The project will design an interdisciplinary laboratory science course for non-science majors that explores the earth's past and its place in the universe. The course will be based on concepts common to all of science. It will include elements of and be taught by faculty from cosmology, physics, chemistry, geology and the life sciences. The centrally significant ideas of these disciplines will provide the focus for presentations and laboratory experiences. Faculty members who will teach in this course will themselves become "master learners", attending classes in other disciplines. There will be a 4-week workshop to design the course in 1993, a two-week workshop to review, evaluate and revise it in 1994, and a two-day evaluation session in May, 1994. Upon completion of the grant, there will be six to eight faculty prepared to teach this innovative interdisciplinary class.
