Science mag opens discussion

Jamie Rosen Assistant Features Editor

What types of birds inhabit the Casperkill? What’s the latest in on-campus robotics research? Which Vassar professor’s research most recently made the front page of The New York Times Science Section? Could time and space be philosophical constructions? And what does neuroscience have to do with economics?

The inaugural edition of Vassar’s first multidisciplinary science publication, ScienceWorks at Vassar, answers these questions and several others in a way that is comprehensible to science and non-science majors alike. The issue, which came out in January, combines articles from nine of the College’s 13 science departments, including student and faculty research, environmental initiatives on campus, reviews of books and lectures, and upcoming science-related events.

Psychology and Cognitive Science Professor and ScienceWorks Faculty Editor Gwen Broude said she first conceived of the publication in her ongoing effort to enrich the out of classroom lives of students and to stress the multidisciplinary direction in which science is heading. She asked Kate Douthat ’05, Cognitive Science major and ScienceWorks Student Editor, to help put together the newsletter.

“What we’re hoping for ScienceWorks is that it will be a forum for people to get new perspective on different scientific issues, and it will be a forum for them to get to know practically what sort of opportunities they have on-campus for research and off-campus for research,” said Douthat. “A lot of people do really interesting stuff, and it’s a forum for them the express that. It’s supposed to be something for people to express their excitement.”

A section of the newsletter titled “Consilience Corner” spotlights connections between the sciences and other disciplines. The idea of consilience comes from E.O. Wilson’s Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, in which Wilson argues that all knowledge is related, said Broude. “The idea [of ‘Consilience Corner’] is to show that not only sciences can talk across disciplines, but we can all talk across disciplines,” she said.

“I think ScienceWorks is very interesting not just for sciences but for more traditional humanities because a lot of issues that humanities deal with can have concrete explanations in the sciences,” said Douthat. “They can be informed by each other.”

Douthat herself was drawn into the sciences through a book she read in a literature studies course, Metaphors We Live By, by Mark Johnson and George Lakoff, which discusses how metaphor guides concept. “I started to have all these questions, like, ‘Does everybody use these metaphors?’” she said. “I got into CogSci as wanting to know more about literature in a concrete scientific way.”

Broude and Douthat allow students to come up with their own ideas for articles to write. “ScienceWorks exists and grows and changes by virtue of what people contribute,” said Broude. “It can be hardnose academic to movies or science fiction. People can write science fiction stories.”

Rebecca Kirlin ’05, who wrote an article about her Environmental Studies trip to the Adirondacks for the first issue, said ScienceWorks makes science-related subject matter more accessible to non-science majors. “Instead of having science papers where you only have science majors reading it, you make it article-style journalism,” she said.

“The whole idea is that even if you’re not an expert in physics or at a 300-level in geology you can still understand the concepts,” Douthat added.

For the first issue, Douthat solicited articles directly from people she knew were doing scientific research and through the all sciences list. She said the biggest issues for the future are spreading the word and making the editing process more formal. “This is essentially something I’ve personally put together, and we want it to become a little more formal, but we thought the best way to do that was to launch it and then people in the future could set up a formal election process if they want.”

One contributor to the first issue said his article created an opportunity. Jacob Hoffman ’07, who wrote about birdwatching on the Casperkill, said Professor of Psychology Kenneth Livingston asked him to take a lecturer from the British Isles birding in the Hudson Valley after he saw Hoffman’s article.

Hoffman added that science majors can benefit from reading the newsletter as well as from writing for it. “My favorite part about it was seeing the research projects that other students were doing,” he said. “I thought that was definitely the most interesting because if there was another geography or geology major doing research, I could use them as a resource.”

ScienceWorks may help attract prospective students to Vassar’s science programs, said Vice President for College Relations Susan DeKrey, who is currently working to put the publication online.

“We’ve given over the last few years some particular attention to the sciences because historically Vassar has been known among some people more so for the arts and humanities than for the sciences, although in recent years there’s been some recognition of the sciences,” she said. “I think that there are probably prospective students who would find it interesting and are finding out about the college by going to the website. We’re going to link it from a variety of our departments and programs in the sciences for them to see.”

Broude said the issue will either come out twice each semester or once each semester with shorter updates. The next issue is scheduled to come out in April or early May and will include announcements about end of semester events like the robot competition, an epidemiology section covering student cancer research and AIDS in Africa, an article on genetics research in Thailand, and reviews of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and Robert Zubrin’s The Case for Mars, to name a few.

Professor of Biology Kathleen Susman said the newsletter may help to show the interrelatedness of different scientific fields. “I think it will help foster a closer sense of community among the sciences at Vassar.”

Susan Hughes already bridged the hard-science, pop-culture gap in her front-page article in the Science Section of The New York Times. The article, which was published Sept. 28, 2004, presented her research on voice attraction and sexual behavior and sex-specific body shapes.

However, though the first issue includes a diversity of articles, it does not represent all scientific disciplines at Vassar, said Susman. “The very first issue, by necessity, came out of the very small group of people working on it, so there weren’t representative articles from all aspects of all science, like chemistry,” said Susman.

The Dean of the Faculty Office financed the first two issues. If the publication gets additional funding, Broude and Douthat plan to print it on color paper and distribute it more widely on campus, in non-science buildings as well as the science lounges.

To obtain a copy of the first issue or submit an article for a future issue, contact Kate Douthat at kadouthat@vassar.edu.