Author: Henry Dickmeyer
In his March 31 lecture, “The World in 50 Years,” held as a part of the Phi Beta Kappa Speakers lecture series, Caltech scientist Ahmed Zewail envisioned a future with an integration of education systems and global scientific and technological progress. He offered theories from the grandiose – space exploration and the tools to kill neurodegenerative diseases – to more humble goals of improving education through science and technology. These theories apply to Occidental’s own liberal arts agenda as well. As a community of progressive thinkers, Occidental’s faculty and students should be eager to explore innovative ways to integrate science and technology into the curriculum as Zewail prescribed.
Over the past 50 years, there has been unprecedented investment in the medical sciences, engineering and computer science. That Occidental lacks an undergraduate engineering program and offers a limited number of computer science courses signals that the school has not caught up with these generational shifts. Students cannot help but notice the abundance of smartphones and laptops amongst their peers, utilized for everything from data analysis for classroom assignments to creating personalized playlists from an iTunes library.
What used to be considered technological expertise has become a necessary aptitude for our generation. The college faces the imperative to enhance the academic understanding of the world with the instruments that shape its future, not least because students in 2012 already use these tools with incredible deftness.
Increased funding will give Occidental the opportunity to build upon this emerging scientific and technological literacy. More businesses have begun to integrate modern innovations into their business plans. It is time to start training undergraduates for their entrance into this newly designed future. Technology funds could go toward creating required coding courses for economics majors, investing in engineering software for physics majors or offer training for ECLS majors in online scholarship. Occidental can play to the audience of technologically deft students by offering the ability to prepare for a new future with the skills they are already cultivating.
Occidental’s goal is ostensibly to build a better future. The community is aware of the Israel/Palestine conflict, indecencies toward different cultures and solutions to a greener Earth. The college is filled with progressive thinkers and whether it is a UEP major who helps with sustainability initiatives in local coffee shops or a mathematics major who wants to find efficient architectural designs in inner cities, there is critical value in having technology by one’s side. The liberal arts education values this interdisciplinary approach to solving problems; as religious studies professor Dale Wright comments, “[If] you do science better, you do the liberal arts better.”
Each department implements scientific reasoning into their studies one way or another, and it is crucial to see science and technology as one of the many angles scholars must take into account. CTSJ majors may find a genetic tendency in biased individuals that biology majors were blind to, or perhaps psychology majors will contribute to the field of economics by proposing an understanding of the investing mind without taking a single course. It is important to increase funding for science and technology to allow their exploration as one of many approaches to academic questions.
With students coming to college with more and more technological prowess, it is vital that the development of science and technology seep into our schools. College students today have the base knowledge, the iPhones, the apps and the “Type to Learn” training. The more mainstream academia enhances its breadth of scientific and technological knowledge, the better it is for the future of education as a whole.
Henry Dickmeyer is an undeclared first-year. He can be reached at dickmeyer@oxy.edu.
This article has been archived, for more requests please contact us via the support system.
