In This Issue:

SEAS Leads Technology & Society Studies at Columbia

By Timothy P. Cross, Ph.D.

One of the unique hallmarks of a Columbia Engineering education is the firm grounding in the liberal arts that it offers students. Our undergraduate students participate in Columbia’s famed Core Curriculum and have the opportunity to minor in a growing list of liberal arts disciplines, from English to history to philosophy to music.

Dr. Jack McGourty's class on Technological Innovation and the Rise of Modern Society has an enrollment of more than 300 students from Columbia College, Barnard, General Studies and Engineering.

Until recently, however, Columbia’s liberal arts students at the College, Barnard, and General Studies did not have similar opportunities to study engineering and modern technological subjects, even though these are crucial elements of modern life. As controversies ranging from stem cell research to the death of Terry Schiavo illustrate, knowledge of technology is essential for informed citizenship in today’s world.

In response, the School is spearheading new courses that introduce non-engineers to engineering and technical subjects. The response has been overwhelming. This semester, more than 300 students are taking Technological Innovation and the Rise of Modern Society taught by Dr. Jack McGourty, associate dean of undergraduate studies.

This course has become one of the most popular undergraduate courses at the University. “If it gets any bigger, we’re going to have to rent out Madison Square Garden,” jokes Dean Zvi Galil.

The course surveys the history of technology, innovation, and entrepreneurialism in industrial and emerging countries, examining how science and technology develop and how they relate to social forces, cultural values, economics and politics.

Students work in three-to-four person interdisciplinary teams with members representing technical (engineering or basic and applied sciences) and social (liberal arts, social sciences) perspectives. Each team selects a specific technological innovation and related social issue, preparing a 15-page paper and class presentation at the end of the semester.

This fall, McGourty also is co-teaching a new upper-level Urban Studies course, Science and Technology in Urban Environments, with Dr. Timothy Cross, director of undergraduate programs and grants. The course, abbreviated to “STUE,” offers an interdisciplinary examination of the role of science and technology in urban settings from the Industrial Revolution to the present, exploring how technology has shaped European and American cities and how urban environments influenced the development, acceptance and application of technology.

A novel component of STUE is required student participation in a community service-learning project. The liberal arts and social science students in STUE join teams of Engineering students who are working on design projects in the local community as part of the required first-year Gateway Lab course, E1102: Design Fundamentals Using Advanced Computer Technologies.

The STUE students become “contextual advisers” to the Engineering teams, providing different social and cultural perspectives on the design projects. As their final project, students will report on the historical, social and cultural trajectories of their projects as well as the solutions proposed by the Engineering teams.

“This course is a win-win situation for all concerned,” says McGourty. “It brings together the College, Barnard, GS and SEAS, forges connections between our first-year students and more advanced students, and promotes a broader perspective on design projects.”

STUE becomes Columbia’s first non-engineering course to include service learning as part of its required work. The course builds on an NSF-funded internship program that puts 45 College students on Gateway teams. Now liberal arts and social science majors can get the same experience for academic credit. So far, STUE has attracted students from anthropology, economics, women’s studies, political science and other departments as well as Urban Studies.

Both these courses fall under a general heading of science, technology and society (STS) studies, a growing discipline that examines the complex relationship between science and technology and human society. STS is concerned with the ways in which social forces shape – and are shaped by – technology.

McGourty says the immediate goal at Columbia is to blend the resources of the faculties of Engineering and Arts and Sciences to create a formal academic program that would allow students to concentrate in the field of science, technology and society. He and Vice Dean Morton Friedman are working with Kathryn B. Yatrakis, dean of academic affairs for Columbia College, and senior members of the Arts and Sciences faculty to investigate the feasibility of such a program that can be offered to all Columbia students.

The time seems ripe for adding more courses in the STS discipline. “We’re not just training engineers and applied scientists here; we’re training the next generation of technical and policy leaders,” says Vice Dean Friedman. “Spreading this knowledge about the role of engineering and technology in modern society to other groups of Columbia students is becoming an important part of our School’s mission.”