DFX 394 - 001: Special Topics - Digital Illustration
Instructor: Nicholas Brummer
Prerequisite: Junior Standing - Photoshop Experience (DFX 221 or SOTA Equivalent)
Special Topics – Digital Illustration will explore tools and techniques for professional digital illustration for games, cover art, comics, design and conceptual art. A heavy focus will be on the technical aspects of composition, color, design, methodology, image development, tool functionality and best practices for document set up. This course will also cover development of style and storytelling.
Offered: Tuesdays, 6:15-9:00 PM
JOU 394/HNR 322: Special Topics in Journalism: True Crime
Instructor: Dr. Stacie Jankowski
Prerequisite: CMST 101 OR CMST 110 OR JOU 110 OR HNR 101 and HNR 102
From scores of recent serial killer documentaries rehashing the crimes of days past to the hundreds of memes that flooded social media after the arrests of notorious alleged perpetrators, it may feel like true crime is a genre that has exploded in recent days. Our society’s obsession with stories of murder and mayhem isn’t new – it goes back centuries. This course examines the genre of true crime throughout its many iterations, such as journalism, entertainment, television, documentary, and podcast. We will investigate how our texts frame the victims, perpetrators, investigators, communities, and storytellers. We will attempt to understand our society’s obsession with true crime — whether we watch in morbid curiosity, in pleasure, in catharsis, or even in preparation for self-preservation. We’ll discuss the ethics of producing and consuming true crime. We’ll consider the ways true crime reveals our culture — how we stereotype others, how we envision the challenges of our society, and how we understand the human experience.
Offered: Tuesday and Thursday, 9:25am– 10:40 a.m.
CYS 330 - 001: Introduction to Ethical Hacking
Instructor: Nazmus Sadat
Prerequisite: CIT 285
Discover vulnerabilities in computers, networks, and services. Understand the procedures and tools used for exploiting weaknesses, escalating privilege, and lateral movement. Perform network, operating system, and application penetration testing. Be able to harden the security of computer systems including applications and networks.
Offered: Tuesday and Thursday, 3:05-4:20 PM
CIT 381 - 001: Raspberry PI Based IoT
Instructor: Kenneth Roth
Prerequisite: C- or better in INF 120
Use of the Raspberry PI and Python to monitor, measure and control devices in the physical world. Make use of the Internet to obtain additional data for better local decisions or transport of data from the device.
Offered: Monday, 6:15-9:00 PM
CSC/DSC/ASE 394 - 001: Software Engineering and IoT System Development
Instructor: Dr. Samuel Cho
Prerequisite: CSC 260 (Java Programming) or equivalent.
This course aims to teach students how to use software engineering principles and patterns to solve the Internet of Things (IoT) problems. In this course, students learn how to make IoT applications through software (such as programming) and hardware (such as embedded system development) development in a team. In the development of IoT systems, students can effectively understand how to build embedded systems with communication and sensor capabilities using software engineering ideas and tools.
Offered: Monday and Wednesday, 2:00-3:15 PM
CSC 464 - 001: Design and Analysis of Algoritms
Instructor: Dr. Yangyang Tao
Prerequisite: C- or better in CSC 364 and MAT 385.
Proofs of time and space bounds on important algorithms; advanced algorithms on graphs, sequences and sets; divide-and-conquer and dynamic programming; randomized algorithms; parallel algorithms.
Offered: Tuesday and Thursday, 10:50AM-12:05PM
CMST 220, Section 001, Interpersonal Communication
Instructor: Dr. Mark Leeman
PREREQ: CMST 101 or CMST 110 or HNR 101 and 102
Theories and skills of dyadic interaction in professional and personal contexts; perception, self-concept, nonverbal communication, listening, assertiveness, relationships, conflict management and problem solving.
Offered: Monday, 2:00 - 3:15 PM/Online hybrid
PRE 300, Section 001, Event Planning and Messaging
Instructor: Dr. Zach Hart
PREREQ: Junior Standing (Students who meet the prerequisite below but are not juniors can be permitted in.)
Hands-on experience in planning, promoting, executing, evaluating events that fulfill a public relations purpose. Students gain an understanding of different types of events, the public relations purposes events fulfill, planning and logistics of executing events, messaging strategies promoting events; and evaluation methods to determine events’ success in meeting public relations goals. The spring 2026 offering of this course will focus on political events, how they are planned and communicate messages in support of a candidate or issue. Through a partnership with LINK nky, a local media organization, students will attend and report on actual spring 26 primary election campaign events in Kentucky and Ohio as part of the course.
Offered: Monday, 2:00 - 3:15 PM/Online hybrid
CMST 394, Section 001/JOU 394, Section 001/PSC 394, Section 001, Political Event Planning and Messaging
Instructor: Dr. Zach Hart
PREREQ: CMST 101 or CMST 110 or HNR 101 and 102 or EMB 100 or JOU 110 or POP 205 or POP 250
Hands-on experience in planning, promoting, executing, evaluating events that fulfill a public relations purpose. Students gain an understanding of different types of events, the public relations purposes events fulfill, planning and logistics of executing events, messaging strategies promoting events; and evaluation methods to determine events’ success in meeting public relations goals. The spring 2026 offering of this course will focus on political events, how they are planned and communicate messages in support of a candidate or issue. Through a partnership with LINK nky, a local media organization, students will attend and report on actual spring 26 primary election campaign events in Kentucky and Ohio as part of the course.
Offered: Mondays 2:00 – 3:15 p.m./Online hybrid
EMB 495, Section 001, Study Abroad in Guatemala
Instructor: Professor Sara Drabik
PREREQ: Instructor permission
Storytelling in Guatemala is your chance to explore the vibrant culture of the Lake Atitlán region while creating meaningful media! Through pre-trip research and a Spring Break journey to the Los Andes Nature Reserve, students will produce faculty-directed documentary projects that celebrate the people, landscapes, and traditions of Guatemala. Highlights include chocolate-making in Antigua, sunrise over a volcano, boat rides across Lake Atitlán, and immersive experiences on a working coffee farm. Past student work has even won a regional Emmy—come be part of the story!
Offered: Tuesdays and Thursdays 10:50 am – 12:05 p.m./Online hybrid
JOU 331, Section 001, Specialty Reporting
Instructor: Dr. Stacie Jankowski
PREREQ: JOU 220 (Students who meet the prerequisite below but do not have JOU 220 can be permitted in.)
This hands-on course immerses students in community journalism by placing them directly within a local community to report on real issues, events, and voices. While embedded in a local Northern Kentucky community, students will learn how to cover a community beat, working on stories about local government, schools, business, sports, arts, and other neighborhood people and places. This course emphasizes ethical reporting while honing journalistic skills — you’ll be listening, engaging, and making journalism that serves a public good. Envisioned as a partnership with LINKnky, this class will also work with LINK for potential publishing opportunities.
Offered: Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:25 - 10:40 a.m.
EMB 394, Section 001, Specialty Reporting
Instructor: Dr. Stacie Jankowski
PREREQ: CMST 101 or CMST 110 or HNR 101 and 102 or EMB 100 or JOU 110 or POP 205 or POP 250
This hands-on course immerses students in community journalism by placing them directly within a local community to report on real issues, events, and voices. While embedded in a local Northern Kentucky community, students will learn how to cover a community beat, working on stories about local government, schools, business, sports, arts, and other neighborhood people and places. This course emphasizes ethical reporting while honing journalistic skills — you’ll be listening, engaging, and making journalism that serves a public good. Envisioned as a partnership with LINKnky, this class will also work with LINK for potential publishing opportunities.
Offered: Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:25 - 10:40 a.m.
POP 494, Section 001, Topics: The MTV Generation
Instructor: Professor Zach Wells
PREREQ: CMST 101 or CMST 110 or HNR 101 and 102 or POP 205 or POP 250
This course examines the music, film, and television that defined Generation X and early Millennials, often referred to collectively as the “MTV Generation.” Focusing on the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, it explores how popular culture reflected and shaped generational identity, social behaviors, and cultural stereotypes. The course emphasizes the reciprocal relationship between popular entertainment and the cultural history of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century America.
Offered: Online asynchronous (16-weeks)
CSC/ASE/DSC 394 Introduction to Generative AI
Instructor: Yangyang Tao
PREREQ: Consent of Instructor
This hands-on course introduces students to cutting-edge generative AI models through weekly labs, each focused on a single pretrained model, such as Diffusion, Transformer, Whisper, etc. Students will learn to deploy these models for practical applications in image, text, audio, and video generation. Emphasis is placed on ethical use, prompt engineering, and rapid prototyping using tools like Hugging Face, OpenAI API, and Gradio.
CSC/ASE/DSC 494 AI-Driven IoT System Development
Instructor: Samuel Cho
PREREQ: Consent of Instructor
This course is designed to help students use **generative AI** as a tool for learning, understanding, and building IoT systems more effectively. Students will practice using AI-assisted programming to develop and debug IoT devices while learning the key principles, rules, and tools behind IoT system design. We will work with a variety of IoT boards (e.g., ESP32 and Arduino), communication technologies (e.g., BLE and I2C), and sensors/actuators. Through hands-on projects, students will build IoT systems that collect data from sensors, interact with mobile devices (iOS/Android), process information, and send it to servers using Docker.
