ABOUT STS

Science, Technology, and Society (STS) is an interdisciplinary approach which reflects the widespread realization that in order to meet the increasing demands of a technical society, education must integrate across disciplines. Understanding the relationships among political systems, social traditions, and human values, and learning how those relationships are influenced by science and technology, is an essential part of contemporary education.

• STS provides a bridge between the sciences and the liberal arts.
• STS encourages communication between diverse disciplines, so students may better appreciate the many complex ways in which science, technology, and society interact.
• STS critically examines issues such as genetic engineering, the environment, emergent diseases, computers and the Internet, applied ethics, nuclear waste, and international agriculture.
• STS provides students with the foundations for responsible citizenship, and the skills necessary to succeed in a highly competitive and constantly changing future workplace.

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Learning Outcomes (LOs) for the STS Program

draft guideines for STS major under development -- April 2008

Students who graduate with a major* in STS will be able to:

[Below, STM=”science, technology, and medicine”]

1. Identify the major societal ramifications of STM both historically and in the contemporary world.
2. Recognize how social factors (such as gender, class, ability, age, race, sexual preference, etc.) influence decisions about the development and uses of STM in society.
3. Explain how STM epistemologies are developed, debated, and implemented in society.
4. Understand multiple ethical and normative frameworks and their implications in the development and deployment of STM in society and to make supported arguments for or against those frameworks.
5. Demonstrate an ability to amass relevant, concrete, and diverse sources of information (including the often unconscious, culturally and historically determined techniques and technologies of knowledge production) to make coherent arguments about STM in society.
6. Discuss STM with students from other disciplines and colleges and perceive arguments form multiple viewpoints.

STS LOs will be evaluated by the following methods:

1. demonstrate that our graduates are obtaining post-graduate positions in diverse fields which make use of STS analyses of STM.
2. perform exit assessments of learning as part of exit interviews with graduating STS students
3. evaluation of capstone projects as to how well they meet our LOs.
4. metrics and stats of STS scholars who do honors, study abroad, do internships, etc.
5. demonstrate the mixing of colleges and majors within our classes

* Currently STS is a minor-granting program at the moment but are in planning process to offer a dual-major in STS by 2010-2011.