America's 10 Hottest Classes

Grinnell College
Space, Time and Motion
Tammy Nyden and Sujeev Wickramasekara

This interdisciplinary course hurtles its students back in time by allowing them to reconstruct important scientific discoveries of the 17th and 18th centuries while also discussing their societal implications. The lessons come from antique textbooks, and the labs are done using either rebuilt or borrowed historical equipment. “For humanities students, this is a way to learn classical physics without being bogged down by math,” Nyden says. “For physics majors, they get to emulate the greatest scientists of their field and see the messiness of the lives of their heroes.”

Middlebury College
The Economics of ‘Sin’: Sex, Crime, and Drugs
Jessica Holmes

A former blackjack dealer and casino pit boss, Holmes is young and vibrant with the background to match. In this elective course, she takes basic microeconomic principles and applies them to less staid pursuits, such as adultery, teen pregnancy, illegal drugs and online gambling. As the professor herself adds, “It is often easier to get students to debate the economic arguments for and against the legalization of prostitution than to discuss the latest employment estimates.”

University of Michigan
The History of College Athletics
John Bacon

Bacon’s engaging style and famous guest lecturers— including several of the Big Ten school’s most-admired football coaches—make his class a perennial favorite. In the course, he dissects why college sports, particularly football and basketball, play such a large role in American culture and how they have become a multibillion-dollar industry.

But Bacon has also clearly found his passion in life and encourages students to do the same. As the professor himself put it last spring upon receiving the U of M’s highest teaching honor, “If you hate what you do, it will never be enough, never enough money, never enough awards.”

Auburn University
Dave Letterman Physics
Mike Bozack

Bozack is infamous for charming his students with a variety of stunts, including lying on a bed of nails, letting students shoot him with Tasers, and jumping on the lecture table dozens of times a semester. He uses physics to explain the best way to hold a tennis racket or tackle a running back. His lessons have made his intro “mythbusters” course probably the most popular way on campus for undergrads to fill their science requirement.

Still, part of Bozack’s charm is that he does more than just explain why your shower curtain may, on occasion, unexpectedly attack you. No, he believes that his job is challenge students to their fullest potential. “I’m not good because I’m easy but because students perceive that I really do care about them,” he says. “I tell them, sometimes for the first time, that you can’t spend your life playing video games.”

Lewis and Clark College
Modern Cuba
Elliott Young

Sometimes a beloved class can just capture the undergraduate’s imagination. Lewis and Clark College’s “Modern Cuba” prepares members to study abroad on the island the next semester. “Students are clearly interested in Cuba because it is the forbidden fruit—U.S. tourists not being allowed to travel there by the U.S. government for almost 40 years,” Young says. “I think its popularity suggests that this generation of college students doesn't like their government to shield them from experiences and prevent them from gaining first-hand knowledge of alternative political and cultural ways of being.”

UCLA
Genetic Engineering in Medicine, Agriculture and Law
Robert Goldberg

Goldberg’s course is always one of the first to sell out these days and commands a deep waiting list. And he has been lauded on many occasions for being one of UCLA’s best teachers. That said, there’s also definitely something about his course material that appeals directly to today’s student. “Go to the grocery store to buy a tomato or read about global warming and the subject matter of this course affects your everyday life,” says former Goldberg student Daisy Robinton. “People of our generation want to be more active and informed about such things.”

University of Texas
Life and Death Decisions
Sheldon Ekland-Olson

The sociology department's “Life and Death Decisions” forces students to debate controversial topics such as abortion, in vitro fertilization and the death penalty. Another class delves into the Beat Generation’s influence on modern-day culture. “It’s really heartening that students are flocking to courses that ask big questions,” says Texas academic advisor Richard Ribb. “Especially while every motivation produced by our society propels them toward accounting and advertising majors.”

Kathleen Kingsbury covers education for The Daily Beast. She also contributes to Time magazine, where she has covered business, health and education since 2005.

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