Interdisciplinary Linkages

Science, Technology, and Society

The STS Program runs a year-long senior honors seminar, called The Craft of Research, providing a capstone experience in which students design and complete a final integrative project. The goal is to apply all that they have learned about the social and cultural study of science and technology to a project of their own that they find interesting and challenging. Students identify a research topic in the fall, attend the STS seminars, read and discuss the assigned readings, conduct a literature search, present an oral progress report, and write a formal project proposal. In the Spring semester, students prepare a final report and present the results of their work in a public seminar.

Cross Campus Initiatives

Grants to Develop Courses with Research Components

During the summer of 1999, five faculty across the curriculum were selected after a competitive proposal process to receive stipends to develop or upgrade courses by integrating an enhanced research component into them. Emphasis was placed on distribution courses that all students take in completing their degree requirements and on courses that strengthen education through research in specific majors. Similar funding is offered for proposals written during the 2000-1 academic year.

Reports for each of the projects from the first year awards can be downloaded by clicking on the title.

The five projects are as follows:

-- Environment and Society taught by Elizabeth R. DeSombre, Ellen Baum, David Firmage, and Tom Tietenberg (Interdisciplinary Studies Division)

-- Sustainable Development in Panama taught by Patrice Franko (Social Sciences Division)

-- Discovering the Potential and Confronting the Problems in the Use of Assistive Technology in Educating Students with Disabilities taught by Karen Kusiak (Interdisciplinary Studies Division)

-- Research Methods in Government taught by L. Sandy Maisel (Social Sciences Division)

-- Microorganisms and Society taught by Frank A. Fekete (Natural Sciences Division).

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