11/8/95

Science core to report to Faculty Senate

STANFORD - When the science core committee reports at the Nov. 9 Faculty Senate meeting on the planned core course for non-scientific undergraduates, most of the news will be positive, committee chair Brad Osgood said recently.

The program is in the process of applying for a new National Science Foundation grant aimed particularly at interdisciplinary science courses for non-majors. A dozen faculty have signed up to help plan year-long courses that will introduce humanists to the rigors and the methods of science. Also, Osgood plans to report on a survey of transcripts that shows what science courses students in the humanities actually take in their undergraduate years.

Three tracks of the course are in the planning stages, each using a different theme as a reference point. The "Earthlings" faculty team will use the earth sciences as a theme; they include petroleum engineer Martin Blunt;,geophysicist Mark Zoback, geologist Donald Lowe and ecologist Gretchen Daily. The "Heartbreakers" will take students on a journey through the cardiovascular system, under the tutelage of geneticists David Botstein, Richard Myers and David Cox, and statistics Professor David Siegmund. The "Illuminati" will bend light to their purposes, in a course to be taught by Osgood, psychologist Russell Fernald, biologist Sharon Long and physicist Pat Burchat. Other faculty are being recruited..

For more about the science core, visit the World Wide Web page at http://genome-www.stanford.edu/Science_Core/.

-jb-

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