When catastrophe strikes, humans are often a larger threat to themselves, says Glenn Stutzky, a clinical instructor at Michigan State University (MSU).
Stutzky, who teaches in the department of social work, is creating an online course starting this summer entitled “Surviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse: Catastrophies and Human Behaviour.” After he decided to launch a course on human interaction during times of crisis and catastrophe, he initially thought of simulating a tsunami disaster or meteor hitting the earth.
“I’m using the zombie thing to hopefully make the whole thing a little more interesting,” Stutzky said in a promotional video.
“In times of catastrophes, some people find their humanity, others lose theirs,” he added.
Stutzky has been teaching and researching at MSU for 15 years. Much of his research focuses on bullying and its correlation to school violence, which involves situations like a school shooter on campus.
When experiencing such crises, humans are faced with questions like, “How do you assess your immediate environment? Is this place where I am at now safe?” he said in a phone interview.
“Surviving that initial moment, or those first few hours, is crucial.”
“The class is actually about different kind of catastrophic events like the Black Plague and how people behave during those kinds of crisis situations,” Stutzky said in the video, in which a school janitor morphs into a zombie and begins devouring him.
As for the course itinerary, Stutzky said it will include “the traditional classroom things, such as required readings, quizzes, [and] discussion forums” in addition to “some more interactive assignments” online.
“One [assignment will require students to] be put in small survivor groups,” he said. “For the entire first week of the class, these survivor groups will be located geographically in different locations throughout the United States.”
Joel Kelford, a second-year criminology student at Carleton and an avid fan of AMC’s popular zombie television series The Walking Dead, said he believes the course is “a useful tool to engage students to bring a recent fad into a learning environment.”
He added that its purpose may be to “lure more audiences to the program and to raise more money.”
Should a program with a fantasy-oriented subject have a place in academia? Cyril Ricketts, a first-year humanities student at Carleton, said he thinks so.
“It sounds like a perfectly fine idea,” Ricketts said.
“I don’t see it as an issue if it’s simply looking at disaster preparation,” he continued. “But if it’s [stating], ‘Yes, zombies are coming,’ then there probably is a problem there.”
