Santa Clara University

I.  STS Education at Santa Clara

 

Jesuit education is organized around the idea of educating the person for ‘service to humanity’, and SCU states as its goal "the preparation of students to assume leadership roles in society". It is increasingly obvious that the contemporary world is shaped by science and technology to such a profound degree that our students cannot be effective leaders and citizens of today’s world without the ability to understand and engage the scientific and technological dimensions of society. Yet there is still a tendency among students to compartmentalize these three concepts, to think of science, technology and society as three separate domains of human experience rather than understanding them as mutually interpenetrating and reciprocally constitutive of each other. Students in the arts and humanities may view science and technology simply as aspects of society they can passively consume or reject, while students in the natural sciences or engineering may be content with thinking about their activities in the lab in isolation, indifferent to their social conditions and impacts. These narrow perspectives inhibit the more complex and critical thinking our students need in order to capably and responsibly shape our world’s future. The purpose of STS in the core is to help our students develop this richer understanding and to develop the confidence and capacities to become leaders and citizens of a scientific and technological world.

The chief STS educational work of the Center is serving the university's new Core Undergraduate Curriculum. STS is an undergraduate core requirement, a pathway, and an undergraduate STS minor. Santa Clara University will be one of the few universities to require its students to learn how to analyze and understand major scientific and technological problems in society through the unique STS "lens." At the Engineering School, the Center has collaborated with Associate Dean Alex Zecevic to create a graduate "STS Minor in Engineering," to prepare students for positions of technical and intellectual leadership in their workplaces.

All students have to fulfill STS learning goals and learning objectives. Most students will do so with a single STS course in the “Explorations” section of the new core, normally taken during sophomore or junior year. STS courses are likely to be more effective if students have first fulfilled their social science and natural science requirements as “Foundations. ” Students in some majors (e. g.  Engineering) will take an STS-themed Critical Thinking & Writing sequence that, combined with other coursework in their major, will fulfill the STS requirement for these majors only. Business School majors will be required to fulfill their STS requirement with OMIS 34, significantly revised to fulfill STS Learning Objectives.  

 

II. Goals of STS Undergraduate Education at SCU

1. Scientific Inquiry: Reflected in STS Learning Objective 2. Students need to develop an understanding not just of how science and/or technology impact society, but how science and/or technology themselves develop. As such, STS courses will actually help students understand some specific methods of inquiry by which science and/or technology have progressed.
2. Science & Technology: Reflected in all the STS Learning Objectives, this is the goal of helping students to understand “the formative influences, dynamics, social impacts, and ethical consequences of scientific and technological development” (SCU Core 2009 Overview)
3. Complexity: Reflected in STS Learning Objective 1.  STS courses will help students move beyond simplistic or shallow conceptions of science, technology and society, and their relationship, encouraging and enabling them to explore the complexities that mark their dynamics and their effects on one another.
4. Critical Thinking: Reflected in STS Learning Objective 3. This indicates that students need more than a passive understanding of the dynamics of STS – they also need to be able to actively and critically engage those dynamics and their significance for our lives.  STS courses will help students develop the analytical and evaluative skills to form their own independent judgments about the impacts of science and technology on society, and vice versa.

 

III. STS Learning Objectives

1. Recognize and articulate the complexity of the relationship between science and/or technology and society.
2. Comprehend the relevant science and/or technology and explain how science and/or technology advance through the processes of inquiry and experiment.
3. Analyze and evaluate the social impact of science and/or technology and how science and/or technology are themselves impacted by the needs and demands of society.

 

IV. How is STS Different from the Old Technology Requirement?

First, the old technology requirement focused on technology alone, whereas STS courses may focus on science, technology, or both. Second, the old requirement required some development of ‘hands-on’ technology skills; we now recognize that our students are largely digital natives, much less needful of technological skills than they are of a richer understanding of, and responsible engagement with, their scientific and technological inheritance. So, for example, courses that simply give students the opportunity to use a particular technology will not meet the STS requirement unless they also help them understand the technology itself – how it works, how it was developed, what social forces drove its development and implementation, and how it in turn is shaping our society and the world.

 

V.  Where does STS appear in the new core?

All students have to fulfill STS learning goals and learning objectives.  Most students will do so with a single STS course in the “Explorations” section of the new core, normally taken during sophomore or junior year.  STS courses are likely to be more effective if students have first fulfilled their social science and natural science requirements as “Foundations. ” Students in some majors (e. g.  Engineering) will take an STS-themed Critical Thinking & Writing sequence that, combined with other coursework in their major, will fulfill the STS requirement for these majors only. Business School majors will be required to fulfill their STS requirement with OMIS 34, significantly revised to fulfill STS Learning Objectives.  

 

VI.  How does the STS pathway differ from the STS requirement?

Since all students are required to declare and fulfill a pathway under the new core, we are developing an STS Pathway. This will allow students to make linkages between STS topics and disciplinary perspectives. The learning goals associated with the Pathways are Integrative Learning and Intentional Learning. These are "meta-level" goals within the Pathway as a whole. SCU’s Center for Science, Technology and Society (CSTS) is presently assembling courses for the STS Pathway. The STS Pathway will be available to all majors, and syllabi from a wide range of academic disciplines are sought. STS Pathway courses can address any theme in science and technology, and do not have to fulfill the STS Learning Objectives. For example, an introductory biology or chemistry course that fulfilled the natural science requirement could be in the pathway, but would not fulfill the STS core requirement. Courses from the humanities and social sciences with science and technology themes are particularly welcomed for the pathway.