General Education Goal

Course Goal

Part One:

Intellectual Abilities and Dispositions

A. Conceptual and Practical Understanding of Modes of Learning, Problem-Solving and Creative Inquiry

B. Information-Gathering, Reasoning, and Synthesizing Abilities

1. Skill in formulating questions and in setting goals for inquiry.

To learn how to model real-world problems through articulation of dimensionality, specification, resource available, logic integrity, and mathematical rigor.

2. Knowing how and when to make generalizations and value judgments.

3. Skill in generating and evaluating observations and evidence.

To learn how to articulate and specify the environmental/experimental conditions for desired observations.

4. Skill in making deductive inferences.

To learn how to summarize observed results and to determine whether they add to our knowledge base and support the original hypotheses.

5. Ability to use relevant quantitative methods.

To emphasize the importance of quantitative analysis, including the concepts of significant digits, mean, root-mean-square, most probable results, and margin of error.

C. Reflective, Creative, and Critical Dispositions

1. Striving to be well informed and open-minded.

To introduce the achievements in science and technology, e.g. via a discussion on the Nobel prizes, and show how our everyday life has been fundamentally transformed by them.

2. Looking for multiple possibilities and being able to deal with ambiguity.

Use the history of Newtonian mechanics to show that behind mystery, ambiguity, and chaos there can be a unified theory that has wide applications in real life.

To show that the road to scientific discovery can be rocky and lonely, but persistence and imagination can take us to where no one has been before.

3. Striving to achieve one’s best with persistence and imagination.

4. Willingness to make choices and to evaluate those choices.

5. Intellectual self-awareness: being conscious of one’s own thinking process, including the cultural and social contexts of that thinking.

To examine the importance of context of physics and engineering. Use e.g. nuclear power to show that, even if the technology is superior, it may still be rejected for environmental concerns.

D. Communication Skills

1. Writing and speaking with clarity and precision for diverse audiences.

To develop the ability to formulate a problem using logic, principle, specification, and plans of execution. Also to develop the ability to design, specify, report, and summarize experimental procedures.

2. Making use of computers and other technological tools

3. Interpreting and communicating visual information

To apply the graphics capabilities of computer programs for data presentation and interpretation.

Part Two:

Knowledge and Understanding

A. Understanding the Natural World

1. Knowledge of the physical Universe, including its origin and the physical laws governing it.

To instill the concepts and principles of physics, with emphasis on motion, force, energy, and conservation theorems, using the plethora of examples that are available in the real world.

2. Knowledge of living systems, including their nature, organization, and evolution.

To demonstrate how living systems can be modeled using physical principles. Such models would then allow an understanding of the nature, organization, and possibly the evolution of the living system under study.

3. Understanding the history and methods of scientific inquiry and alternative explanations of the natural world.

To show that modern physics originated from the inquiry of whether the Earth was the center of the universe, and that our civilization is continuously being pushed ahead by the inquiry of whether Mars exploration is possible.

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4. Understanding the multiple influences on scientific inquiry and the consequences of science and technology.

To emphasize inquiry as an important origin of society development, using e.g. the development of steam engine to demonstrate that the industrial revolution can be traced to the common question of "how the steam engine can be made more efficient."

5. Understanding the ways human choices affect the earth and living systems and the responsibilities of individual citizens and communities to preserve global resources.

B. Understanding of Culture and Society

1. Knowledge of the many expressions of culture, including

• 1 Understanding the unique shared ways of thinking, believing, and acting, developed by a people who live together over a long period of time.
• 2 Ability to conceptualize and trace the influences of community, institutions, and other constructions such as class, gender, and race.
• 3 Familiarity with the ways in which culture is expressed artistically, through literature, performance, and artifact.
• 4 Awareness of and appreciation for the ways in which culture and society influence and are influenced by work and leisure.

To introduce the fact that science has no real national/cultural boundaries but engineering often does, that successful engineering designs must be human and environmentally friendly.

To show that, while science generally has no national boundaries, scientific discoveries are often influenced by society, in particular the degree of well-being and the self-awareness of its people.

To show that science was often art before it became science, and that it is often related to how people in a particular community express themselves.

2. Understanding the sources and expression of diverse values throughout the world, including ethical, religious, aesthetic, political, and economic values as well as social and cultural priorities.

To show that the practice of science and engineering almost always addresses local needs, but at the same time adds to the collective knowledge of human civilization.

3. Ability to trace the impact of technology on societies and cultures for diverse audiences.

4. Understanding the ways human choices affect communities, from local to global, and responsibilities of individuals to assume the duties of citizenship.

To show that through natural selection, different societies often develop different technologies that are beneficial to all parties in trade, and that such collaboration relies on each party fulfilling their responsibilities in this global partnership.

5. Understanding the role of government regulation and of legal requirements, political processes, and financial and economic influences on decisions of individuals and society.

C. Self-Understanding

1. Understanding the nature of our humanness and how human beings are like and different from the other beings with whom they share the planet.

2. Knowledge of individual physical, emotional, intellectual, social and creative development as well as ability to use such knowledge to improve personal well-being.

To show that scientists and engineers are leaders of the society and that their opinions and decisions often have great impact on the welfare of the society.

3. Knowledge of individual physical, emotional, intellectual, social, historical, spatial, and cultural matrices into which the individual is born; and the influence of the unique set of experiences which the individual encounters.

4. Ability to perceive one’s own being not only from cognitive perspectives but also from those perspectives which come from exposure to and creative vision of the arts – to imagine the possibilities the future holds and to develop responsible goals for interactions with others, modes of personal expression, and roles in improving the world.