Science Teaching Focus of CSST Fall Workshop Series

Science Teaching Focus of CSST Fall Workshop Series

BY PHILIP MONTGOMERY
Rice News Staff
Sept. 17, 1998

To encourage an open dialogue and to draw upon imaginative approaches at Rice
to teaching science and engineering to majors and nonmajors, the Center for the
Study of Science and Technology (CSST) will hold a series of teaching workshops
this fall.

The first workshop, titled "Approaches to the Teaching of Physics and Astronomy
to Non-Majors," will be held at 4 p.m. on Sept. 21 in Symonds Lab of Fondren
Library.

John Freeman, professor of space physics and astronomy; Anthony Chan, assistant
professor of space physics and astronomy; and Janice Bordeaux, senior research
scholar with the Center for Technology in Teaching and Learning, will lead the
workshop.

The workshops are free and open to the Rice community. Each session will consist
of an informal presentation by the speakers followed by general discussion from
audience members.

"We want to encourage an open dialogue about teaching science as a component
of general education, having people who have done it for years share what was
successful and what wasn’t," said Albert Van Helden, the Lynette S. Autrey
Professor of History and director of CSST.

Other speakers and workshops for the fall semester include Sidney Burrus, dean
of the George R. Brown School of Engineering, and Kathleen Matthews, dean of the
Wiess School of Natural Sciences, who will talk about "Science and Engineering
in the 21st Century: A Career of Learning" at 4 p.m. Oct. 5 in 1042 Duncan
Hall.

John Hutchinson, associate professor of chemistry, will speak on "Case Studies
and the Socratic Method" at 4 p.m. Nov. 9. in the Kyle Morrow Room of Fondren
Library.

John Bennett, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, will
give a presentation called "Lego Robots: Teaching Engineering Design to Poets
and Nerds" at 4 p.m. Nov. 23 in the Kyle Morrow Room of Fondren Library.

For more information contact Van Helden at (713) 527-4947 or Randel Hanson, CSST
coordinator, at (713) 737-5881.