Keck-abstract

Earlham College requests $358,877 to develop multidisciplinary science curriculum modules and student/faculty research projects focusing on a common core problem: metals in the environment. This project will emphasize collaboration among our natural science departments, including biology, chemistry, computer science, geosciences, mathematics, and environmental science. Scientific research is becoming increasingly multidisciplinary, collaborative, and computational. Therefore, it is essential to train our students to develop multi-faceted approaches to problem solving that use both traditional laboratory techniques and computational methods. This project will introduce an important scientific problem (metals in the environment), ask students to collect and analyze data, and to make interpretations using different disciplinary perspectives. This idea of collaborative multidisciplinary learning will transform our undergraduate curriculum in the sciences and provide a model for programs among the sciences at other liberal arts colleges.