Wed, Aug 03, 2005

Architects of Peace Gallery and Lesson-plan Collection at Santa Clara University

The Architects of Peace Gallery is a collection of photos taken by photographer Michael Collopy for his book Architects of Peace. It contains a series of portraits of people who have worked toward peace from a diversity of viewpoints and backgrounds. The list includes diplomats and poets, scientists and religious leaders.

The Architects of Peace website hosted by the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University contains 73 discreet lesson plans primarily geared toward collegiate freshmen and sophomores, but easily adaptable to high school juniors and seniors. A lesson plan has been prepared for each featured architect, the core of which is the composition of an essay, usually in the three-to-five page range, but expandable to meet course requirements. Preliminary research for these essays is primarily internet-based, with some links being provided within the lesson plans themselves.

A teaching guide helps faculty apply the materials to different course areas. Each lesson plan follows the same basic format, using a five-step explication in the following order: prepare, read, explore, write, and expand. The explication is followed by an additional resource students may find to be helpful in their research. The website has been optimized for class projects where individual students will choose the area they wish to investigate on an architect-by-architect basis. This model allows students to pursue research in areas of greater personal interest.

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