Creating Linkages through Institution-wide Reform of the Science Curriculum

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Millikin University will engage in a three-year curriculum development project with extensive participation by faculty from the departments of biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics to continue our efforts to link the above disciplines. We will develop a set of introductory science courses which: * Link the sciences to the rest of academe * Link the sciences with each other; and * Link our students and the courses with the surrounding community. These goals have arisen from challenges we have encountered at Millikin. One challenge is that undergraduates are often not skilled in discerning the applicability of fundamental principles across disciplinary boundaries. Millikin has already done much work to bring the sciences together within our university community. However, this task is large and challenging as a consequence of the tendency in traditional science courses to mask the common methods and purpose shared by all science disciplines. Hence, much remains to be done. This tendency towards specialization has also tended to isolate students from addressing important community problems and issues that would benefit from closer attention and assistance from the Millikin students and faculty. Our community needs a stronger partnership with the University. We are engaged in developing a set of introductory science courses which allow students to study a specific discipline, to explore fundamental methods of inquiry and principles important to all sciences, and to learn how these methods and principles are relevant to both the chosen field and also to the other science disciplines. Each course section will focus on a particular area of inquiry, such as stars or prairie ecology. A set of common laboratory exercises will be developed by the faculty involved in teaching each of the various sections being offered; each exercise will present an interesting question drawn from the contributing professor's discipline yet will explore a fundamental method of inquiry or principle important to all fields of science. After the students complete each exercise, the illustrated principle or method of inquiry will be explored in the context of each section. Students will also develop exercises to present to local school children in grades K to 12. The planned reform is an integral part of institution-wide planning at Millikin University. It has the broad support of the faculty and the administration. It will build on prior activities of the faculty and administration that lead naturally in this direction. The principal investigator, Dr. Mauri Ditzler, lead the development of the "Discovery Chemistry" curriculum at the College of the Holy Cross in the early 1990s, with support from the NSF. The Millikin department chairs are wholly supportive of this effort. The chair of the Physics department is developing just in time laboratory modules under an NSF ILI award ("Fundamental Constants - Modern Physics Laboratory, 9552171). The chairs of biology, chemistry, and physics are currently working under NSF support in "Integrating the Sciences through Common Laboratory Experiences," (9555029). Millikin is successfully raising funds for a new science building that will house undergraduate laboratory facilities designed to incorporate these methods of instruction and learning. Millikin also conducts a summer research program for undergraduate students.