Chemistry, Society, and Civic Engagement (Part 1): The SENCER Project

Abstract

the interdisciplinary work of a group of people committed both to better defining and to accomplishing these tasks.As a change agent, SENCER is concerned with institutional and curricular reform, particularly in regards to designing new science courses and rethinking older ones in ways that make the connections between science, people, and society more transparent. Through such connections, these courses invite students (as well as their instructors) to engage in the complex social issues that face us today locally, regionally, and globally. Ultimately, as Leshner pointed out, science is about people and life. So is the SENCER project.We first describe how the SENCER approach contributes to the undergraduate chemistry curriculum. Next we offer examples of chemistry courses that have been constructed on the SENCER model. And finally, we acknowledge the challenges that underlie the project, including designing the SENCER course, setting and assessing its goals, and teaching for civic engagement. The SENCER ProjectIn 2005, SENCER entered its fifth year as a national dissemination project. Originally affiliated with the Association of American Colleges and Universities, SENCER now has its home in the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement at the Harrisburg University of Science and Technology. One of the authors of this paper (KKO) is the co-founder of the Center, and a cadre of SENCER senior associates (including the other authors of this paper) serves as the faculty for the SENCER Summer Institutes for curricular development. Over 300 participants attended the 2005 Institute, representing 106 institutions, 30 states, and three continents. In addition, the senior associates contribute background papers and descriptions of model courses, as do the SENCER participants themselves. The details, as well as a quarterly newsletter, can be found on the SENCER Web site (2). Symposia featuring SENCER courses have been organized at recent national meetings (3)(4)(5).At the heart of the SENCER project lie its undergraduate courses for nonscience majors, including courses currently being taught and courses under development by teams at over 150 colleges and universities. These courses explicitly teach through complex, current, and contested real-world issues to basic scientific principles, thus engaging the learners in the complexities of both. In fact, the previous sentence is foremost among the ideals (List 1) to which the SENCER courses

STEM students’ social agency and views on working for social change: Are STEM disciplines developing socially and civically responsible students?

“…Moreover, another body of literature has focused on specific practices and programs being implemented in STEM undergraduate education to help promote students' social responsibility, understanding of social issues, and civic engagement. These include service‐learning programs (Baillie et al, ; Lima, ; Ritter‐Smith & Saltmarsh, 1998; Ropers‐huilman, Carwile, & Lima, ) and courses connecting science and societal issues (Chamany, ; Jordan, ; McGowan, ; Middlecamp, Jordan, Shachter, Lottridge, & Oates, ; Schneider, ). Additionally, studies on the impact of undergraduate research in science suggest that these experiences can provide the context for the development of students’ more critical outcomes in STEM education.…”

“…To control for the possible influence of faculty pedagogy and courses connecting science and society (Jordan, ; Middlecamp et al, ) on students’ social agency, the frequency with which students state faculty provide an opportunity to apply classroom learning to real‐life issues is used in the model. The importance of high income potential to a student's future career is also controlled for given previous research that suggests a relationship between STEM students and aspirations for money and status (see Antony, ; Goodwin, ).…”

Engaging Students in Science Courses: Lessons of Change from the Arctic

“…In the process of course development, we worked to avoid the “content trap” that is, designing a course based on what content we thought we would “cover.” Rather, we thought first about higher order learning goals for student learning and reverse engineered the course in the light of the goals set as summarized in Table 2. Since these goals were congruent with the model course, Uranium and American Indian (Middlecamp et al, 2006), the adapt and adopt process occurred smoothly for course modification. As noted in Table 1, a higher order goal is the integration of cultural and scientific issues.…”

“…These advances provide the theoretical base for several large curriculum reform projects. One such project, funded by the National Science Foundation, is SENCER, Science Education for New Civic Engagement and Responsibilities (Middlecamp et al, 2006). This national dissemination project strives to develop faculty who can engage students by using capacious real world issues in their science, technology, engineering and mathematics courses.…”

Now for the science bit: implementing community‐based learning in chemistry

“…The authors were aware of a Chemistry Science Shop at the University of Groningen (Mulder, 2008) but the projects there essentially involved CBR which was not our initial focus. Some service-learning projects were reported in the United States (Kesner and Eyring, 1999;Wiegand and Strait, 2000;Hatcher-Skeers and Aragon, 2002;Draper, 2004;Esson et al, 2005;Middlecamp et al, 2006) however.…”