A Passion for Science - Columbia College - Columbia University

Columbia CollEgE Today A PASSION FOR SCIENCE
the pastures originally cleared in areas surrounding the fragments
became reforested. Deforestation in the tropics is continuing at rates
that lack historical precedent resulting in the extensive fragmentation
of species-rich rain forests. Insights from Uriarte’s project are
likely to be relevant to what is happening to forests in other areas.
Uriarte’s work in Peru involves not only biologists but also anthropologists
and climate scientists. For centuries, farmers in the
Peruvian Amazon have used burning to manage agricultural fields,
and more recently, to clear and clean pastures. Yet the landscapes of
the region are being rapidly transformed by clearing for large-scale
plantation agriculture, especially biofuel production, by extensive
ranching and by new patterns of smaller-scale land uses by non-
Amazonian migrants who arrive in large numbers from the coast
and highlands of Peru. Large fires escaped from burning fields and
pastures have become common dry season events that ravage forests,
farms and settlements in much of Amazonia and recently, these
destructive fires have become a major problem along this region.
The immediate causes of increased fire susceptibility reflect a
variety of changes in economic policies. The policies at stake have
affected agricultural development and land settlement in the Ama-
the seniors who will graduate from Columbia
College this May were not yet born when
Columbia first began to consider how to add
a science component to the Core Curriculum.
The debate began in 1982, when Professor
David Helfand, now the chair of the Department of
Astronomy, was asked to head the Committee on the
Place of Science in a Liberal Curriculum.
“When I got here in 1977, I was delighted to see that
the faculty actually had the temerity to say, ‘These ideas
are important, these books are important, and I don’t
care what you are majoring in, you will all do this together,’
” he says. “I was simultaneously appalled that this
Core Curriculum, which was advertised in the catalog as
the intellectual arms of the University and preparation for
life as an intelligent citizen, consisted of seven humanities
courses, zero math courses, zero science courses
and zero social science courses.”
For 22 years, Helfand worked with faculty, administrators and
alumni, many of whom had a deep emotional attachment to the Core
as it was, in an effort to create a science component for the Core
Curriculum. The basic goals of the project were “to show students
that science is interesting because of the things we don’t understand,
not the set of facts that we do,” and “to inculcate in them a set of
quantitative reasoning skills that many students lack,” he says.
In 2004, Columbia launched the Frontiers of Science course on
a trial basis. In this one-semester class, which College students
generally take in either the fall or spring semesters of their first year,
students attend a series of lectures
presented by noted senior faculty
on current research, and then meet
in smaller seminar-style groups to
discuss the topics covered.
The topics change every year
as research advances. More than
30 tenured professors have taught
the course, and each lecture must
be rehearsed twice in front of the
faculty before it is presented to the
students.
MAY/JUNE 2011
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zon Basin, and led to rising prices for tropical commodities including
biofuels that might serve as substitutes for petroleum products.
Many of these changes result from a series of enacted policies and
decisions taken on national and local levels. The disruptions produced
by rapid land use and demographic transformations are
compounded by the uncertainties of a changing climate. Uriarte’s
team aims to quantify the critical factors driving the increased incidence
of fires. The researchers are trying to determine whether the
fires are the result of droughts, or of recent changes in land use, or
perhaps of the management practices of new migrants.
“As scientists, we like to deal with one thing at a time,” she says.
“Right now, so much is happening at once that that is impossible.
What’s the effect of climate change on forests? Legacies of human
land use? Development policies? There are so many important questions.
The trick is to identify which ones we must manage to preserve
biodiversity, critical ecosystem services and human livelihoods.”
Ethan rouen ’04J, ’11 business is associate editor for Columbia
College Today. His last cover story, about internships at the College,
was published in the January/February issue.
Frontiers of Science Broadens the liberal arts education
Professor Darcy Kelley (left) says
Frontiers focuses on what’s happening
in science right now.
PhOTO: COLuMBIA COLLEgE
David Helfand has been
thinking about a Core
course in science since
the 1970s.
PhOTO: MARIANNE COOK,
FACES OF SCIENCE
“The course emphasizes the frontiers, the breakthroughs,”
says Darcy Kelley, the Harold Weintruab
Professor of Biological Sciences, one of the Frontiers’
creators. “Doing anything in science, you have to struggle
through years and years of preparation. In Frontiers,
you don’t. You get to cut to the chase and talk about
what’s happening right now. That’s fun for faculty to
talk about, but it’s also fun to hear.”
The seminars are taught by tenured faculty and post-
doctoral research fellows with a specific interest in interdisciplinary
science teaching. Regardless of the instructor’s
expertise, he or she teaches all components of the
course, which has proven alluring to dozens of faculty
members.
“As scientists go deeper into their fields, their focus
becomes narrower and narrower,” says Kelley, who this
year gave four lectures on neuroscience. “Here, astronomers
who haven’t done biology since ninth grade get to
learn about and teach biology. Scientists do what they do because
they love to learn science. Frontiers allows them to explore new
fields. What’s not to love?”
Although Frontiers initially was met with resistance from some
students, others found it eye-opening. The course has begun to
gain traction as a vital piece of the Core education, even converting
some students from liberal arts majors to science majors.
“Understanding scientific methods of argument and inquiry is
an important requirement of citizenship in the 21st century,”
says Dean Michele Moody-Adams. “Frontiers of Science seeks to
develop that understanding so that students graduate from the
College able to participate responsibly in those political, social and
economic debates that require some awareness of the nature and
goals of modern science.”
Frontiers recently underwent an initial five-year review, and it
continues to be revised, in a process that Helfand says he hopes
will never cease.
Moody-Adams has approved a second, more extensive review of
Frontiers of Science. External reviewers will join Columbia faculty in
examining the course’s content and methods to ensure that it fully
embodies the goals of the College’s Core Curriculum.
—E.R.