thought during the transition from the High Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Special attention is paid at the outset to the tensions arising from, surrounding, and even effecting this epochal shift, especially as evidenced in Dante’s Divine Comedy. When the course later shifts its focus to texts produced by Shakespeare and others in Renaissance England, students find these tensions now located in increasingly realistic and complex human figures and dramas. Through these explorations students come to see the distinctive groundwork being laid for what will later be recognized as the modern period.

This course provides the student with the fundamental understandings of how the accounting process is used to measure and report economic events to outside stakeholders. The course focuses on fundamental concepts, required financial statements, and key relationships. The course emphasizes the role of accounting in decision making by investors, creditors, and regulators. The primary objective of this class is that students will be able to demonstrate, at a basic level, an understanding of the knowledge and practice of the core business discipline of accounting.

This class will provide students with the opportunity to develop fully interactive game environment inside a game engine. Students will use basic first-person game controller to navigate inside an interactive game environment in order to validate their designs.

This course tracks the development in European art and thought during the transition from the High Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Special attention is paid at the outset to the tensions arising from, surrounding, and even effecting this epochal shift, especially as evidenced in Dante’s Divine Comedy. When the course later shifts its focus to texts produced by Shakespeare and others in Renaissance England, students find these tensions now located in increasingly realistic and complex human figures and dramas. Through these explorations students come to see the distinctive groundwork being laid for what will later be recognized as the modern period.

This course will teach students how to write and speak effectively in business and other communication.

An exploration of the business and craft of writing for television. Students will study the distinctive characteristics of television storytelling, including episodic structure, character orchestration for television, hour-long versus half-hour writing, group writing and rewriting, spec writing for existing shows, the development and pitching of new series, writing pilots, and launching a television writing career. 

This course is based on the Compassion Cultivation protocol developed at Stanford University, with insights and techniques from psychology, neuroscience, and contemplative practice and presented in a Catholic context. Dynamics of compassion explored are: fostering self-compassion, receiving compassion from others, and extending compassion to others. The course integrates evidence-based meditation and prayer techniques, interactive discussions, and lectures as well as real-world exercises to put learning into practice. Students commit to a daily meditative period to cultivate compassion.

This course will provide the foundational knowledge and skills related to the production of visual narrative art. Students will explore the relationship between story and character development and learn how to sequentially compose and arrange images to present a coherent and emotionally effective story.

Current topics of special interest in business as announced in the Schedule of Classes.

This course builds on student understanding of screen storytelling established in Story, Genre and Structure and Writing and Pitching a Script. Students will develop an original feature-length screen story from multiple ideas through idea evaluation and selection, character creation and development, story structure, treatment, pitch and beat sheet. At the end of the course, students will register their work with the WGA (a $20 fee). Students will consider more advanced screenwriting concepts presented in the text and will apply those principles to their developing stories.

In this course text and dialogue are considered from the actor’s perspective. Scene work is explored, and students are instructed in text analysis (the study of the language within the script) and scene study (the study of the structure of the script) for performance.

The course examines the legal relationships in the motion picture and television industries, as well as the legal relationships between artists and their personal managers. It covers the key legal principles that are involved in most media productions. This includes with trade unions, licensing, intellectual property and contract issues. In addition, this course explores ethical challenges students are likely to encounter working in entertainment and guides them through the development of a personal code of ethics that is informed by the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.

This course is part of the Feature Film Program. Students fulfill the role of editor to create a rough cut, fine cut, and achieve picture lock on a feature length narrative film project under the guidance of a professional editor and in collaboration with the film's director. Each student is responsible for editing a specific portion of the movie and must collaborate to craft a cohesive style that fulfills the director's vision.

This course provides an introduction to illustrating picture books for children.Students will explore a variety of techniques used to create narratives and sequential images using tradition and digital methods of image making, emphasizing the fundamentals of compositional design, text integration, character creation, color, concept development and storyboarding.

This course teaches students to meet and resolve objections and conflicts that result from written and oral proposals and pitches. Emphasis is on resolving customer obstacles before addressing your own. Topics covered include: Wants vs. Needs, Win-Win Strategies, Best Alternatives to Agreement, Schedule vs. Quality vs. Cost, Progress vs. Perfection. The class progresses through carefully structured, progressively more complex negotiation exercises. Students learn how external and internal negotiation has become a way of life for effective managers in a constantly changing business environment.

Using the simplicity of basic 2D animation, students will become familiar with some of the basic “Disney: 12 Principles of Animation.” Through lectures and projects, students will create several short animation projects that include: Key Pose Animation, Squash and Stretch, Anticipation, Staging, Arcs, and Action Timing. Whether 2D, CG, or stop motion animation, these principles are the backbone for all character animation projects.

This class continues concepts in modern electronic music established in Electronic Music Composition I, with a focus on compositional techniques, professional mixing and mastering, and multimedia performance environments. Electronic Music Composition I is a prerequisite, unless approved by the instructor.

Students will continue developing realistic and stylized texture and light schemes to produce depth and meaning in interactive 3D scenes. Students will explore into various advanced PBR texturing and lighting techniques, while generating texture assets for interactive objects and environments.

This is a discussion-based class focusing on Plato’s Republic. While it is often thought of as a book describing a utopian vision, this work offers much more: a thorough analysis on everything from the nature of the human soul, the human desire for justice, and the ordering of human society. Systematic—and at points, outrageous—Plato challenges his readers to consider what it means to be just, how to best structure a society, how government ought to work, what are ideal standards for human lifestyle, how education should be carried out, and much more. What is justice?  Is it good to be just?  What is the best form of government?  The best education?  The best way of life?  What are the obstacles in the way of these things?  What is truth and how do we find it? This course offers a slow and close reading of the text, offering careful analysis of the challenging ideas Plato lays out in this landmark work.

This course focuses on introducing the idea of “entrepreneurial marketing” and is aimed at students who plan to start a new venture or take a job as a marketing professional pursuing an innovative marketing approach. Students will study a full spectrum of marketing strategy and tactics that are especially suitable for entrepreneurial firms aiming for high growth and innovation yet faced by limited resources and uncertain industry dynamics. Students will work in teams on marketing plans for their own venture or for other high-profile entrepreneurs or executives. The focus of this course is on hands-on experiences and practical relevance of innovative marketing concepts.

This course builds upon the skills and techniques learned in Sound in Film: Production, with an emphasis on post-production. The class will review the fundamentals of sound and how they are applied in a media environment to help communicate a message. Students will learn the element of a film or video soundtrack and how to take the elements from production and combine with created sounds and effects to create a complete soundtrack. Students will mix, process and enhance the soundtrack in post-production using a digital audio workstation.

This course will give students the opportunity to screen and discuss various content projects with media professionals who played a significant role in the creation or distribution of that content. Each session may include screenings, presentations, or panel discussions with key creative, marketing, or distribution professionals associated with the content screened.

Picking up where Writing Short Fiction I leaves off, this course affords advanced students additional instruction in the demanding art of short story writing.  The workshop model continues to serve discussions of original student work, and during other class discussions particular stress is laid on finer aspects of craft and sincere engagement with more recent masters of the form. 

This class will help students to develop basic figure drawing skills. Students will study drawing a human body in various shapes and poses in order to create designs for animated characters.

Applied Market Research offers students an overview of market research techniques and primary and secondary research strategies informed by a Christian code of conduct. The course is designed to provide them with the principles, vocabulary, tools and practice necessary to identify a market demographic, write a research brief, develop and implement a research study, and analyze the findings.

This course develops the artistic and technical skills needed to enhance a story using visual effects. Students learn fundamental concepts such as masking, keyframing, tracking, and chroma keying to craft visual effects. This class is a pre-requisite for ENTM 417 Compositing

This seminar explores the development of the novel across the 20th century. By grounding their exploration in essential modern texts from varying times and places, students will be positioned to access a range of human experiences and worldviews, even as they track large-scale cultural movements and the consequences of increasing secularization.

This class will help students to develop basic figure drawing skills. Students will study drawing a human body in various shapes and poses in order to create designs for animated characters.

An exploration of the intricate link between story structure and game design, this course gives students hands-on experience creating games with narratives that are both embedded (scripted) and emergent (arising from the game mechanics). Branching stories, database narrative, and environmental storytelling will be addressed, as well as current developments in the field.

In this class, students will work as part of a collaborative production team that will write, produce, film and edit a short-form narrative film. Students will gain an understanding and knowledge of the key personnel positions required to produce a film, and will execute those job functions by taking a project through pre-production, production and post-production.

This course tracks the development in European art and thought during the transition from the High Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Special attention is paid at the outset to the tensions arising from, surrounding, and even effecting this epochal shift, especially as evidenced in Dante’s Divine Comedy. When the course later shifts its focus to texts produced by Shakespeare and others in Renaissance England, students find these tensions now located in increasingly realistic and complex human figures and dramas. Through these explorations students come to see the distinctive groundwork being laid for what will later be recognized as the modern period.

An advanced seminar on a topic or author based on faculty selection. Course may be taken multiple times for credit.

This course tracks the development in European art and thought during the transition from the High Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Special attention is paid at the outset to the tensions arising from, surrounding, and even effecting this epochal shift, especially as evidenced in Dante’s Divine Comedy. When the course later shifts its focus to texts produced by Shakespeare and others in Renaissance England, students find these tensions now located in increasingly realistic and complex human figures and dramas. Through these explorations students come to see the distinctive groundwork being laid for what will later be recognized as the modern period.

This course covers the tools and techniques of digital painting in Photoshop, emphasizing the fundamentals of color, light, perspective, and depth to create stylized and realistic pieces for illustration, matte painting, and/or concept art.

This course provides the student with the fundamental understandings of how the accounting process is used to measure and report economic events to outside stakeholders. The course focuses on fundamental concepts, required financial statements, and key relationships. The course emphasizes the role of accounting in decision making by investors, creditors, and regulators. The primary objective of this class is that students will be able to demonstrate, at a basic level, an understanding of the knowledge and practice of the core business discipline of accounting.

This course is designed for junior and senior entrepreneurial business students, and builds upon earlier courses in leadership, project management, and Project Execution I. The course’s intent is to show how to successfully visualize, plan, brief, execute, and debrief a more complex project involving the entire class. The center piece of the course is the actual execution of a three-day wilderness campout involving JPCatholic students as part of their overall academic experience. The course shows how management (represented by half students) can successfully plan and brief a project that is executed by other staff (represented by the other half), which in-turn demonstrates the importance of visualization, discussion, and tapping into the experience of others, as well as how to successfully debrief the team to learn valuable lessons. Consequently, the course gives valuable insight, since the division of duties mimics real-life project execution in the business world, where management and staff have different roles and responsibilities.

This course tracks the development in European art and thought during the transition from the High Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Special attention is paid at the outset to the tensions arising from, surrounding, and even effecting this epochal shift, especially as evidenced in Dante’s Divine Comedy. When the course later shifts its focus to texts produced by Shakespeare and others in Renaissance England, students find these tensions now located in increasingly realistic and complex human figures and dramas. Through these explorations students come to see the distinctive groundwork being laid for what will later be recognized as the modern period.

This course focuses on introducing the idea of “entrepreneurial marketing” and is aimed at students who plan to start a new venture or take a job as a marketing professional pursuing an innovative marketing approach. Students will study a full spectrum of marketing strategy and tactics that are especially suitable for entrepreneurial firms aiming for high growth and innovation yet faced by limited resources and uncertain industry dynamics. Students will work in teams on marketing plans for their own venture or for other high-profile entrepreneurs or executives. The focus of this course is on hands-on experiences and practical relevance of innovative marketing concepts.

Students conduct research on a primary text and write a lengthy paper, practicing revision and editing skills as they develop their original theses.  This class encourages a “close reading” of a primary text, requires students to build an annotated bibliography to evaluate secondary and tertiary source material, and introduces rhetorical concepts in the effort to help students become stronger readers and writers.

This course introduces the basic principles of economics and their applications to managerial decision making. It begins with an analysis of the decision making of individual consumers and producers and how they interact in a variety of marketing settings. Other topics covered include: decision making in risky situations; the complexity of pricing, production, and market entry and exit; and the relationship between market structure and the strategic choices that are open to the company. The course forces the student to think systematically about achieving competitive advantage through the management of the firm's resources.

Students will learn the basics of motion picture production using real-time rendering in Unreal Engine and will leave with a completed project that demonstrates proficiency in both the engine and its application across several stages of production. Additional topics include motion capture and tracking a real world camera. 

Orthodoxy is not only right belief but right worship. Through the Church’s sacramental economy and the individual prayer life of the faithful, the truths of the Catholic faith are displayed, lived, and understood. Following Parts Two and Four of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, this course explicates the Church’s “mysteries”: the sacraments, prayer and devotion that nurture the faithful in their Christian discipleship and sanctification.

This course focuses on the anatomy and form, context, and motion of typography as a powerful communication tool across a variety of physical and digital media.

Orthodoxy is not only right belief but right worship. Through the Church’s sacramental economy and the individual prayer life of the faithful, the truths of the Catholic faith are displayed, lived, and understood. Following Parts Two and Four of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, this course explicates the Church’s “mysteries”: the sacraments, prayer and devotion that nurture the faithful in their Christian discipleship and sanctification.

While mainstream 21st century life operates in the arbitrary and meaningless condition that Pope St. John Paul II called a “culture of death,” the Catholic tradition holds out the enduring reality of human nature and its supernatural vocation to beatitude. Starting from Part Three of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, this course introduces the Catholic vision of morality centered on the virtues and the attainment of the beatific vision. In his “theology of the body,” our university’s patron insists that the Catholic view of moral action centers on the meaningfulness of the human body. As such, the course gives special attention to JPII’s teaching on the “nuptial meaning” of the body as an alternative to postmodern voluntarist individualism.

Mixing classroom learning with evangelization in the local community, this course allows JPCatholic students to apply their classroom learning about the New Evangelization to actual evangelizing encounters. Experienced faculty provide guidance and ensure that team-building, collaboration, prayer, and mutual support are integrated into the course, along with continued instruction in the dynamics, approaches, content, and aims of the New Evangelization.

This is the second course in the Incubator Sequence. Entrepreneurial students will receive mentorship as they continue to launch their company. Goal is to make meaningful progress toward the start or growth of their company.