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THE OTHER CULTURE: SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION IN HONORS Edited by Ellen B. Buckner and Keith Garbutt Jeffrey A. Portnoy Georgia Perimeter College [email protected] General Editor, NCHC Monograph Series Published in 2012 by National Collegiate Honors Council University of Nebraska–Lincoln 110 Neihardt Residence Center 540 N. 16th Street Lincoln, NE 68588-0627 (402) 472-9150 FAX: (402) 472-9152 Email: [email protected] http://www.NCHChonors.org © Copyright 2012 by National Collegiate Honors Council International Standard Book Number 978-0-983-5457-3-6 Production Editors: Cliff Jefferson and Mitch Pruitt Wake Up Graphics, Birmingham, AL Printed by EBSCO Media, Birmingham, AL TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface . 5 Dail W. Mullins, Jr. Introduction . 7 Ellen B. Buckner and Keith Garbutt Section I: What is Science in Honors? Chapter 1: One Size Does Not Fit All: Science and Mathematics in Honors Programs and Colleges . 15 Keith Garbutt Chapter 2: Encouraging Scientific Thinking and Student Development . 25 Ellen B. Buckner Chapter 3: Information Literacy as a Co-requisite to Critical Thinking: A Librarian and Educator Partnership . 39 Paul Mussleman and Ellen B. Buckner Section II: Science and Society Chapter 4: SENCER: Honors Science for All Honors Students . 55 Mariah Birgen Chapter 5: Philosophy in the Service of Science: How Non-Science Honors Courses Can Use the Evolution-ID Controversy to Improve Scientific Literacy . 61 Thi Lam Chapter 6: Recovering Controversy: Teaching Controversy in the Honors Science Classroom . 73 Richard England Chapter 7: Science, Power, and Diversity: Bringing Science to Honors in an Interdisciplinary Format . 85 Bonnie K. Baxter and Bridget M. Newell Section III: Science and Mathematics in Honors for the Non-Science Student Chapter 8: Honors Science for the Non-Science-Bound Student: Where Have We Gone Wrong? . 105 Bradley R. Newcomer Chapter 9: Engaging the Honors Student in Lower-Division Mathematics . 117 Minerva Cordero, Theresa Jorgensen, and Barbara A. Shipman Chapter 10: Statistics in Honors: Teaching Students to Separate Truth from “Damned Lies” . 139 Lisa W. Kay 3 Chapter 11: Is Honors General Chemistry Simply More Quantum Mechanics? . 153 Joe L. March Section IV: Science in Honors for the Science Student Chapter 12: Communicating Science: An Approach to Teaching Technical Communication in a Science and Technology Honors Program . 167 Cynthia Ryan, Michele Gould, and Diane C. Tucker Chapter 13: Designing Independent Honors Projects in Mathematics . 185 Minerva Cordero, Theresa Jorgensen, and Barbara A. Shipman Chapter 14: Honors Senior Theses Are ABET Friendly: Developing a Process to Meet Accreditation Requirements . 197 Michael Doran Section V: Interdisciplinary Approaches in Honors Science Curricula Chapter 15: Interdisciplinary Science Curricula in Honors . 209 Dail W. Mullins, Jr. Chapter 16: The Science of Humor: An Interdisciplinary Honors Course . 229 Michael K. Cundall, Jr. Chapter 17: An Interdisciplinary Understanding of a Disease: Project for an Honors-Embedded Biochemistry Course . 239 Kevin M. Williams Section VI: Thinking like a Scientist: A Toolkit Chapter 18: Replacing Appearance with Reality: What Should Distinguish Science in an Honors Program? . 253 Larry J. Crockett Chapter 19: Confronting Pseudoscience: An Honors Course in Critical Thinking . 263 Keith Garbutt Chapter 20: Science Education: The Perils of Scientific Illiteracy, the Promise of Science Education . 275 Glenn M. Sanford Acknowledgements . 287 Ellen B. Buckner and Keith Garbutt About the Authors . 289 4 PREFACE The National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) has established over the years twenty-two standing committees, only one of which deals explicitly with curricular disciplines: the Science and Mathematics Committee. It is a widespread and relatively accurate perception among NCHC members that the academic strengths of most honors programs are focused primarily in the humanities, with also a sizeable fraction in the social and behavioral sciences. In a survey conducted several years ago for the NCHC1 for example, only fifteen percent of honors administrators reported having an academic background in the natural sciences, and three percent in mathematics. Forty-nine percent listed an academic affiliation in the humanities, and twenty-four per- cent in the social and behavioral sciences. Several reasons are likely for the apparent modest involvement of faculty from the natural sciences and mathematics in honors programs, chief among these being the fact that these disciplines may be per- ceived—if erroneously—by their practitioners to be less conducive to the small group discussion format favored in honors environments gen- erally. Perhaps a more difficult problem to resolve is the fact that tenure-track faculty in the natural sciences may be subject to rigid time constraints vis-a-vis laboratory or field research that, together with the complementary duties of administering often sizeable research grants, can detract from the availability of such faculty for the kind of intense and time-consuming involvement with undergraduate students that is characteristic of honors coursework. Finally, it should be said that— with some exceptions, obviously—departments of natural science and their faculty often do not put as high a premium on excellence or inno- vation in teaching, perhaps in part because they place a greater empha- sis on research activities, given the appreciable sources of external funding available in these disciplines, relative to the humanities and even the social sciences. One adverse consequence of this situation, of course, is that honors programs often have difficulty arranging for honors sections of course- work in mathematics and the natural sciences, and especially in arrang- ing for the participation of faculty from these disciplines in team- taught, interdisciplinary offerings. The implementation of this latter pedagogical tool—which is becoming increasingly popular with some honors programs—may also encounter problems if participating faculty from the natural sciences insist upon incorporating laboratory or field work into the curriculum, since such facilities may not be read- ily available to humanities-based programs. 5 PREFACE While national data on the declared majors of honors students are apparently not available, U. S. Department of Education statistics on bachelor’s degrees awarded by field for all students indicate that the percentage choosing to major in the natural sciences and mathematics averaged 10.4 between 1995 and 2000, while the corresponding value for humanities majors was 6.1 percent.2 While it cannot be known if stu- dents majoring in the natural sciences and mathematics are less inclined to participate in honors programs that have a strong humani- ties-based focus, there is no reason to suspect that their numbers are lower in honors programs generally. It is a matter of interest then to all honors administrators and faculty to understand how programs that have been successful in incorporating the natural sciences and mathe- matics into their curricula have accomplished this, and what ideas and options might be available to those still seeking to achieve such a disci- plinary integration. It is axiomatic in honors education that no two honors programs in the country are identical. Whether literally true or not, this diversity of form and function in honors education is at once both a great source of inspiration and ideas for these many programs—especially those in the formative stages—as well as a quite tangible barrier to the writers of monographs such as this. These authors strive to make some sense of this potpourri of organizational and pedagogic matters and to pro- vide useful generic guidelines and practical help to the administrators and faculty of these many program types. I think you will find that the editors and authors of the present monograph have succeeded admirably in this task. —Dail W. Mullins, Jr. Notes 1Survey by Ada Long in 1995. 2Chronicle of Higher Education Annual Almanac, 1999–2000; 2000–2001; 2001–2002; 2002–2003. 6 INTRODUCTION The Other Culture: Science and Mathematics Education in Honors “I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question— such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read?—not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of mod- ern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had.” —C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures1 In the now-famous lecture given by C.P. Snow in May 1959, he raised the issue of scientific illiteracy in the halls of academia and called for practitioners of science, the humanities, and social sciences to build bridges to increase human understanding of our world.2 Thinking that this issue was resolved in the last half century would be nice, but it may have actually become worse.3 As Dr. Dail W. Mullins, Jr., points out in the Preface, two cultures are alive and well in the world of honors edu- cation. Scientists and mathematicians are in a minority among honors deans and directors, and while many, if not most, of the student posters at the NCHC annual conferences demonstrate that honors students are engaged in undergraduate research in STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Mathematics, and Engineering) that is of an extremely high quality, relatively few of the session presentations address issues in STEM education and the integration of science and mathematics into multi-disciplinary honors courses. Perhaps the most distressing issue with mathematical and scientific illiteracy is that people often do not see it as a negative, and in some instances people actually view it as a virtue.4 While most people would be appalled when individuals confessed that they could not read or write beyond the third grade level, claiming to have difficulty balancing a check book or understanding a relatively simple scientific concept like momentum, until of course one encounters the effects directly in massive loan burdens or a car crash, seems to be fine.
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