UW-Madison Provost Envisions Future of Science Education at Delta Roundtable
Katherine Friedrich

At the Delta Program’s Roundtable dinner on Sept. 27, new UW-Madison Provost Pat Farrell challenged instructors to be open to new teaching methods. The Delta Program is a project of the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning.

Farrell advocated a results-oriented approach to teaching. Science should not be thought of as “an accumulation of knowledge,” he said. Students graduating from college today, he said, will work in environments where information will not be “a scarce resource.” Therefore, he said, educators should shift their focus from content transmission to knowledge integration.

Interdisciplinarity will increasingly become the norm in science professions, Farrell predicted. He recommended that professors train their students to synthesize knowledge from different disciplines and to analyze diverse sources of data. In response to a comment, he added that interdisciplinary academic programs may attract more women, underrepresented minorities, and first-generation graduate students.

In industry, Farrell said, human relations and communication skills are more important than technical skills. Graduates in the sciences need to be prepared to work with people from diverse cultural backgrounds. In 15 years, he said, “the world will be… a lot more international.”

Attendees spoke positively about the talk afterwards. Caitlin Iverson, an undergraduate studying biology, said that she “just really liked how the Provost was… focused on the future.” Cheryl Diermyer, a learning technology consultant for the Division of Information Technology, “liked the provost’s point about digging through… practices to get to the values.” She said that this is a useful approach in dealing with resistance to change.

When asked about the persistence of academic tradition, Farrell replied, “My interest is in the future.” In the sciences, that future may be a world of increased information and greater intellectual and cultural diversity.

October 5, 2006

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