Wesleyan University - Science in Society Program

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Of Note:

New SiSP Faculty Appointments:
The Science in Society Program is pleased to announce two new faculty appointments:
Dr. Laura Stark of the National Institutes of Health will become Assistant Professor of Science in Society and Sociology, beginning July 1, 2009. Dr. Stark received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University and a post-doctoral fellowship at Northwestern University before taking her current post as a Stetten Fellow at the Office of NIH History.
Professor Gillian Goslinga of Stanford University will become Assistant Professor of Anthropology, and a member of the SiSP faculty, beginning July 1, 2009. Professor Goslinga received her Ph.D. in History of Consciousness at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and is currently a Humanities Fellow at Stanford University.

Contact Information:
Chair of the Program:
Joseph Rouse
jrouse@wesleyan.edu
(860)685-3655

Administration:
Deborah Grasso
dgrasso@wesleyan.edu
(860)685-2680

350 High Street
Middletown, CT 05459

Program Description

The sciences and scientifically sophisticated medicine and technology are among the most important and far-reaching human achievements. Scientific work has affected people's intellectual standards, cultural meanings, political possibilities, economic capacities, and physical surroundings. Scientific research has also acquired significance, direction, authority, and application within various cultural contexts. To understand the sciences as human achievements is, in significant part, to understand the world in which we live.

The Science in Society Program is an interdisciplinary major that encourages the study of the sciences and medicine as institutions, practices, intellectual achievements, and constituents of culture. Students in the program should gain a better understanding of the richness and complexity of scientific practice and of the cultural and political significance of science, technology, and medicine. The major is well suited for students interested in a variety of professional and academic pursuits after graduation, since it encourages students to integrate technical scientific knowledge with a grasp of the historical and cultural setting within which it is understood and used.

Students may enroll in the program either as their only major or as a joint major with one of the science departments (Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Neuroscience and Behavior, Physics, or Psychology). All students must take one course each in history of science, philosophy of science, and sociocultural studies of science. Students who undertake the joint major with a science must take two additional courses in the program and complete all requirements for a science major. Students for whom the program is their only major must take three additional courses in the program, plus a minimum of four major-track courses in one of the science departments and a structured three-course area of concentration in either anthropology, history, philosophy, sociology, or feminist, gender and sexuality studies. Further information about program requirements and policies can be found on the program's Major Requirements.

To be eligible for departmental honors, a student must meet two criteria. First, all work done in the core courses of the Science in Society Program including electives must be considered, on average, to be very good (equivalent to a B+ or better). Second, a senior thesis deemed excellent by its readers is necessary for honors, and a genuinely distinguished thesis is needed for high honors.

Last updated: March 27, 2009.

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