Itai,

Jeff Groves pointed out your proposal to me and I read it with interest.
If you're interested in my comments, here they are. If not, feel free to
delete now.

Let me say, first, that your proposal is, at least in part, based on the
common presumption that the humanities and social sciences curriculum is
solely responsible for fulfillment of the college's mission in that
sense that the mission calls for understanding the impact of our work on
society. It is important to realize that the mission was created by
faculty, trustees, and other friends of the future college who mostly
came from scientific, engineering, or business backgrounds. The first
chairs of the math and science departments, to say nothing about the
original president, were passionate about general education and the
ethical issues involving science, industry, and war. The earliest
faculty appointments were made clearly in this context, and the entire
faculty embraced this aspect of the mission as a collegial mission.
There was not, in other words, a belief that the humanities department
(originally the social sciences were not present) was solely responsible
for this task. It is not even clear that the founders were certain this
mission could be achieved through merely curriculum. I would argue that
it is more involved with the institution's "culture."

Unfortunately, through decades of growth and development, the college
has been significantly corrupted by the overall academic environment in
the US, an environment of narrow specialization. Hence, as departments
attempted to excel in the natural paths expected of them, less and less
attention was given to the collegial framework and more and more
attention was given to departments providing specific educational
preparations. In this mood, it is natural, I suppose, for people to
assume that preparing students for the "impact issue" is the sole
obligation of this department.

If you take collegiality seriously, then you should begin your
reflection on the disappointments of your Harvey Mudd education by
asking what each of the departments did to enhance your understanding
about the relationships between math, science, and engineering with
human life and society. I surely hope that most students do actually
remember instances when one or more of their technical professors
sparked some thought about these issues. However, if you examine their
curriculum (which is what you propose to "reform" in our department),
you would have to come up quite disappointed. The prevailing concept is
that technical curriculum is just that --- technical.

Fortunately, the adoption of the IE requirement by the full faculty,
several years ago, began a process (admittedly not very far along) of
re-focusing on the collegiality of this mission. For this reason, I
believe that it is very important for the IE program to be owned by the
full faculty (in spite of the constant tendency of students to believe
that it's "a humsoc requirement") because it is the avenue that will
actually reform the technical curriculum along the lines of a collegial
fulfillment of our mission.

Let me conclude my lengthy remarks by observing some things about the
humanities and social sciences department and its curriculum. First, the
department does have a mission of its own, just as each department in
the college has interpreted the college mission into a specific mission
of its own. You can find our mission on our HomePage at
http://www.humsoc.hmc.edu/index.html and I hope that your proposal will
consider this statement and its relevance to our curriculum. The faculty
discusses curriculum constantly and our discussions are informed by our
sense of mission. Thus, if you want to talk to us about reforming our
curriculum, you need to start with a discussion about our sense of
mission.

Second, and finally, allow me to say something about STS since it
figures so thoroughly in your proposal. There is a great danger, in
technical institutions, of reducing everything to technical subjects.
Thus, when we think about learning X, our impulse is to put up a course
on "Science and X" or "The Scientist in Relation to X." Technical
institutions, on average, rarely encourage their students to "think
outside the box" that they're in. Our faculty, on the other hand, has
taken the position that HMC students should be encouraged to get outside
of their technical interests to experience human life and society at
large. We do this through what appears to be a traditional liberal arts
curriculum. Underneath the "appearance" is a faculty that is fully aware
of who are students are and what their technical commitments are,
consequently, a faculty that is fully ready to help make reconnections
between the "two cultures." The educational challenge we place before
HMC students is to locate oneself in the world at large and then to ask,
"how do I fit in this world as an engineer (chemist, physicist, etc.)?"
This position, I would argue, is why HMC can honestly call itself a
"liberal arts" college; otherwise, it would really just be a technical
"trade school."

Having retired in June, I have had ample opportunity to think about my
41 years at HMC. And I have to confess to some deep feelings of regret
that, for all the struggles (and in "humsoc," believe me, it IS a
struggle), so little seems to have been achieved. I agree with you that
HMC does not succeed in its ethical mission. Where I disagree with you,
is in the conclusion that this is somehow a failure of the humanities
and social sciences curriculum. In fact, I believe the real failure of
HMC lies in the lost opportunity of establishing a genuine culture of
self-examination and criticism, in particular, a culture that is ready
to examine and question the roles of math, science, and engineering in
our world. This is a collegial need, only modestly connected with
curriculum.

Hope everything is going well in your new academic adventures!

Tad Beckman