I'v ealways liked the idea of having to take courses outside of one's own discipline. It sounds like Colgate takes it even further than Mount A does. We have "distribution credits", where you need six credits (two semester courses or one full year course) in four different areas: Arts and Letters, Humanities, Social Science and Science. They're sometimes a PAIN to schedule (especially for science students, since a lot of arts courses are in the afternoon when we're in labs), but I was SO glad I took them.
One of the courses I took for my Arts and Letters course sounds like it has the same sort of aim as the Core Scientific Perspectives class. I lovingly referred to it as "English for Science Students", but it was a really interesting class. The dynamic was really different from a lot of classes since it was an English prof talking science to a bunch of science students. The theme that ran through the course was that there is an element of aesthetics running through science too. She claims that we're the only class where teaching meter in poetry isn't met with annoyance, because that's the math part of the course, along with discussing the idea of an elegant proof. Biology talked about Darwin and once again the idea of beauty. Physics was philosophical about the beginning of the universe and even made me not hate an Margaret Atwood Novel. We also read poetry about atoms and below, and analyzed it from the English and Science perspectives at the same time. The chemistry section was a collection of short stories where a character would have the characteristics of an atom. It may make me a chem geek, but I loved reading the author wax poetic about carbon as the last story in the collection.
So, umm, that was long, my point is that these courses don't hurt you! It's good to take a look at this other stuff! :p
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-23 04:02 am (UTC)One of the courses I took for my Arts and Letters course sounds like it has the same sort of aim as the Core Scientific Perspectives class. I lovingly referred to it as "English for Science Students", but it was a really interesting class. The dynamic was really different from a lot of classes since it was an English prof talking science to a bunch of science students. The theme that ran through the course was that there is an element of aesthetics running through science too. She claims that we're the only class where teaching meter in poetry isn't met with annoyance, because that's the math part of the course, along with discussing the idea of an elegant proof. Biology talked about Darwin and once again the idea of beauty. Physics was philosophical about the beginning of the universe and even made me not hate an Margaret Atwood Novel. We also read poetry about atoms and below, and analyzed it from the English and Science perspectives at the same time. The chemistry section was a collection of short stories where a character would have the characteristics of an atom. It may make me a chem geek, but I loved reading the author wax poetic about carbon as the last story in the collection.
So, umm, that was long, my point is that these courses don't hurt you! It's good to take a look at this other stuff! :p