Courses
The Sheedy Family Program curriculum consists of three required courses: Business in Context, which is the gateway seminar, and two electives from a small menu of options. Sheedy scholars may also opt to enroll in additional courses, exclusive to the program, that are focused on professional development.
Gateway seminar
Business in Context (ALSF 30126, 3 credits)
Students in Business in Context – and the whole Sheedy Family Program – are seeking something. They are intellectually curious. They have big questions without easy answers.
In Business in Context, the gateway course for the Sheedy Family Program, students confront those questions head on. The course challenges students to put business in context: to understand the political, economic, historical, social, and personal factors shaping today's business world and conditioning their work in it. Students probe those factors in four units:
- What is the purpose of education? What is the purpose of the Sheedy Program?
- What are the origins and politics of the US economy? What makes an economy just?
- How can businesses maximize their social value? Can I benefit society with a career in business?
- What’s my calling? What makes work meaningful?
Along the way, they learn to dialogue with peers and professionals – a vital "hard" skill with deep roots in the liberal arts – and to integrate complex ideas from across disciplines and genres. Students must take Business in Context their first semester in the program (i.e., the fall semester immediately after they are admitted). There are no exceptions, not even for study abroad.
Business in Context is a University core Integration (WKIN) course, taught by Prof. Chris Hedlin.
Electives (Select 2 of 3)
Work and the Global Economy (ALSF30326, 3 credits)
This course explores how politics and economics collide in shaping work in an increasingly interconnected or "globalized" world. As cross-border trade, investment, and migration have expanded dramatically in recent decades, living standards have risen in many places, but so have new social, economic, and political tensions over who benefits from globalization and who bears its costs. Understanding these dynamics is essential for making sense of today's global economy. In this course, you will develop an analytical toolkit for evaluating the causes and consequences of globalization for business. We will survey major theoretical approaches and empirical strategies used to study labor in the global economy and apply them to key issue areas including international trade and employment, multinational firms and global supply chains, immigration and labor mobility, automation and the future of work, international labor standards, and the politics of inequality and social protection. Throughout the semester, we will compare competing explanations for outcomes in global labor markets and assess each using historical and contemporary evidence. You will also apply concepts through policy-relevant case studies designed specifically for this class—sharpening your ability to analyze real-world challenges facing workers, firms, and governments from multiple perspectives.
Work and the Global Economy is cross-listed in political science and is taught by Prof. Ricky Clark.
Ethics of Influence (ALSF 20277, 3 credits)
John Henry Newman once claimed that truth is upheld in the world not by systems, books, or arguments, but by “personal influence.” How might Newman’s statement apply in our era — one with declining in-person social interactions and a rise in online "influencers," personalized advertising, and parasocial (one-sided) relationships? Today, influence gurus peddle persuasion tactics, and it seems everyone has something to promote. Can we still discover the line between ethical influence and manipulation? This course explores this question through a deep look at the nature, danger, and promise of influence as seen in classic and contemporary texts and sources on Christian ethics. Classic texts will include Plato’s Phaedrus, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Students will examine the popular advice from some of the past century’s best-selling self-help and business books, including Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini, and You Have More Influence Than You Think by Vanessa Bohns. Students will learn to analyze each approach through the lens of Christian ethics, drawing from Neo-Thomist, Girardian, and Personalist thought as well as from papal encyclical letters. Through contemporary case studies — including a look at the life of the recently-canonized Saint Carlo Acutis (“God’s Influencer”) — students will develop a robust framework for ethical persuasion. The course will culminate with each student composing a personal charter for his or her ethical influence. Whereas much of the professional writing about influence tends to sever professional life from personal values and purpose, this course will integrate them, resulting in a coherent and normative vision of the influential life.
Ethics of Influence is a University core Catholicism & the Disciplines (WKCD) course, taught by Prof. Brett Beasley.
'Women's Work': Facts and Fictions (ALSF 30226, 3 credits)
In this course, we’ll explore 'women’s work' in three senses. First, we’ll consider the history of gendered "separate spheres" in the United States, the way in which some kinds of labor – care work, teaching, and domestic chores, for example – came to be seen as properly the concern of women, while other kinds of work, like business careers and scholarly pursuits, became coded masculine. Second, we’ll understand ‘work’ in the sense of a work of literature: we’ll read popular novels by and about working women and probe how their fictional representations compare and contrast with women’s lived realities. Finally, we’ll take ‘women’s work’ as the starting place for you to engage in your own purpose-driven career discernment, taking gender as a key, always-present variable. Through partnerships with ND Women Connect and ThinkND, we’ll interview, read fiction alongside, and dialogue with ND alumni, probing how 21st century women (and men, too) are overcoming gendered barriers in the workplace and finding meaning in their work. We’ll approach stories – literary and personal – as a form of data and use that data collaboratively to interrogate the gendered working life.
Women's Work is a University core Art & Literature (WKAL) course, taught by Prof. Chris Hedlin.
Note: Students who took Work, Meaning, and Happiness (aka, The Working Life) and/or Investing and the Good Life during or prior to Fall 2026 can count those as their second and/or third requirements.
Additional Sheedy course offerings
Students in the Sheedy Program have the option to enroll in the following courses to enrich their professional and personal development.
Professionalizing with Purpose (ALSF 23001, 1 credit)
Professionalizing with Purpose is a unique experiential course designed to help Sheedy students intentionally shape their future careers. Through readings, podcasts, guest speakers, self-assessments, peer discussions, and interactive exercises, students learn how they can activate their skills and values to create meaningful personal and professional opportunities. Students in the course identify their priorities, research target companies, network with leaders in their fields of interest, and develop strategies for creating and capitalizing on future opportunities. Along the way, they interact extensively with industry professionals who share career stories, expert advice, and perspectives on navigating uncertainty and change. Students emerge from the course with greater clarity about who they are, what matters most to them, and how to build successful, fulfilling future paths.
Investing and the Good Life (ALSF 40001)
Taught by Paul Buser and Rick Buhrman, ND alums and founders/CEOs of Sator Grove Holdings, IGL seeks to provide the definitive curriculum on the role of investing and compounding in the context of a well-lived life. At its heart, IGL features guest teachers who are not only world-class investors and company builders but also genuinely great human beings. The goal? To inspire a community of lifelong learners who embrace the time horizon of eternity in pursuit of the good life. In keeping with the ethos of the Sheedy Family Program, students are expected to bring their unique majors, minors, backgrounds, and insights to bear on the case studies, readings, dialogues, and presentations integrated into each class session. Students are expected to participate willingly in discussions and to navigate both detailed information and big ethical questions regarding companies, markets, case studies, and human behavior.
Course recommendations: business and the liberal arts
Interested in taking more courses at the intersection of business and the liberal arts? Although Sheedy students are only required to take the courses above, we can highly recommend the following, taught by Sheedy affiliated faculty:
Business in America from East India Company to Google (Joshua Specht, History)
Christianity, Commerce, and Consumerism (Brad Gregory, History)
Consuming America (Emily Remus, History)
Capitalism and Its Discontents (Joshua Lund, Romance Languages and Literatures)
Designing Your Life (Wendy Angst, Powerful Means Initiative)
Gender @ Work in US History; Just Wage Lab; Labor in America (Dan Graff, Institute for Social Concerns)
The History of American Capitalism (Korey Garibaldi, American Studies)
Philanthropy and the Common Good (Jon Hannah, Political Science)