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HISTORY OF THE SCIENCE IN SOCIETY PROGRAM
Earl Hanson,
Fisk Professor of Natural Sciences
Founder of the Science in Society Program
Program Chair, 1975-86, 1991-93
The Science in Society Program was founded at Wesleyan in 1975 as the
College of Science in Society, with the assistance of a 5-year grant from
the National Science Foundation and the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary
Education. Earl Hanson, then Professor of Biology, was both the author
of the grant and the founding Chair of the Program.
The Program was then foreseen as a successor to the College of Quantitative
Studies, a three-year interdisciplinary major in science and applied mathematics,
which had been active from 1960 until 1966. The College of Quantitative
Studies had been organized as one of three alternative "colleges" within
the University (along with two still extant programs, the College of Letters
and the College of Social Studies). Intended to foster interdisciplinary,
applied work within the sciences, the College was especially notable for
its student projects, involving the solution of problems for outside agencies
like Raymond Engineering and the Department of Motor Vehicles, and for
its Senior Seminar, an interdisciplinary capstone course including the
sciences, philosophy, and public affairs.
Like many "Science, Technology, and Society" or "Science, Techology,
and Values" programs being developed at roughly the same time at a number
of engineering schools (notably MIT, Lehigh, Renssalaer, Virginia Tech
and Georgia Tech), but adapted to the context of a selective liberal arts
university, the original Science in Society Program aimed to encourage
a humanistic approach to scientific and technological problems, conjoined
with a commitment to scientific excellence and a recognition of the scientific
and technological dimensions of many social and political problems. Students
initially went through their three years in the Program in a sequence of
small Colloquia with all other students in their cohort, while taking additional
courses tailored to their particular interests. The capstone of the Program
in its early years was a required thesis, which students typically worked
on for up to two years, and a Senior Colloquium in which students presented
their thesis research and other current issues in a seminar format. Although
the topics for these thesis projects were quite wide-ranging, environmental
issues, critical assessments of medical theory and practice, agriculture,
urban planning, and human population growth were common foci of student
research.
Apart from the founder, Earl Hanson, the initial staffing of the Program
was drawn from faculty whose time was borrowed from other departments (notably
C. Stewart Gillmor in History and Barry Gruenberg in Sociology) and from
faculty hired on term contracts with funding from the initial grant to
the University (including science writer Jeffrey Baker, planner Howard
Brown, writer Barbara Bell, and historian Howard Bernstein). In 1979, the
University confronted the difficult decision whether to establish the Program
on a permanent basis after the expiration of its outside funding, at a
time in which the University as a whole was reducing the size of the faculty.
After extensive Committee review and faculty debate, the University decided
to commit three faculty FTE to enable the Program to continue, with the
expectation that these positions would be filled by six or more faculty
holding joint appointments between the Program and other departments in
the University (including Earl Hanson, whose appointment was officially
converted to a joint appointment in Biology and Science in Society). The
conversion of the original term appointments to joint tenure-track or tenured
appointments began in 1981, with the appointment of Joseph Rouse in Philosophy
and Science in Society. Over the next decade, other appointments were added,
including Karen Knorr-Cetina (Sociology), Drew Carey (Earth and Environmental
Sciences), Sue Fisher (Sociology), Anthony Daley (Government), and Marc
Eisner (Government). Robert Wood (Government) and William Trousdale (Physics)
also joined the Program for extended periods during the 1980's. Robert
Rosenbaum, Professor of Mathematics and founder of the College of Quantitative
Studies, rejoined the Program for one year as Chair when Earl Hanson was
on leave. Many of the faculty who had been hired under the original grant
continued to teach in the Program during this extended transition; Howard
Brown, the last of the original adjunct faculty who had begun the Program,
left the University in 1990.
Several significant intellectual and pedagogical trends are discernable
in the Program's development from 1980 until 1993, during which time the
Program typically graduated between 10 and 15 students a year. The social
sciences took on a more prominent role in the Program, which had originally
been conceived primarily by natural scientists: most notably influential
were the newly emergent interdisciplinary social studies of science, and
political economy and policy analysis. Traditionally structured academic
courses in these fields took on a more prominent role in the curriculum,
replacing many of the relatively free-wheeling, project-oriented colloquia.
While independent research projects remained a prominent part of the Program's
requirements, these were gradually scaled back from 2-year to 1-year projects,
and some students were permitted to substitute a briefer senior essay for
the senior thesis. The Program itself formally changed from a three-year
"college" to a two-year interdisciplinary major, a change which also eliminated
comprehensive oral and written examinations in the junior and senior years.
Although there was no formal division within the Program, students increasingly
tended to gravitate toward one of two distinct intellectual foci: critical
philosophical and sociological reflections upon the sciences and/or medicine,
and environmental studies, especially environmental policy. Many Program
faculty converted their joint appointments back to traditional departmental
positions, while continuing to teach in the Program.
The untimely death of Earl Hanson in October 1993 precipitated a substantial
reorganization of the Science in Society Program. Not only was Professor
Hanson the founder, the Chair, and the faculty member most prominently
associated with the Program; his interests provided the primary link between
the two distinct "wings" of the Program in environmental studies and interdisciplinary
science studies. Because of his many contributions, and deep commitment
to the Program, it was widely recognized that no single faculty member
could replace his role in the curriculum and administration of the Program.
After extensive discussion, a decision was made to split the Program.
A new certificate program in Environmental Studies was organized under
the leadership of faculty in Earth & Environmental Sciences, Economics,
and History, while the Science in Society Program itself continued with
a more specific focus upon the history, philosophy and social studies of
science and medicine. With the aid of a substantial grant from the National
Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation through
their joint initiative on "Science and Humanities: Integrating Undergraduate
Education," continuing faculty Joseph Rouse and Sue Fisher were joined
by Professors C. Stewart Gillmor, Jill Morawski, and William Johnston.
Half a dozen new courses were developed under the auspices of the NSF/NEH
grant. By splitting off environmental studies into a separate course of
study, the Science in Society Program was able to expand its science requirements,
add a substantial curricular component in the history of science, and provide
its students with a more intellectually coherent major. After a brief interregnum
while the new curriculum was being developed, the first students graduated
under the new requirements in 1995, and the Program has once again grown
to include over 30 junior and senior majors, making it one of the five
largest interdisciplinary majors at Wesleyan University. The appointment
of Assistant Professor Jennifer Tucker (History and Women's Studies) in
1998 strengthened our core faculty, and marked the consolidation of the
revised curriculum as a vital component of Wesleyan's overall program of
study.
The Science in Society Program holds a distinctive and important place
in the context of Wesleyan University's mission. Wesleyan aspires to combine
the forefront research typical of the best universities with a commitment
to the intensive undergraduate teaching that characterizes the best liberal
arts colleges. Such a joint commitment would be impossible to fulfill without
making the best of current research accessible to undergraduates in the
classroom. Throughout its first quarter century, the Science in Society
Program has been guided by this goal, adapting the most innovative and
informative research on the social, cultural, and political significance
of the sciences to the undergraduate classroom. Moreover, since Wesleyan's
Ph.D. programs in the sciences are the most visible and distinctive manifestation
of the seriousness of the University's commitment to research, our Program's
aspiration to connect the best humanistic and social scientific studies
of the sciences and medicine with serious and sustained study of a science
undertaken with Wesleyan's research-oriented science faculty is central
to this University's self-understanding.
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