The Science of General Education

The smell of frying tuna steak wafted through the Science Center C lecture hall while cheesecake baked in an oven.

As Professor of Applied Mathematics and Applied Physics Michael P. Brenner measured the temperature of the two foods as a function of time, he knew he had his audience hooked.

Finally, after he calculated the heat diffusion constant of water with only 10 percent error, a few hungry audience members ate the demonstration.

“I walked out thinking, this is the greatest lecture I have ever given in my life,” Brenner said somewhat playfully of his lesson on heat transfer during Physical Universe 27: “Science and Cooking”—a course designed for the College’s General Education program.

Creative, innovative, and explicitly connected to the real world, it was a moment that embodied everything that the Gen Ed program stands for.

But when students in the course sat down to do that week’s problem set, many were unable to answer a question based on Brenner’s demonstration.

“I didn’t explain in enough detail why certain steps were true,” he reflected on his lecture. “And if you don’t think this way as a matter of custom, like I do, then it really led to a lot of confusion.”

For many science professors teaching Gen Ed courses, the question of how best to teach scientific concepts to non-science concentrators has no easy answers.

This particular lecture seems to be more of a minor hiccup than indicative of a broader failure of the course, as many administrators and students praised the course’s innovative teaching methods.

“It has taken something students are interested in (food) and used it to teach them some basic scientific principles,” Director of General Education Stephanie H. Kenen wrote in an emailed statement. “If you want to describe what Gen Ed is about, that’s a good course to point to.”

While “Science of Cooking” has been able to draw praise from students and administrators alike, collectively Gen Ed science classes have been less successful at teaching rigorous science within a creative framework, according to some faculty members.

“I worry that too many students are coming through Gen Ed and not achieving the scientific literacy we want them to have,” Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris said. “Students can still graduate from here pretty ignorant in the world of science and that shouldn’t be.”

In  this struggle to teach science to often-reluctant non-science concentrators, a pedagogical divide has emerged.

While some science professors are embracing Gen Ed by using innovative teaching methods, other faculty members have kept their courses—holdovers from the nearly defunct Core Curriculum—virtually unchanged, making only the necessary tweaks to get approval from the Gen Ed committee.

INCONSISTENT PROGRESS

Since its launch in the fall of 2009, the Gen Ed program has dramatically altered the landscape of course offerings at Harvard College. It replaced the 32-year-old Core Curriculum, which will be phased out at the end of the next academic year.

The General Education Office has approved 397 courses, including 91 “new or significantly revised” Core or department courses, according to Tez Chantaruchirakorn, who is program manager of the Program in General Education.

Students must choose from these course offerings to fulfill eight requirements in the humanities, sciences, social sciences, and math.

The Gen Ed curriculum is meant to “connect in an explicit way what students learn in Harvard classrooms to life outside the ivied walls and beyond the college years,” according to the program’s website.

While humanities and social science classes have largely been able to embrace this mission, a number of indicators show that the sciences are lagging behind.

Data from the Q Guide—Harvard’s course evaluation tool—suggests that science and math courses have struggled in the shift from Core to Gen Ed.

Humanities and social sciences classes designed for Gen Ed are scoring higher on average than past Core humanities and social sciences classes.

Not accounting for overall changes in teaching quality across the College, Q scores for humanities and social science courses have jumped from an average of 3.82 in Fall 2007 through Fall 2008 for Core classes to an average of 3.93 among courses numbered in the Gen Ed category in the first three semesters after the new program officially launched.

On the other hand, math and science Q scores saw no significant improvement in the transition from Core to Gen Ed, moving from an average of 3.56 to an average of 3.60 over the same periods.

Although this data only reflects student perception of course quality and may change in upcoming semesters as professors refine new courses, anecdotal evidence from faculty members also suggests that science Gen Ed courses have not lived up to the program’s mission in the same way that humanities and social science courses have.

“I think the science areas were really not thought about nearly as creatively as some of the other areas in Gen Ed,” said Chemistry lecturer Logan S. McCarty ’96, former assistant dean of undergraduate education.

McCarty co-teaches Science of the Physical Universe 20: “What is Life?”

“[The creators of Gen Ed] didn’t really do a whole lot to change the view of what these science courses ought to be.”

RESISTANCE TO CHANGE

One potential explanation for why science Gen Ed classes have failed to show improvement over science Core courses is that many professors have simply re-packaged their Core classes.

Although Kenen said she “[doesn’t] see a lot of aspects of the Core retained in Gen Ed,” some faculty members said that the science courses have seen less change overall, particularly in the Core holdovers that have transitioned into Gen Ed.

“There’s a sense that the way we’ve always taught science is the way to keep teaching it,” McCarty said.

Physics professor Gary Feldman said he didn’t change much about his class when proposed its transition from Core to Gen Ed.

“It really didn’t need a whole lot of change,” he said about his class, which is now called Science of the Physical Universe 18: “Time.”

Feldman said he does not think that many professors drastically altered their science Core courses when switching to Gen Ed.

“We’ve had less change because we’ve been doing a lot of things that Gen Ed wanted all along,” he said.

According to Kenen, the old Core courses that were admitted into the Gen Ed program “already fulfilled the Gen Ed goals.”

For his part, Physics Professor Roy J. Glauber said he did not make any major changes to his Core course Science A-29 before submitting it to the Gen Ed Office.

The class, which is now labeled Physical Universe 23: “The Nature of Light and Matter,” has since been approved.

In his own course, “there was no change in philosophy[the Gen Ed Office] just wanted a lab added,” which he said he had done several years earlier on his own when the course was still in the Core.

Glauber said he thinks science Gen Eds have seen few changes because there are fundamental limitations to the way science can be taught.

“There has not been a world of change because we have a skeleton with a certain amount of rigidity,” he said, adding that he thinks humanities courses are “a great deal more adaptable and flexible” than science courses.

Glauber said he thinks science can be taught according to the Gen Ed philosophy “if its purpose is to interest people and give them experiences that are worth having.”

But, he said, “you cannot really do an honest job of presenting a discipline that way and expect people to understand its ramifications.”

When it comes to presenting rigorous science, he said, “there’s not very much you can do with those equations.”

McCarty said he thinks many of these old courses are not consistent with Gen Ed’s philosophy of imaginative teaching.

“Some of the Core courses that have been converted into Gen Eds, I think, are just not as interesting,” he said.

“I think there’s been less creative effort given to pedagogy and modes of assessments and kinds of projects that students can do.”

MIXED REVIEWS

While some old Core classes have successfully made the transition to Gen Ed, administrators most often point to the newly created classes as the poster children for the new Gen Ed curriculum.

Along with “Science and Cooking,” Harris praised “What is Life?” and Science of Living Systems 12: “Understanding Darwinism”—two new interdisciplinary courses designed specifically for Gen Ed—as courses that “explicitly link to the concerns of students who are not scientists.”

While some new science Gen Ed courses have received high Q score ratings, new Gen Ed science classes are no more likely to receive high Q scores than science Core holdovers that have been approved for Gen Ed—controlling for course-related variables such as instructor quality, difficulty, size, and Gen Ed category.

Only positive professor ratings and designation in the Science of Living Systems category were shown to be connected with a high overall Q score.

Despite receiving positive reviews from faculty members, “Science and Cooking” received an average Q score of 3.77 in Fall 2010, only 16th out of the 32 math and science course offerings listed in the Gen Ed category during the first three semesters after the launch of the program.

Another new course, Science of the Physical Universe 25: “Energy: Perspectives, Problems and Prospects,” earned a 2.83 in Fall 2010, the lowest rating among the 32 course offerings.

Meanwhile, the highest ranked course Science of the Physical Universe 13: “The Physics of Music and Sound,” which received a 4.40 in Fall 2010, is a Gen Ed course that was originally offered in the Core curriculum.

But there is some indication that the Gen Ed philosophy has improved the class. The course instructor, physics professor Eric J. Heller, said he dramatically changed the course to fit the Gen Ed philosophy.

In response to the Gen Ed initiative, Heller adopted the clicker system, moved from Powerpoint presentations to blackboard lectures, implemented in-class peer instruction, and changed the curriculum to make it more quantitative.

Heller said he approaches the challenge of teaching non-science concentrators by regarding them all as “potentially good scientists.”

“I never talk down to any students,” he says, adding that he warns shoppers during the first lecture that his course will be very rigorous.

INSPIRING TEACHERS

Three years from now, in the fifth year of the program, the Gen Ed program will undergo a review to determine how successful it has been in meeting the goals of Gen Ed.

Harris said he expects to use focus groups, Q guide data, and an analyst to assess Gen Ed programming.

But Harris said it could be years before the College has a definitive understanding of how well the long-term goals of the program have been achieved.

As Gen Ed prepares to enter a period with more established courses, some faculty members said that the best way to improve Gen Ed science courses is to draw on the talents of professors.

Some of Harvard’s most committed teachers are grappling with the difficult question of how best to teach science to non-science concentrators, Brenner said.

“The people who teach Gen Ed are by and large very dedicated teachers,” he said.

Brenner adds that he thinks faculty—who are under no obligation to teach Gen Ed—typically only teach Gen Ed courses because they love to teach.

McCarty said he thinks science faculty have enormous potential to teach great courses.

“You really have to somehow inspire the passions of the very creative science faculty we have and really challenge them to think of something outside the box,” he said.

—Punit N. Shah and Saieed Hasnoo contributed research to this article.

—Staff writer Rebecca D. Robbins can be reached at rrobbins@college.harvard.edu.