Science, Technology, and the Liberal Arts: Report on a National Conference Held at Lehigh University

Abstract

In Spring 1984, Lehigh University was the site of a national conference entitled Technology and the Liberal Arts. Although the immediate occasion for holding this conference was to disseminate the results of a NSF-funded curriculum development project at Lehigh,* we decided to use the occasion to offer participants an overview of activities at other institutions working toward the same goal, namely, bringing science, mathematics, and technology into the liberal arts curriculum. The Lehigh conference, then, afforded an opportunity to assess the state of a science and technology literacy movement that has been steadily growing in power and influence since the late 1970s. At the moment, the key players in this movement are the National Science Foundation, the Congress of the United States, a growing number of state departments of education, the Sloan Foundation (together with the college and university programs that it is actively supporting in this area), and various national educational associations. Moving to play a more active role are the Association of American Colleges (representing approximately 700 liberal arts colleges), the American Association for the Advancement of Science and, somewhat tentatively thus far, a number of corporate foundations. The movement is being kept active, in part at least, by the prospect of hundreds of millions of Federal dollars likely to be targeted for improving the level of competence of the American people in mathematics and science, primarily, and in technology secondarily. The activity also reflects authentic concern over the adequacy of education, at all levels, in areas that are preconditions of excellence in science and engineering. This concern has been voiced, for example, in highly publicized reports of the National Research Council, the National Commission on Excellence in the Carnegie Institute for Higher the National Science Foundation, and the Sloan Foundation.' Earlier still, in 1979, it had moved a group of engineering educators to organize the Council for the Understanding of Technology in Human Affairs (CUTHA), which has since held conferences at MIT (1980), Chatham College (1981), and the University of Maryland (1982), on what it was about technology that liberal arts students ought to know, and how to teach it to them. In retrospect, then, one can see a steady and rapid development during the past five years which has centered on calls for significant modifications to existing elementary, high school, and college curricula on behalf of increasing competency levels in those quantitative and reasoning skills relevant to a wider public involvement with scientific reDr. Cutcliffe is Director of the Technology Studies Resource Center, Lehigh University, and Editor of the Science, Technology and Society Curriculum Development Newsletter; and Dr. Goldman is Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and Director of the Science, Technology and Society Program, Lehigh University. * NSF Grant No. SER-8005 199, Elements of Technology in a Liberal Education, through the Directorate for Comprehensive Assistance to Undergraduate Science Education (CAUSE).