This Fall semester, VCU launches a series of bike-themed undergraduate courses that coincide with the 9-day international bike race (UCI Road Worlds Champtionship) held this year in Richmond! This is huge for us, largely because it’s Richmond, not Portland, and unlike the Olympics or a Super Bowl, for example, the cycling events happen in the city streets, not in an enclosed and controlled sporting arena. Yes, my heart races just thinking about this! Richmond will be open to the world, literally, and the VCU community is gearing up (pun intended) its teaching and learning to prepare, serve and enjoy this inspiring event.

I will be co-instructing one of the many bike-themed courses with Herb Hill (Director of Undergraduate Research at VCU). Our course, Urban Biking Benefits, is a classroom on bikes and in the community. Each week we will have Ride + Learns™, and meet with community leaders to discuss and explore bike infrastructure in Richmond on bikes. We will collect data on bicycling trends on the two VCU campuses, Monroe Park Campus and the MCV Campus, to update the 2010 VCU State of Cycling Report. Students will also provide bike parking assistance at the bike valets in coordination with SportsBackers BikeWalkRVA. The student excitement for this course (and all of the others) is something magnificent. How can we continue to excite student learning, incorporate fresh topics and current events, and how best should we tailor our curricula and engage students outside the classroom and in the city streets? These are all the good things this course will consider. 

So, today is all about the syllabus. Later today, Herb and I also have a meeting with Tom Houff, a bike historian and author of “On Richmond’s Wheels.” For the Ride + Learn™ with Tom, we will tour around Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens (finally I go) and get the insider’s scoop on racing history at Lewis Ginter. Lewis Ginter will actually serve as the starting point for the elite men’s and elite women’s team time trial events on September 20, 2015. That’s a big deal, not to be missed.

Check out the course’s trailer. Thank you, Molly and Emma at ALTLab!

And the syllabus here.

The most FAQ? Are bikes required? Yes, for so many reasons.