History for STEM Majors: Pitfalls, Opportunities, and Rewards

Media, administrators, and policymakers often cast the humanities and STEM fields as oppositional.  In the academy, however, STEM majors routinely take history and other humanities classes for general education purposes as well as out of general or individual interest.  This paper will examine how advanced general education history courses can augment and enrich the education of STEM majors.  History departments are well positioned to complicate the scientific knowledge of STEM majors, especially as we develop courses that appeal to the interests of young scientists and engineers: classes in environmental history, the history of science, in medicine and disease history, and in the history of technology.  Importantly, cross-disciplinary cooperation between history and STEM faculty can provide opportunities for both trans-disciplinary research and instructional collaboration.  Further, attentiveness to the needs of STEM and other non-humanities students can provide History and other humanities fields with opportunities to expand offerings and develop alliances across disciplinary divides.