Course distribution requirements normally lead undergraduates not majoring in the sciences, including students preparing for careers in elementary and early childhood education, to take several unrelated science courses, each of which lies within the traditional boundaries of a single scientific discipline. As an alternative to the standard approach, this pilot project will produce a four semester sequence of integrated science courses focusing on the general theme of environmental science. All four courses will be suitable for enrollment by students not majoring in the sciences, including students enrolled in teacher preparation programs. The courses to be developed include: 1) Ecosystems: Their Formation, Function, and Impact on Life; 2) Environmental Health; 3) Global Change; and 4) Quantitative Methods in Environmental Science: Non-linear Dynamics, Fractals, and Chaos in Nature. These courses will be based on a variety of combinations of biology, chemistry, ecology, engineering, geology, mathematics, meteorology, and physics, and all will place emphasis on the role of science both in students' everyday lives and in public policy. As part of each course's requirements, students will work in small groups to carry out research projects, and cooperative learning strategies will be employed. Each course will include a laboratory component and three of the four will include a series of all-day field trips to nearby sites. University resources will be supplemented with personnel and facilities drawn from a variety of local industrial and governmental organizations. The primary goal of the pilot project is to demonstrate that this alternative approach improves the scientific and environmental literacy of students, relative to traditional course offerings for non- science majors. Evaluation efforts will include close monitoring of relative outcomes for students majoring in early childhood and elementary education, who will be assigned randomly to the standard curriculum and the pilot courses. If su ccessful, the pilot project will serve as a model for the development of thematically organized cross-disciplinary science courses for non-science majors, including education majors, at the college level.
