History of our Unity of Science Course

Department of Geography & Geology

In 1992, a group of science faculty at Mount Holyoke College began meeting in a weekly seminar to discuss science topics of common interest. Participants received modest stipends for participating from a PEW grant the college had received for curricular development. These seminars ran for two years. The first year we covered topics that were inherently interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary and of interest to several participants. The second year, a smaller group focused primarily on issues of curricular development, which culminated in a proposal to the Course and Curricular Development program at the National Science Foundation, and ultimately led to our Unity of Science course.

In the first year of the PEW Seminar, 20 faculty participated to varying degrees. At a college with just under 200 faculty positions (annual FTEs), of which about 40 are in mathematics and science, this was a marvelous participation rate. Departments represented by participants (number of faculty in parentheses) were Astronomy (1), Biology (7), Biochemistry (1), Chemistry (3), Computer Science (1), Geology (3), Mathematics (2), Physics (1), and Science Librarian (1). Topics we discussed included meteorite impacts and mass extinctions, chaos and fractals, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, modeling and dynamical systems, and the origin of life on earth. Science issues we discussed included what is science, what is not science, what are the differences among disciplines, is there a hierarchy to science disciplines, what makes a topic interdisciplinary, what are the tools in science, and the role of mathematics in science.

These two semesters of faculty seminar were an outstanding experience for the participants. We all learned a great deal and enjoyed our wide-ranging pedagogical and philosophical discussions. A typical two-hour session would begin with a discussion leader focusing on a pre-assigned topic covered by a book or article(s) agreed upon earlier, and the discussion would stray and meander in completely unpredictable directions. The leader would usually rein the group in occasionally or near the end so as to summarize the assigned topic. The first year was specifically designed not to lead us toward any particular curricular effort, however, we all often felt that the synergism created by our interactions was something we would love to be able to harness and share with students.

The second year a subset of seminar participants continued to meet with the explicit goal of devising one or more interdisciplinary science courses. We had no preconceived notions of what such courses might include, or who the target audience(s) might be. Our discussions were generally about pedagogy and content, philosophical issues, target audiences, learning outcomes, the pros and cons of laboratory exercises, and the current curriculum at Mount Holyoke and elsewhere. We explored national statistics and articles about science education. We learned about courses and approaches being used by others, but found no specific courses or textbooks we were interested in adopting. And, in the end, we created the framework for the Unity of Science course now in place. We submitted a successful proposal to NSF, and along with substantial support from the college, we have implemented the course and are now able to share what we have learned and created with those who may be interested.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The ultimate creation of this course is due to a collective effort by the faculty at Mount Holyoke College. The NSF grant proposal that made it possible was written by Steven R. Dunn (Geology), Tom R. Dennis (Astronomy), Susan Barry (Biology/Neuroscience), Frank J. DeToma (Biology/Biochemistry), Sandra N. Ward (Science Librarian). The specific content and methodology of the course was shaped in profound ways by the aforementioned and by Mary K. Campbell (Chemistry), W. Donald Cotter (Chemistry), Katherine Dorfman (Director of Laboratories), Rachel Fink (Biology), Mark A.S. McMenamin (Geology), Samuel Mitchell (Philosophy), Donal O'Shea (Mathematics), Curtis Smith (Biology/Biophysics), and Stan Rachootin (Biology). Other seminar participants and contributors include George Cobb (Mathematics and Statistics), Paul Dobosh (Computer Science), John Durso (Physics), Claude Fennema (Computer Science), Aaron Ellison (Biology and Environmental Studies), Edward Fitzgerald (Chemistry), Anna Harrison (Chemistry), Lilian Hsu (Biochemistry), Mark Peterson (Physics and Mathematics), Margaret Robinson (Mathematics), Lauret Savoy (Geology), and Elsbeth Walker (Biology). Other contributors to whom we wish to express our sincere gratitude include Joseph Cohen (Psychology), Lynn Morgan (Anthropology), and Thomas Millette (Geography). The Unity of Science course was funded in part by the National Science Foundation (DUE-9455682).