News Release

Learn Something New in School, Without the Homework

The Odyssey Program at The Johns Hopkins University offers new non-credit classes every semester in the arts and sciences, photography, performing arts, creative writing, career skills, foreign language and certificate programs in environmental studies and aging. And none of them require homework.

Here are some highlights of the fall semester:

Barry Scheck, Frank Sesno, Donna Rice Hughs, Dinesh D Souza are among the well-known voices in law, journalism, academia and literature, who will be featured speakers in the series Free Speech: Media Law, and Society. This is a five-session course ($90), but sessions may be attended individually for $18.

Charles and Diana were not the first royal couple to have had marital problems. Thomas Berry, retired Russian language and literature professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, will teach a course titled Royal Marriages, Royal Tragedies, examining the tragic histories of eight royal couples--lives filled with drama and intrigue, spanning 1500 years and three continents. (9 sessions, $144)

What is biodiversity, and why is it so important to our survival? Well-known environmentalists from the Smithsonian Institutions, the National Zoo and Johns Hopkins explore the remarkable diversity of life on our planet in Chain of Life: The Importance of Biodiversity. (9 sessions, includes a trip to the National Zoo, $164)

Other noteworthy classes:

• The Spanish-American War Reconsidered
  
• Athens: From Myth to Modernity
  
• Baltimore Mansions
  
• Einstein: The Man and His Ideas
  
• Intelligence and the Brain.