Multicultural Mental Health (Summer, 2019)

MULTICULTURAL MENTAL HEALTH
Summer, 2019

Professor: Dr. Travis Langley
Contact:   langlet@hsu.edu 

Required textbook: None.
Required readings: Plenty (many through http://library.hsu.edu/)

OVERVIEW: 

PSY 3053 Multicultural Mental Health.  This course examines non-Western perspectives on mental health, including issues of psychological science, diagnosis, and treatment. Culture-bound syndromes rarely found in Western society are explored. Coverage includes social and cultural determinants of psychopathology and the range of problems in individuals, families, and communities; mental health of indigenous peoples, ethnocultural minorities, immigrants, and refugees; cultural views on related issues such as suicide; mental health issues among native Americans and other citizens of non-Western/non-European descent; and the influence of Eastern philosophy on areas of contemporary psychology, views toward mental health, and how the mentally ill are treated.

EXAM

You must come to campus to take the 60-minute final exam at one of these times.

Pre-Summer (May, pre-summer)
* Friday, May 25, 2:00 or 4:00 p.m. (McBrien 311).

Summer I
* July 3, 1:00 or 3:00 p.m. (McBrien 311).

Summer II
*  August 8, 1:00 or 3:00 p.m. (McBrien 313).

You are NOW responsible for making sure you can and will be here at one of those times. Do not ask to take it early or late unless you have other finals at EVERY time listed above, and if so, tell me as soon as possible. Find out now when all your finals will be held. It’s no big deal if I need to add an extra time, but we all need to know that soon so I can make that time available as an option anybody in the class can choose.

Bring a #2 pencil, Scantron sheet, and identification (driver’s license or HSU ID) to take the final. If your photo on the roster looks like you, I’m unlikely to ask for your identification, but have it with you just in case. Location will be announced the weekend before finals.

If your phone, iPod, or anything else that could contain notes can be seen by anyone in the class, that will be treated as cheating because too many students use their phones to cheat. We do not have to confirm what was on your phone, notebook, or related item. Do not have any of them in line of sight.

ONLINE ORIENTATION

There is a mandatory first-week (first-day in summer) orientation session for students in the class. Anyone who does not complete the online orientation on time will be dropped from the course. The term is too short and we have too many things to go over for us to handle that otherwise.

GRADES

1/4 PowerPoint project
1/4 Other assignments before midterm grade entry
1/4 Other assignments after midterm grade entry
1/4 Final

If you do everything you’re supposed to do and do it all correctly, you’ll go into the final with an A for assignments (but keep in mind that the PowerPoint gets graded after everything else).

If you miss a couple of Internet assignments or do several assignments incorrectly, you should go into the final with a B. Each assignment you miss is worth negative credit, and some students underestimate how much each missed assignment can damage the grade.

To have a lower grade before the final, you could do every assignment but do the work poorly and repeatedly fail to follow instructions OR miss more assignments after the last time the professor drops students (and you won’t know when that will be). If you miss three or more assignments, you are likely to get DROPPED FROM THE CLASS WITH NO FURTHER WARNING. This is your warning.
Assignments get tallied at the end of the semester. There’s no grade to report along the way because you should already know if you’re doing the work or not and you should notice if you get dropped from the class. Every semester, there are people who get dropped for missing assignments and they do not manage to plead their way back into the class. These are easy assignments. Do them.
If you signed up for a pre-summer or summer course, you’re trying to get credit for an entire semester in a few weeks. Allow yourself enough time every day to earn credit  the kind of classroom hours (not to mention homework and study hours) that would eventually add up to be equivalent to taking a course during the regular semester.

Specific MyHenderson message board assignments will guide you through the process of completing your PowerPoint project. Your project gets graded at the end of the semester, after everything else. If you only meet the minimum requirements for the PowerPoint, you become less likely to make an A in the class. Do more.

PERSONAL COMMITMENT

While you enjoy great flexibility in taking this course online, you and you alone are responsible for your success. It requires motivation and devotion. You must make sure you follow instructions and do your work before the deadlines.

CONTACTING YOUR PROFESSOR

For an online course, the easiest way to contact me with questions or comments is by e-mail. Write me at langlet@hsu.edu any time and I will respond after I see the message if a reply is necessary. If you cannot e-mail me, you will need to leave a message on my voicemail at  (870)230-5222 . E-mail works best, though. Every time you email your professor, say who you are and which course and assignment you’re talking about at the beginning of your message (not just in your subject line because that doesn’t immediately show in some apps).

I will send messages to the entire class via e-mail at times. The e-mail system is set up to send messages to your HSU student e-mail address. If you prefer to use some other address, you must go into your campus email system and set up your mail options so that it will forward e-mail to you. I do not plan to use Canvas’s mail system after the welcome message.

If I can help you with anything else, always feel free to ask. Some of you have never taken online classes before, so do not be embarrassed when you occasionally goof here or there. That’s part of the learning process, and I’ll endeavor to help you get things running smoothly.

INTERNET ASSIGNMENTS

We will never use chat rooms and you will not have to be online at any specific time of day to do the assignments. Chat room technology for that is still too awkward, not every student’s computer will be able to handle it, and part of the reason for taking an online class is to keep your time flexible.

To do your assignments, check the message board on the MyHenderson page for this class several times each week. You should not go more than two weekdays in a row without checking the message board. You will either do each assignment on that message board or learn from the message board where to go to do each task. Each response you’re required to make counts as one point simply for following the instructions or minus one point (-1, negative credit) if you don’t do it. You will have several assignments every week (due every weekday during summer and every day including the one weekend during pre-summer). Because missing an assignment in an online class counts as missing class, anyone who fails to do three or more of the assignments may be dropped from the course without further notice.

Assignment deadlines appear as dates in the assignments’ subject headings. The deadline is 30 minutes until midnight at the end of the specified day. If you wait until that evening and something goes wrong that keeps you from doing the assignment, well, you should have done it earlier because you’ll normally have several days to complete each task. If your Internet is out all day, you are responsible for going somewhere with Internet access. If your wifi is out, you might be able to use your phone to create a hotspot with access. The Internet is all around us, the ways to access it are many, and you have chosen to take an online class. Internet access is your responsibility. An assignment that’s late by less than a day is worth one-third (1/3) credit; after that, NO credit. There will be some assignments you simply cannot do late, and you will not always know which ones because no one should regularly plan on running late. MAKE THE DEADLINES.

If you are unable to post your assignment because your attachment is too large, do not email it to your professor. Emailing it does not count. So far, the only reason any student’s PowerPoint file has ever been too large to post has been because it included one or more images that were too large. Look at each image’s file size before you add it to your PowerPoint. When it comes time to grade your assignments, your professor will only look in the place where the instructions told you to put it. Nobody gets special treatment for failing to follow instructions or extra time for waiting until they did not have enough time left to complete and post by the deadline.

You will complete the course orientation and take a few quizzes online through Canvas. Don’t take any specific quiz until you see the MyHenderson discussion forum tell you to do so (although feel free to retake them later as part of reviewing for the final). Except for those and your first reading assignment (DSM appendix), we will not use Canvas for anything else. Think of this as a MyHenderson class.

Syllabus Part II: Expected Learning Outcomes, Computer Tips, Disability Services
(not covered by syllabus quiz)

Any information in this syllabus may be subject to change, correction, or other revision.