CEN article: Chemists Advocating for More Humanities Courses

[polly_mer]

https://cen.acs.org/education/undergraduate-education/Behind-the-scenes-STEM-humanities-culture-war/97/i29?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=CEN

"I've taught for 30 years at MIT, and my view is that, by and large, science and engineering students are really old-fashioned positivists," says Fitzgerald, who has a PhD in history and sociology of science and technology from the University of Pennsylvania. Their love for science is largely based on their confidence that it solves problems beyond just technical ones, she says. "They just have an uncritical faith in the power of science and technology. So we find that they need to be shaken out of that a little bit. They need to understand that the problems they are going to encounter in the world are not going to be as tidy as the ones they encounter at MIT."

Thoughts?

[spork]

"'A lot of major institutions are requiring more credits within majors, restricting the time for outside courses. They are increasing the number of courses you need to take to complete those degrees, and it's a zero-sum game.'"

Where I work, this is not institutionally-driven, it's department-driven, because there is no centralized institutional oversight departmental curricula. And here the greatest offenders in bloatware credit requirements being added to majors are business and education, not STEM -- coincidentally the two fields that nationally attract the lowest academic performers and that have low post-college incomes. To be fair, we do not offer any engineering of any sort, even the engineering-light "technology" degrees.

I don't think a history professor/former humanities-arts-social sciences dean at MIT is in the best position to argue that chemists want chemistry undergrads to take more humanities courses. The environment makes it an outlier among undergraduate programs in both STEM and humanities fields.

Her statements did get me curious and I looked at my old transcript. In my first four years there, if I exclude mathematics and astronomy (classical Greek definition of liberal arts subjects), there are three history courses (humanities), and twelve courses in the social sciences (which includes two courses taken at Wellesley). But I attribute learning the problem-solving, "critical thinking" (I hate that term), and "soft" skills frequently claimed as obtainable only from humanities/liberal arts study to the thirteen courses in engineering, physics, astronomy, math, and chemistry.

What I found most interesting about that article is UT Austin's discovery that few graduates were using chemistry degrees for anything that required a STEM degree, with internships and specialized tracks seen as more specifically career-relevant (presumably requiring additional courses) being instituted as a remedy. I wonder if that approach will backfire when job definitions and needs change in five years.

[polly_mer]

What I found most interesting about that article is UT Austin's discovery that few graduates were using chemistry degrees for anything that required a STEM degree, with internships and specialized tracks seen as more specifically career-relevant (presumably requiring additional courses) being instituted as a remedy. I wonder if that approach will backfire when job definitions and needs change in five years.

My bet is the approach will work if the internships are good, problem-solving-in-the-wild experiences instead of checking the box that an internship in chemistry was performed.

The A student with a stack of classes taken by "everyone" will not be competitive in the job market when we can hire enough C students who have demonstrated experience in dealing with the messiness that is problem-solving out in the wild.  Someone with a couple good internships in problem-solving in the wild, even in somewhat unrelated areas, will beat the person who only has formal classes in specific areas.

A specialized track of classes is mostly useful if (a) most people will learn much more quickly through the classes than on the job and (b) if those classes are in hard-to-get areas that translate directly to applications.  Knowing the textbook and being able to solve a problem without the handy context hints focusing on only one aspect are two different things.

In academia, people specialize and say things like "I'm a physical organic chemist with interests in the structure-property relationships of polymers".  At my home, the joke used to be "look, that movie hero has the science skill!".  Now I work in a place where a key qualification is willingness to learn whatever is necessary to make progress on this particular science problem, regardless of what one's formal education prepared one to do.  An oft-repeated truism is "you only have to know 10% more than the other people in the room to be the expert".

[mleok]

When I was a Caltech student, there was a humanities and social science requirement, which roughly corresponds to one course every quarter. I think there is value for a STEM student to take some reading and writing intensive courses, courses that develop their communication skills, and courses in the social sciences that show how mathematical techniques can be applied to softer and messier systems. In any case, the MIT dean is suggesting courses in politics and economics, which aim to connect engineers with the policy and societal implications of their work, as opposed to things like critical theory.

[pedanticromantic]

When I was a Caltech student, there was a humanities and social science requirement, which roughly corresponds to one course every quarter. I think there is value for a STEM student to take some reading and writing intensive courses, courses that develop their communication skills, and courses in the social sciences that show how mathematical techniques can be applied to softer and messier systems. In any case, the MIT dean is suggesting courses in politics and economics, which aim to connect engineers with the policy and societal implications of their work, as opposed to things like critical theory.

I agree.
My place added humanities courses as a requirement to STEM degrees a few years ago because employers were complaining about that graduates lacked even basic communication skills necessary in the workplace.

[polly_mer]

When I was a Caltech student, there was a humanities and social science requirement, which roughly corresponds to one course every quarter. I think there is value for a STEM student to take some reading and writing intensive courses, courses that develop their communication skills, and courses in the social sciences that show how mathematical techniques can be applied to softer and messier systems. In any case, the MIT dean is suggesting courses in politics and economics, which aim to connect engineers with the policy and societal implications of their work, as opposed to things like critical theory.

I agree.
My place added humanities courses as a requirement to STEM degrees a few years ago because employers were complaining about that graduates lacked even basic communication skills necessary in the workplace.

My experience as an employer, though, is having a couple humanities courses, even writing intensive ones, has almost no effect on communication skills necessary in the workplace. 

A solid internship lasting a year or more in the workplace tends to correlate better with having the necessary basic communication skills.  Part of the communication skills that is hard to teach is what's important in a given context and what the audience is likely to need.  Thus, hiring people who have the relevant experience or several not-as-related-experiences-but-not-just-formal-classroom-learning is much more likely to pay off than hiring someone with a more well-rounded transcript in formal classes.  Identifying when a communique needs to be written or even when to skip the writing because the sh*t has hit the fan and someone needs a phone call or personal visit right now is the hard part to teach; how to structure an argument and follow grammatical rules is much easier to teach.

[ciao_yall]

Not to mention the importance of writing to synthesise learning. Which is why WAC programs remain popular.