In the future, we hope to link our efforts with theirs to test which concepts are best learned in an intimate environment and how the virtual experience and the real world experience combine to develop richer and deeper understanding. Next year we plan to add another semester to our program, focusing on the interaction of science and society. Integration of natural science with the social sciences and humanities is critical to making judgments about environmental issues and solving complex problems. Today professionals of every stripe face decisions requiring scientific knowledge, including all who ponder public policy issues. How we value our environment determines how we treat it.
Natural science is too important to play a secondary role in the curriculum.
Its powerful organizing concepts help us make sense of the natural world around us and the multitudinous technological devices that cascade from the discovery of natures secrets. Yet natural science now represents a diminishingly small part of the liberal arts curriculum. The goal of our emerging Earth and Environmental Science curriculum at Columbia, Barnard and Biosphere 2 Center is to lay the foundation for a natural science curriculum for life, not just for future scientists. We can, if we have the will. However the road is not without peril.