n023  0905  14 Apr 85
BC-REVIEW-TECHNOLOGY Undated
(Week in Review)
By EDWARD B. FISKE
c.1985 N.Y. Times News Service
    To John S. Morris, the president of Union College, the gas leak at
the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, last year represents an
academic challenge as well as a human tragedy. ''Methyl isocyanate
makes it possible to grow good crops and feed millions of people, but
it also involves risks,'' he says. ''And analyzing risks is not a
simple matter.'' Morris's college, in Schenectady, is at the fore of
a growing movement in American higher education - bringing the study
of technology into the standard liberal arts curriculums.
    Several years ago Stanford became the first major university in the
country to require all students to take at least one course in
technology. ''It comes from our idea of what the educated person will
need in the future,'' says Carolyn C. Lougee, associate dean of its
School of Humanities and Sciences.
    Marymount Manhattan College in New York City is developing a new
''introduction to technology'' course that plunges students into
topics ranging from decision-making theory to the analysis of nuclear
waste disposal. Grinnell College in Iowa sends students to
Washington, D.C., for a ''technology semester'' in which they work at
such places as the Environmental Protection Agency and study such
topics as the ''social costs of technological change.''
    At Union and elsewhere, engineering is taking its place alongside
the arts, humanities and social and natural sciences as the building
blocks of the curriculum. ''Technology is not only a process of
designing and creating, but also a way of knowing,'' says Robert P.
Lisensky, executive vice president of the Council of Independent
Colleges.
    To some extent the new fascination with technology grows out of a
general discontent with the teaching on college campuses. A survey
published by the American Council on Education last month found that
nearly six out of ten colleges are reviewing their curriculums,
especially their ''general education'' programs. More fundamental,
however, is the sheer pervasiveness of technology in modern society.
Curriculum planners note that many political decisions - those
involving the MX missile, for example - require some technologically
informed common sense.
    American colleges began concentrating on the study of technology in
the 1960s, when what were usually known as ''science, technology and
society'' programs were organized at scores of institutions.
    Although the intention was to promote conversation between
scientists and nonscientists, many of the programs ended up as
vehicles for social scientists who preferred to attack technology
rather than understand it. ''It was the time of Vietnam, and
technology had a bad name,'' says Colton Johnson, dean of studies at
Vassar.
    By contrast, most of the new programs seek to teach students
''about'' technology. Wilson College in Pennsylvania, for example,
requires a course that explores the ''philosophical and historical''
basis of science and technology, while Wheaton College in
Massachusetts is embarking on a three-year, $300,000 curriculum
overhaul designed to assure that its graduates will be conversant
with ''technology issues.''
    Many of the courses are team-taught by, say, a scientist and a
historian, and many include ''hands-on'' projects. At the State
University at Stony Brook, for example, students do field work on
topics such as Long Island's water supply. Implicit in many of the
new programs is the notion that engineering is not only an
increasingly important intellectual tool but also that it differs in
significant ways from other disciplines, including the natural
sciences.
    ''The engineer works with a special set of intellectual tools,''
says James D. Koerner of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which has
encouraged the trend with $10 million of grants. ''While the
scientist wants to understand the environment, the engineer is a
practical-minded chap who wants to change it.'' The scientist works
with absolutes, the test of a theory is whether it conforms to the
natural world; but the engineer lives in a world of relative values
and trade-offs. There is no such thing as a ''perfect'' bridge.
    Colleges seeking to integrate the study of technology into liberal
arts programs face numerous problems, beginning with finding people
to teach it. ''Thus far it doesn't have the allure,'' says John P.
Crecine, senior vice president for academic affairs at
Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. ''There's no Carl Sagan of
engineering.''
    
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