SCIENCE AND THE AMERICAN EDUCATED AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & SCIENCES Science and the Educated American: A Core Component of Liberal Education Edited by Jerrold Meinwald and John G. Hildebrand AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & SCIENCES AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & SCIENCES Science and the Educated American: A Core Component of Liberal Education Please direct inquiries to: American Academy of Arts and Sciences 136 Irving Street Cambridge, MA 02138-1996 Telephone: 617-576-5000 Fax: 617-576-5050 Email: [email protected] Web: www.amacad.org Science and the Educated American: A Core Component of Liberal Education Edited by Jerrold Meinwald and John G. Hildebrand © 2010 by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences “Physics for Future Presidents” © 2010 by Richard A. Muller All rights reserved. Cover image © iStockphoto.com/runeer ISBN#: 0-87724-088-4 The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is grateful to the Simons Foundation for supporting the publication and dissemination of this volume and the Academy’s ongoing work in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. The statements made and views expressed in this publication are solely the respon- sibility of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Simons Foundation or the Officers and Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Contents vii Acknowledgments viii Preface 1 Introduction Jerrold Meinwald and John G. Hildebrand Part I: The Case for Studying Science 9 Chapter 1 Science in the Liberal Arts Curriculum Don M. Randel 23 Chapter 2 Science as a Liberal Art Frank H.T. Rhodes Part II: What Should Students Be Learning? 41 Chapter 3 Science in the Liberal Arts and Sciences Eugene H. Levy 57 Chapter 4 Scientific Literacy: A Modest Proposal James Trefil and Robert M. Hazen 70 Chapter 5 Science Education in the Age of Science Chris Impey Part III: How to Present Science? 112 Chapter 6 Physics for Future Presidents Richard A. Muller 130 Chapter 7 Learning Astronomy through Writing Martha P. Haynes 151 Chapter 8 Teaching Science for Understanding: Focusing on Who, What, and Why Sally G. Hoskins 180 Chapter 9 Molecules of Life: A General Education Approach to the Science of Living Systems Brian N. Tse, Jon Clardy, and David R. Liu 218 Chapter 10 Science for All in a Core Curriculum: Frontiers of Science at Columbia University Darcy B. Kelley Part IV: How Can We Judge Success? 228 Chapter 11 Assessing Scientific Reasoning in a Liberal Learning Curriculum Diane Ebert-May, Elena Bray Speth, and Jennifer L. Momsen 241 Chapter 12 The Conceptualization and Measurement of Civic Scientific Literacy for the Twenty-First Century Jon D. Miller 256 Contributors Acknowledgments The American Academy’s project on Science in the Liberal Arts Curriculum pays special attention to the challenges of and opportunities for teaching science in a general education context, considering how best to engage those students not majoring in the physical or natural sciences. It also argues that scientific literacy developed during a student’s undergraduate years plays a critical role in the quality of our national debate and, in turn, the health of our democracy. In August 2007, the Academy convened academic leaders from thirty- four colleges and universities to discuss science curricula for non-science majors. The forum facilitated the exchange of ideas across institutions, focusing on innovative teaching methods and common barriers. The participants also completed a survey of their institutions’ existing science requirements for non- scientists, the options available for fulfilling those requirements, and the assessments used to determine success in meeting science-education objectives. This volume grew out of the Academy conference and survey. (A list of par- ticipants and schools represented in the survey responses is included at the end of this volume.) The essays contain descriptions of specific courses, concrete strategies for curricular reform, and spirited defenses of the value of science to the liberal arts curriculum. We hope that administrators and faculty members will find this publication useful in updating their institutions’ curricula. We are confident that the many new ideas and thoughtful recommendations in this volume will have a positive influence on post-secondary science education in America. The Academy thanks especially Jerrold Meinwald and John G. Hildebrand for their guidance of the project and for serving as editors of this publication. We are thankful to the Simons Foundation for supporting the publication and dissemination of this important volume and the Academy’s ongoing work in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. We also acknowl- edge the partial support provided by the Podell Emeriti Awards for Research and Scholarship, awarded through the Cornell Association of Professors Emeriti. We are grateful to Katie Donnelly and Kim Durniak, the program officers who worked closely with Jerry and John on the conference and publication, respec- tively. Thank you also to the program assistants and publication staff for help- ing to produce this publication. Most of all, we express our gratitude to the contributors for bringing their knowledge and creative ideas together in an effort to inform curriculum debate at higher-education institutions. Leslie Cohen Berlowitz President and William T. Golden Chair American Academy of Arts and Sciences ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii Preface An idea for a new approach to science teaching unexpectedly grew out of my experience at several small faculty dinner parties. More than once, I found my- self responding to “and what do you do?” by explaining that my research, at the interface between chemistry and biology, was largely focused on exploring how various organisms (mostly insects and other arthropods) use chemistry to defend themselves and to communicate with the outside world. A simple example I might cite was our discovery that a handsome local millipede (Apheloria corrugata) defends itself by secreting a mixture of deadly hydrogen cyanide and benzaldehyde when disturbed. In a short time, this topic might be followed by a somewhat lengthier explanation of how a female Florida Queen butterfly relies on a chemical signal provided by a courting male in se- lecting a mate. Her choice of a partner, it turns out, is based on the male’s abil- ity to provide chemical protection for her eggs (rendering them unpalatable to egg predators such as lady bugs). The male obtains this protective chemical from toxic plants (Crotalaria spp.) and incorporates it into a spermataphore, which is transferred to the female during mating. In courtship, the male “in- forms” the female of his defender status by applying a courtship pheromone, which he produces from the toxin itself, to her antennae. If a male lacks the toxin, he cannot synthesize the courtship pheromone, and the female will most likely evade his advances. Most listeners are intrigued by this example of chem- ical communication in nature. What struck me about these interchanges was that I was actually explaining the first recognized example of Darwin’s sexual selection based on a chemical signal to a thoroughly engaged audience whose primary interests were in sub- jects as diverse as music, economics, or ancient history. Without the benefit of a blackboard, slides, or props of any sort, my fellow diners became truly inter- ested in this narration, and they came away with a new understanding of some previously unsuspected roles of chemistry in nature. That a group of humanists and social scientists expressed interest in chem- istry during casual conversation over a glass of wine provided a clue as to how we might teach chemistry and biology to a large body of undergraduate students whose own primary interests are not necessarily in science. These considerations led me to develop an unconventional chemistry course at Cornell University, with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as well as the Henry and Camille Dreyfus Foundation and the National Science Foundation. I called the course “The Language of Chemistry,” a phrase used by Arthur Kornberg in his 1989 autobiography, For the Love of Enzymes. Designed as a lecture course with viii SCIENCE AND THE EDUCATED AMERICAN a built-in writing requirement—with no prerequisites or laboratory component —it could nevertheless be used to fulfill part of the science requirement for students in the Cornell College of Arts and Sciences. “The Language of Chem- istry” made no attempt to survey the entire field. Instead, it demonstrated, via carefully selected case studies, exactly how chemists have studied a variety of biological phenomena and have ultimately attained a deep understanding of these phenomena at the molecular level. Students came to appreciate why mo- lecular structures are important and learned how those structures can be de- termined. As part of the course, they also studied an area of chemistry/biology on their own and wrote an essay explaining this body of science to a lay reader.1 During a subsequent sabbatical leave, which I spent as a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, I explored further the general question of what sort of scientific education our country’s college undergrad- uates actually receive. In August 2007, a workshop was held at the House of the Academy in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A group of roughly forty partici- pants, comprising physical and biological scientists as well as college and uni- versity administrators, met to discuss the importance to our society of incorpo- rating a substantial science component in the “liberal arts” curriculum, and to learn about some highly original approaches to science teaching that several of our faculty participants, from a variety of institutions of higher learning, were pursuing. At an early stage in preparing for this exercise, I had asked my good friend John G. Hildebrand (Regents Professor of Neurobiology with joint appointments in Chemistry and Biochemistry, Entomology, and Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Arizona in Tucson) to join me in organizing the workshop.