• Would I be capable of teaching a “humanities-skills” class to my physics majors? Could that class count toward the our “humanities” liberal arts requirement?

I think I would teach a bang-up humanities course, maybe something like “Battleships and Lightbulbs: Understanding how the Technical and Scientific Revolution of the Early 20th-Century affected Society”. However, this is not a product of my physics training. I spent a considerable amount of time in college and after (although leisurely) reading about that time period. I think this course would be fairly enjoyable for my students. Fun even! What if science students could take this class instead of taking a history class? Maybe even reducing the amount of history and philosophy classes to zero.

Again, I think I could teach a science humanities class successfully. It wouldn’t be perfect. But why would I do that? I would strongly recommend a student take that same class with an engaging history professor and it could be life changing. A good history professor will be able to agitate the way the student’s view of the world – opening them up to new ways to think. We could force that student to think about connections that student wasn’t even aware were important. I have seen it happen to me. While I have discarded most of my undergraduate physics textbooks (mostly because I have an upgrade), I still hold tightly on my undergraduate history texts. Those history professors changed my life and they help me to see a side of me that wasn’t just a lab rat.

I have been training my students to “think like a physicist” from the moment they step on Adelphi’s campus. It is something I am very proud of. I was in a meeting the other day with another organization and name of one of my former students came up. People were impressed. I quite literally glowed for the entire day after. But there are other valid ways of thinking; shouldn’t my students be exposed to that as well.

• Would I be capable of teaching a “social science-skills” class to my physics majors? Could that class count toward the our “social science” liberal arts requirement?

I view social science in the same vein as humanities; its super important and different than what I am used to working in the natural sciences. I couldn’t teach it. If I tried, I promise I’d screw it all up. [I really tried to write a joke for the last sentence of this paragraph, but the jokes keep failing. :(]

• Would I be capable of teaching an “arts-skills” class to my physics majors? Could that class count toward the our “Arts” liberal arts requirement?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! This is just LOL! Matt and Art don’t fly.

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There are two things that we get from liberal arts: skills that are different than our major skill-set and a different perspective. I do believe it is possible to teach some of the skills in our majors. I do not believe we can provide the broad perspective in our majors. We have to reach out to other brilliant people, with other points of view, for help.

I fear that folks will start claiming that they can teach “scientific reasoning” in their non-science majors. In these classes students will learn about the scientific method, (Whatever the hell that is? Science is so much more messy, abrupt, and non-linear.) about how scientific results are verified through experimentation/evidence, and about the importance of data analysis. Students will ultimately miss that other perspective that you get when you take a Liberal Arts class. That professor from outside their field’s point of view that challenges them to think about ideas that are foreign to them. In a world that is rapidly redefining itself through revolution, political strife, rapid technological change, and the destruction of our fragile Earth being able to think about a thing from multiple points of view is a necessity.