Foundations of Science

Using modern, student-centered, active and collaborative learning techniques, students will engage — through field observations, in-class experiments, computer simulations, and selected readings — with a range of ideas and techniques designed to integrate and anchor scientific habits of mind. Throughout the term, each student will satisfy a detailed set of rubrics by documenting their learning in reflective e-portfolio postings designed to serve as a future reference for how they, individually, went from not understanding an idea to understanding it. Topics covered will include statistics, basic probability, a variety of calculations skills, graph reading and estimation, all aimed at elucidating such concepts as energy, matter, cells, and genes in the context of astronomy, biology, chemistry, earth sciences, neuroscience, and physics.