AROUND THE QUADS
General Science Course
Being Created for Core
By Alex Sachare '71

Around the Quads

• Rushdie's Midnight's Children coming to the Apollo • General Science Course Being Created for Core • Bizup Developing New Writing Program • Bollinger Adds Two Key Administrators • Campus Bulletins • Alumni News • Transitions • In Lumine Tuo • In Memoriam • Elbaum, Carroll Receive CCYA Achievement Awards • Athletics' Bill Steinman Retires (Sort of)

The Core Curriculum, the College’s signature program, continues to evolve. A general science course that focuses on contemporary scientific developments has been in the thinking and planning stages for more than a year, is currently being tested and may be added to the Core Curriculum as early as the 2003–04 academic year.

“The Core Curriculum is general education in a disciplined, sophisticated mode,” says Dean Austin Quigley. “We want to try to give students a general introduction to the sciences from some of our most distinguished faculty in their fields of expertise.”

The problem most general science courses have faced is that they have not been “general” enough to satisfy most students and not “science” enough to meet the standards of most faculty. Unlike other Core courses, which are taught in small sections of 20–22 students per class, the science course is envisioned as consisting of two elements: lectures by some of Columbia’s most prestigious science professors, supplemented by smaller, seminar-type sections that would facilitate the discussion that is a hallmark of the Core.

As part of the “Theatre of Ideas” series being presented at Miller Theatre, six lectures are being offered that feature some of Columbia’s top scientists, who will lead the audience through a major scientific topic using highly visual presentations and everyday language. Students who have been enlisted to test this course attend the lectures, participate in smaller, group discussions and then offer course evaluations. The first of the lectures was delivered last month by Professor of Astronomy David Helfand, one of the many faculty members who have worked to help shape the course, and was called “The Dark Side of the Universe.”

“The Core is designed to embody the great ideas of Western civilization,” says Helfand. “The one unique idea this civilization has produced is Western science, and we are anxious that it be represented in the common curriculum that all students experience.

“The other Core courses are largely historically based, and develop the analytic skills necessary to appreciate aesthetics, philosophical discourse and general humanistic approach to the works of humankind. The science Core will emphasize the latest in scientific discoveries, but with a similar goal of developing the complementary skills in quantitative reasoning and the other scientific habits of mind that characterize the way a scientist approaches the natural universe.”

Currently, students must take nine credits (three courses) to fulfill their science requirement. At least two of the courses must be taken in the form of a departmental or inter-departmental sequence. The general science course would replace one required course and would provide a common experience in science for all College students, similar to the common experience provided by other Core courses.

Dean of Academic Affairs Kathryn Yatrakis says that the course would “put science in the same central place that art, literature, music and philosophy now occupy in the College’s Core Curriculum” and described it as “a statement saying that science is critically important to our education.”

The Miller Theatre lectures are open to the public. The next is scheduled for November 11, when Professor of Biological Sciences Darcy Kelley will present “How Your Brain Works (Or Not!),” followed by “Small Wonders: The World of Nano-Science,” by Professor of Physics Horst Stormer on December 9. Also scheduled are “Lessons From the Past in Global Climate Change” by Newberry Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences Wallace Broecker on February 3; “Darwin, Mendel and the Diversity of Life” by Professor of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology Don Melnick on March 3; and “Light Meets Matter” by William P. Schweitzer Professor of Chemistry Nicholas Turro on April 14.

For more information, log onto www.columbia.edu/cu/arts/miller or call the box office at (212) 854-7799. Tickets are $10 (free to students). The Miller Theatre is located in Dodge Hall at 116th Street and Broadway.