Achieving Institutional Reform: The Full Integration of Science into the General Education Curriculum

在国家科学基金会的支持下，我们将启动并实施一项机构范围的改革，将数学和科学注入我们文科教育的核心。之前来自NSF的支持使我们能够为非理科专业的学生开发一个真正创新的综合数学和科学课程，这让我们的学生和教职员工都得到了丰富。我们对这项工作的评价表明，还必须做更多的工作：如果我们的学生认为科学思想具有相关性和重要性，就必须在整个学术界予以重视。科学对文化产生的深远影响，以及我们的文化对科学和技术发展产生的深刻影响，在大学课程中往往没有得到重点关注。然而，我们的学生--他们将塑造21世纪的社会和政治结构--必须理解科学倡议及其社会和政治后果。按照美国国家科学基金会最近的一个研究小组的建议，德鲁里大学的教职员工们已经建立了一个科学和数学课程，让学生“直接体验探究的方法和过程”，他们准备迎接挑战，将理解科学和人文之间复杂联系的方法和思想融入我们的核心课程。德鲁里学院是承担这项任务的唯一设备。在过去的四年里，教师们设计并实施了一项新的跨学科通识教育课程。在这一势头的基础上，我们现在试图通过举办教师发展研讨会和为我们的通识教育核心课程建设材料来使其真正整合起来。这个项目的成功将使我们的教职员工和毕业生完全有能力面对21世纪的社会和科学挑战，我们相信它将成为其他机构努力培养具有科学素养的学生的典范。

With support from NSF, we will initiate and implement an institution-wide reform that will infuse mathematics and science into the heart of our liberal arts education. Previous support from NSF allowed us to develop a truly innovative integrated math and science program for non-science majors that has enriched both our students and faculty. Our evaluation of this work has made it clear that more must be done: that scientific ideas must be valued throughout the academic community if our students are to find them relevant and important. The profound impact that science has had on culture, and that our cultures have had on science and technological development, is not often given central attention in college curricula. Yet it is imperative that our students, who will shape the social and political fabric of the 21st Century, understand both scientific initiatives and their social and political consequences. Having built a science and math program that gives students "direct experience with the methods and processes of inquiry," as recommended by a recent NSF study group, the faculty at Drury are poised to take up the challenge of integrating into our core courses the methodology and ideas that give understanding to the complex connections between the sciences and humanities. Drury College is uniquely equipped to undertake this task. Over the last four years, faculty have designed and implemented a new interdisciplinary general education curriculum. Building upon this momentum, we now seek to make it truly integrated by conducting seminars for faculty development and construction of materials for our general education core courses. The success of this project will fully empower our faculty and graduates to confront the social and scientific challenges of the 21 st Century, and we believe it will serve as a model for other institutions as they strive to educate students who are scientifically literate.