Science Education at Arts-Focused Colleges

Abstract

Many arts-focused colleges and universities in the United States offer their undergraduate students coursework in science. To better understand the delivery of science education at this type of institution, this article surveys the science programs of forty-one arts-oriented schools. The findings suggest that most science programs are located in general education departments alongside other liberal arts disciplines, and at most of the schools students are required to complete at least one science course. The findings also suggest that the context of science education at arts-focused colleges may encourage innovation in pedagogy and curriculum development. This article highlights courses and assignments from Emerson College and other schools in which scientific topics are aligned with arts fields or framed to emphasize the societal relevance of science and its place in our daily lives.

“I'm just not that great at science”: Science self‐efficacy in arts and communication students

“…Overall, the results relating to students' demographic profiles suggest a somewhat different picture from the "chilly" environment described by Ballen et al (2017) and offer a degree of promise in that the creative and adaptive teaching approaches that emerge in these interdisciplinary-positioned, general education science spaces (Oswald, Ritchie, Murray, & Honea, 2017) may be of value in counteracting trends that we see in more traditional science instruction (Rittmayer & Beier, 2008;Villafañe et al, 2014). We recognize that our findings should be interpreted with caution, however, because of the somewhat limited racial diversity in our sample.…”