What happens to the brain as we age? Why is it more difficult to recall names or remember where you placed the keys? Why do patients with Alzheimer's disease lose the ability to form new memories or retrieve old memories? Why do patients with Parkinson's disease have deficits in movement and changes in personality? In this course, you will learn the answers to these questions and also learn:
about the structure of the human brain and the changes that occur during natural aging and during neurodegenerative diseases, about current research aimed at developing treatments for neurodegenerative diseases, about the science behind lifestyle changes that improve brain health as we age, how to evaluate advertisements for products that claim to slow down brain aging.

For the past 19 years, Dr. Hogan has been a professor in the Biology Department at Canisius College, where she teaches many courses in the area of neuroscience, including Neurobiology of Nervous System Disorders, Functional Neuroanatomy, Developmental Neurobiology, and Cellular Neurobiology. In her lab, she researches how the nervous system develops and regenerates. Using microscopy, she is able to observe living neurons as they grow axons. She loves teaching neuroscience and showing her time-lapse movies of nerve growth in her classes.

This course will be a combination of classroom work as well as practical applications for the material covered in the class. We will address the various parameters of exercise to include: flexibility, cardiovascular exercise, muscular strength, muscular endurance and body composition. Other topics that will be explored will be osteoporosis prevention, proper nutrition, skill related components (balance, rhythm, reaction time, coordination and agility). The class will be very interactive so be prepared to move and even to perhaps sweat a little bit.

Dr. Pelitera began his career at Canisius College in 1986. He started out at Canisius as the strength and conditioning coordinator for all of the college's NCAA Division I athletic teams, a position that he held for 18 years. In 2004, Dr. Pelitera was offered a job as a faculty member in the kinesiology department. He completed his doctoral degree and continues to serve in that capacity. Dr. Pelitera is the director of the Health and Wellness program and coordinates the placement and supervision of the internships for the program. He also teaches classes in Wellness, Fitness, Nutrition and Disease evolution. Dr. Pelitera has been interviewed and quoted in several magazines and journals based on his expertise and experience in fitness. Recently, he was quoted in both SHAPE magazine and Prevention magazine.

Dr. Pelitera earned both his bachelor's and master's degrees at Canisius College and originally attended Canisius as a student athlete playing football for all four years. Being a part of collegiate athletics is what stirred his passion for exercise and training athletes. Dr. Pelitera continues to train athletes and other individuals at Pelitera's Fitness Consultants, a locally based workout and athletic performance facility. He has trained many professional, collegiate and high school athletes. Recently he has focused on strength training programs for professional boxers and was "Baby" Joe Mesi's strength and conditioning coach throughout Joe's professional career. Pelitera's Fitness Consultants consists of a gym and an outdoor training facility that combine to fit a variety of workout needs.

This is a course in developing your own personal leadership skills. It will be taught primarily through interactive group discussion based on our reading and application of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. By applying in real life the leadership practices we read about, and sharing personal experiences, participants will develop greater self-confidence and leadership skills. A major focus of the course is on self-discovery: your uniqueness, values, strengths, and goals - in short, the many factors which affect how you act as a leader. The goals of the course are for students to acquire knowledge about the basic principles of leadership and develop a better understanding of themselves as leaders and apply these skills to motivate themselves and others in personal, social, and organizational settings. Throughout the process, emphasis will be placed on learning and applying effective strategies for self-management and self-improvement, and on enriching our relationships with others by improving our interpersonal communication skills.

"Success comes from persistence" -- That's what Dr. Larkin tells her students. After graduating from Vassar College, she spent 10 years, including marriage and 3 children, two separate year-long experiences in the Philippines, and numerous long distance commutes from Buffalo to Columbia University to meet with her thesis advisor, before she obtained her PhD in Psychology and began her teaching career at Canisius College

Dr. Larkin has taught Introduction to Psychology to generations of students, plus courses and workshops in industrial/organizational psychology, leadership and motivation, and career decision-making. She has done research and written articles applying psychology to issues in business and education. Her current research and writing focuses on understanding what prevents so many women from going public: Speaking up, speaking out, stepping into the spotlight and striving for success.

Is humor the "best medicine" or not? In this course you will learn, laugh, and have fun! We will explore the intrapersonal and interpersonal benefits of humor production in different communication contexts. While watching humorous movies, reading funny stories, and being around humorous people is beneficial, these experiences are relatively passive and different from actually creating humorous messages. Come join the fun and learn about how humor production can improve your physical and mental well-being. You might even decide to pursue a career in standup comedy!

Legendary CEO of Dupont, Irving Shapiro, argued that leaders are "first and foremost in the human relations and communication business." Dr. Melissa Wanzer, Ed.D., is in the "human relations and communication business" and her courses help students gain the knowledge and skills needed to develop and maintain rewarding personal and professional relationships. Dr. Wanzer believes that people can learn to use humor appropriately and effectively to improve relationships and well-being. Dr. Wanzer's research describes the benefits of humor production in contexts such as medicine, education, the workplace, and bereavement/coping situations.

WordPress is the most popular website building tool in the world. Professionals in a wide range of industries can benefit from knowing how to create, maintain, and update websites built with WordPress. In this course, you will learn how to transform a basic template (called a “theme” in WordPress lingo) into a robust website, with custom colors, images, fonts, pages, and content. You’ll also learn how to make WordPress do even more with add-ons (called “plugins” in WordPress lingo), adding a contact form that collects your visitors’ information. This course is perfect for students looking to launch a website without learning how to code, or looking to manage or make edits to a blog or website running on WordPress. Students should have experience with computers and familiarity with Website management systems such as WordPress, Drupal, Wix, Weebly, and SquareSpace. Computers are provided, but students are welcome to work on their own laptops.

Ben Dunkle, M.F.A., has been making websites since 1996. WordPress has been his primary platform since the mid-2000s. As the head of the Web Design Concentration in the Digital Media Arts Program, he has taught courses and workshops on WordPress and web design and overseen the education and career development of the College’s alumni in the web development industry. He works on the WordPress.org open source project, and has designed thousands of icons for WordPress, including the Dashicons that we see in the WordPress administration system. Ben has organized and spoken at many WordPress conferences, and runs a monthly WordPress users meeting in Buffalo, NY.