Science, Technology, and Society
About the Program
- Last Updated on Thursday March 01, 2012
Creating robots, building high-tech prostheses, and developing new energy-efficient systems. These are only a few of the critical projects at the intersection of science, technology, and society. As science and technology change our society, it is important to understand how culture, economics, law, professional training, funding, and employment settings affect the pursuit of science and the development of technology.
Science, Technology & Society (STS) enables students to identify and analyze the ways that science and technology shape, and are shaped by, society. Emphasizing the importance of social processes to shaping scientific research and technological development, STS students engage in research projects, interview campus-based researchers and write academic papers that link their research to larger social needs.
Students can participate in research opportunities and internships with a variety of on- and off-campus research centers and governmental bodies. STS students then reflect on their individual skills, practical knowledge, and experiences to understand broader contexts of society's needs, scientific research, and technological development.
STS students develop life-long skills for interdisciplinary research and problem-solving through collaboration with peers pursuing different majors to understand the interactions of science, technology and society. Open to students of all majors, STS offers opportunities and challenges for those interested in science and engineering to think more broadly about their work.
STS merges inside-the-classroom experience with opportunities outside of the classroom. STS students participate in trips to the National Institutes of Health, the Military Advanced Training Center at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to explore current research in a variety of world-class settings.
In the sophomore Capstone course, students learn analytic methods in the academic discipline of Science, Technology and Society, and apply them to answer a serious research question of their own choosing.
As one of Scholars' original four programs, STS has a long history of educating students in the sciences. STS is sponsored by the A. James Clark School of Engineering and is housed in Chestertown Hall.
