Problem Sets & Caffeine
The title of this article was chosen to evoke some laughter, but hopefully also some eye-rolling. With the explosive integration of IT into our lives over the past 30 years, STEM seems to have been elevated to an almost holy academic status: you study it, or you go bust, and don’t earn any money for the rest of your life. As a liberal arts university, Tufts takes a more balanced and in my opinion, more reasonable, attitude: STEM fields must be studied by everybody alongside liberal arts fields to allow students to develop a more holistic view on knowledge.
In practice, it may seem that one’s major would interfere in the manifestation of this rather lofty ideal. How can you have time to dissect the principle of Descartes’ First Philosophy in depth and detail if you have to learn about reactions involving carboxylic acids? My answer is that Tufts’ unique pedagogical methods in STEM, STEM-adjacent (economics, quantitative psychology), and non-STEM fields encourage maximum understanding. Today, I’d like to do a deep dive into how STEM is taught at Tufts.
As always, Tufts’ essential identity as a small liberal arts university is crucial to understanding this. Intro-level STEM classes like Calculus 1 and 2 will be taught in a large lecture hall, and there will be automatically graded online homework, like you would have to do at any other school. This can naturally feel quite impersonal and uncharacteristic of the type of school Tufts is. Of course, the effects of this are largely mitigated: to reinforce and apply concepts learned during the lectures, larger Tufts STEM classes usually have recitation sections where a highly qualified teaching assistant (usually a senior, graduate student, or research fellow) walks you through the material in meticulous detail, with a small group of other students who you grow to know well over the course of a semester.
For instance, this semester, my Calculus 2 class is taught by Professor Zac Faubion, who is an excellent lecturer and very friendly and available during office hours - but in case I can’t make it on the Friday afternoon to clarify difficult concepts, I needn’t worry - my recitation with Dr. Lorenzo Ruffoni will usually ensure I don’t have any misunderstandings of the material and obtain high marks on my problem sets. Problem sets are another crucial part of STEM classes at Tufts - they are longer worksheets which contain highly conceptual problems that are often discussed during recitations, and solved independently or collaboratively. The answers to the questions on problem sets are not easily Googled or searched up, and require critical thinking.
The intersection of small, intimate class groups with rigorous problem-solving is at the heart of a liberal arts education, as a form of deep thinking and deep dialogue. While smaller STEM classes like Bridge to Higher Mathematics (or STEM-adjacent classes like Intermediate Microeconomic Theory) do not usually have recitation sections, they essentially fulfill the requirements for functioning as one, as you meet the professor several times a week with a small group and build familiarity with the material. Tufts’ small size means classes reduce in population much earlier than you would have to wait in other schools, and a subsequent increase in instruction quality will become apparent. But no matter whether you want to wade into the waters of STEM, or dive deeply into a specific subject through a specialized class, Tufts has your back.