For the first time in its 25-year history, the CAS Core Curriculum has undergone a general revision of its program with the help of BU’s Interdisciplinary Course Development Grant. The department began to introduce new natural science and social science curricula last spring, and will offer the entire sequence in the 2016/17 academic year.
Through four new courses, students can now explore the origins of the universe, examine the nature of religion and its place in society, and better understand the modern world. These new classes replace Core’s former natural and social science courses.
Core’s updated curriculum is an opportunity for students to think outside the box and put together the idea of what it means to be “human” in biology, neuroscience, the social sciences, philosophy, and religion. They will have the chance to connect how different cultures and time periods saw the world and consider where our way of seeing the world fits in.
The course “CC 212: Science and the Modern World,” for example, studies the paradigm-shifting scientific theories that forced the twentieth-century into a new understanding of our relation to the physical world, including Quantum Theory and Relativity. The class runs parallel to another new course, “CC 202: From Enlightenment to Modernity,” which studies the major works of the humanities and the radical affect of the twentieth century.
“The notion that the world is essentially a ‘solved problem’ couldn’t be further from reality,” says Binyomin Abrams, senior lecturer in chemistry, Metcalf Prize winner, and professor of CC 212. “One of our biggest hopes is that ‘Science and the Modern World’ will open students up to see the world much how we [professors] do: as a weird, confusing, and amazing place.”
This project was funded by the BU Provost Office’s Interdisciplinary Course Development Grant, which “gives faculty additional time and resources to create new courses or redesign existing ones that cross department, program, and school/college boundaries.” The grant allowed Core to work with undergraduate students and faculty across disciplines to develop the classes, produce a flexible digital textbook for the science classes, and build new labs.
The program also received Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) grants for the development of individual natural science and social science topics, as well as a large grant for the entire program.
“The Core has always been dedicated to innovative active pedagogy and interdisciplinary learning where students learn to hone their critical skills by learning to think outside of the ‘departmental box,’” says program director Stephanie Nelson. “We also have quite a number of exciting, dynamic faculty who are also dedicated to this goal, so this seemed like the perfect moment to bring these faculty together and further our project of interrelating the Core Humanities, Natural Science and Social Science classes.”
Faculty who will teach these new curricula include Assistant Professor of Anthropology Kimberly Arkin, Director of Middle Eastern & North African Studies Margaret Litvin, Director of the Undergraduate Program in Neuroscience Paul Lipton, Assistant Professor of Astronomy Andrew West, and Assistant Professor of History Simon Rabinovitch, in addition to Abrams.