The Interdisciplinary at Tufts: Science, Technology, and Society
One area Tufts excels at is being interdisciplinary (that is, having ample opportunities for Jumbos to try a little bit of anything and everything)! A lot of majors, clubs, and classes at Tufts incorporate ideas and students from various fields from physics and engineering to visual art and psychology.
My favorite example of this value being emphasized at Tufts is the Science, Technology, and Society (STS) program. STS draws on humanities and social sciences approaches to study science and technology in their social context. Faculty partners come from departments like:
● Anthropology
● Biology
● Classics
● Education
● Engineering
● History
● Mathematics
● Music
● Philosophy
● Physics
● Political Science
That’s a lot of departments! In addition, STS offers a 10-course co-major (meant to accompany another major) with general themes such as “Bodies, Health, and Medicine,” “Science and the State,” and “Math, Maps, and Modeling.” My exposure to this department is through a class called STS 10: Reading Lab. A Reading Lab is a reading- and discussion-based course with a central theme and distinct applications explored in each week. That means that grades are dictated by purely participation, not exams or written assignments, which makes discussion much more valuable and low-stakes!
Right now, I am taking the Reading Lab on Averages. Allow me to share a brief blurb about the course:
“In this reading lab, we will explore the way averages and statistics are used, interpreted, and leveraged. Some key questions to keep in mind throughout the semester: Can averages tell us the truth? What happens when statistical models are designed by people with their own sets of values and ethics? How do societal and cultural beliefs influence how we make sense of certain averages?”
While this may sound too philosophical at first, the weekly sessions talk about tangible examples of averages being used in decision-making: standardized testing, pharmaceuticals, the U.S. census, ChatGPT, gerrymandering, and so on and so forth. The most exciting part of the class is witnessing and participating in discussions as my peers come from backgrounds in linguistics, political science, data science, human factors engineering—people I wouldn’t have interacted with had I stayed in my major-specific bubble.
That being said, the other appeal of STS 10 is that each offering has a different big picture theme. Fall 2023’s were about Progress and Programming; Spring 2023’s is on Averages; the upcoming Fall 2024’s will cover Classification. In other words: if you need an elective and want a less intensive yet productive class, I heavily recommend STS 10. As a whole, STS is a nice way to explore how people from a wiiiiiide variety of backgrounds and experiences come together and critically look at technological advances we’re seeing in day-to-day life today.