Currently, students with two units of Advanced Placement science credit can take an ST — a science course with a lab — and an STX — a science course without lab — to fulfill the science distribution requirement. Those without AP credit must take two ST courses. This change will extend the ST and STX option to all students, regardless of previous credit.
According to the minutes of the faculty meeting, the change will “enhance the education of undergraduates in science and technology” and allow for “more choice in fulfilling the ST requirement.” The proposal was presented to the faculty by Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel.
Malkiel said that toward this aim, the Council on Science and Technology will also invest “its resources in supporting a range of rigorous, engaging laboratory science courses — some of which exist already, some of which will be created with council support,” according to the minutes. The council, which proposed the change, was established in 1989 and oversees the science distribution requirement.
“A major objective of this change is to get people to take more science courses,” molecular biology professor Samuel Wang said in an e-mail, echoing the faculty’s hope that increasing options for students will expand their interest in the sciences.
“It will only work if it is backed up by the development of new courses that are well designed and speak to the importance of science in everyday life,” he said.
But for some, like molecular biology professor Edward Cox, the idea is too risky. “Once we’ve made this change, it’s really irreversible,” Cox said, explaining that while the revision might work out well, it is still an experiment — a sentiment echoed by Wang.
Cox, who noted that the change has been debated for decades, spoke out against the idea at the faculty meeting.
Without requiring two labs, “you don’t really get a feel for how to do science,” Cox explained. “Our society depends on the success of science and technology, and I think it’s a disaster for anyone to come away without an understanding of how it works.”
The requirement is especially important for students majoring in pure humanities like history, because “for the first time they get to experience what it’s like to have experiments fail, which is 95 percent of the scientific enterprise,” Cox said.
Cox also said he thought that if “revamped and better resourced,” the current distribution requirements could easily remain in place.
“I think in some courses we don’t do a good job ... but that’s hardly a reason to get rid of something,” he explained.
Physics major Kai Sheng Tai ’13, however, said that the new policy likely won’t have much of an effect.
“I don’t think it’s cutting down the science requirement so much as cutting down the lab requirement,” he explained. “I personally didn’t feel that I gained that much from the labs in my introductory physics courses. A lot of people take easy STs anyway.”
The recommendation for the change was based on wide consultation with “faculty members, academic departments, the Committee on the Course of Study and the Academic Planning Group,” as well as student feedback. Wang noted that during a survey of the Class of 2014 he conducted this fall, more than 90 percent of freshmen said that “science was important in their everyday lives.”
“This policy needs to speak to the openness that students have to science when they arrive,” Wang explained, by extending the options available to incoming students in the fields of science and technology.
But Cox said he felt the decision to make the change was based too closely on student feedback.
“I’m sure if you asked the same thing about a language requirement, I can pretty much guess what the answer might be,” he said. “Or any requirement. After all, Brown attracts a lot of talented students, and one reason is that there are no requirements.”
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