With:

1. RVCC Science Seminar April 13, 2011When Science LooksintoThe Embodied Mind:Insights into Thinking and Writing Across the CurriculumAngela Bodino, Ed.D.; Professor of English • With: • Multimodality in Composition Studies:Piloting a Case Study of Students' PerceptionsJessica Darkenwald-Decola, Adjunct English Instructor,Ph.D. Candidate, The Rutgers Graduate School of Education • Geothermal Energy: An Underutilized Resource- Adrian Lee Turner, Student • The Ecology of Long Beach Island:The Threat of Sea-Level Rising Due to Climate Change- Jesse O'Connor, Student

2. Language and Creativity • Wallis ReidVerb and Noun Number in EnglishLongman, 1991 • Language users participate actively in the communication act. • They are not passive decoders, but creators of meaning. • Language acts merely as a guide. In this creative act people bring to bear their entire store of world knowledge and experience.

3. Introduction: • A 25-Year Quest: From WAC to WID • Writing Across the Curriculum • Writing In the Disciplines • Writing as a means of developing insight

4. The importance of interdisciplinarity, of a synthesizing curriculum Quotes: C.P. Snow, 1959 • "The clashing point of two subjects, two disciplines, two cultures—of two galaxies, so far as that goes—ought to produce creative chances. In the history of mental activity that has been where some of the break-throughs came“—The two culturesLondon: Cambridge University Press. (1964, p. 16)

5. Jerome Bruner, 1986 Science and Humanities – an ancient topic, even a tired one… seems to have come awake again. - Jerome Bruner, Actual Minds/Possible Worlds (1986)

6. Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein, 1991 (from Preface) “…Ever increasing specialization is clearly leading to a fragmentation of knowledge. People today have so much information and so little grasp of its origins, meanings, and uses that overall comprehension has frayed beyond repair…”

7. Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein, 1991 (from Preface) “…Even as specialized knowledge increases, communication between fields decreases. Between fields experts address larger and larger problems in smaller and smaller bits. Modern society faces a Dark Age in the midst of intellectual plenty, a paradox that can be resolved only by reintegrating knowledge in new ways and by training a new generation of renaissance people to weave ne syntheses for themselves.”

8. Simon A. Levin Professor of biology, Princeton University The scientific discipline of ecology is dynamic, steeped in historical tradition but adapting to its changing environment and building its own ecological network of interactions with other disciplines… Society has become increasingly aware that we are losing crucial parts of our ecosystem, and that the activities of human beings are threatening the sustainability of the biosphere… “Ecology, the unifying science in integrating knowledge of life on our planet, has become the essential science in learning how to preserve it.” Chronicle of Higher Education, August 8, 2010

9. II. Challenges and Opportunities • Emphasizing theunity of creative and critical thinking • The role of the unconscious/Importance of feeling

10. Unity of Creative and Critical thinking • Common tools of thinking threaded throughout the curriculum: • Observing • Imaging • Abstracting • Recognizing Patterns • Forming Patterns • Analogizing • Body Thinking • Empathizing • Dimensional Thinking • Modeling • Playing

11. Unity of Creative and Critical thinking • Case Study and Story • Observation • Classification • Sorting • Convergence ofnarrative and argument

12. Unity of Creative and Critical thinking 5th week of a 10-week interdisciplinary seminar (WAC 1985)Roger Johnson responded to the prompt: “Describe a problem in your discipline and the way you help students solve it.” To help students understand and view the population of a forest as a system, we construct flow diagrams or component models showing the parts and the influences of one on others. One assignment I give students is a written population study of red grouse. From this we draw a picture which includes each of the various factors which are influential on the population – such as food supply, predators, climate and behaviors like dominance, age, structure, clutch size…

13. Unity of Creative and Critical thinking “Describe a problem in your discipline and the way you help students solve it.” …Then we draw arrows between these factors to show positive or negative effects, thus emphasizing interactions as well as structures. I have tried this myself in preparation for teaching, from an article about the effects of medical technologies on society. The article described so many compounding and far-reaching effects of even one technology that I found drawing a picture to be very helpful.

14. The role of the unconscious/ Importance of feeling • Niels Bohr: complementarity in quantum theory • Teenage son confessed he was out shoplifting • “It was difficult… to know my son both at the same time in the light of love and in the light of justice. Could you have both love and justice at the same time and in the same psychological system?” • “Vases & Faces”— can see only one set at a time. • Impossibility of thinking simultaneously about the position and the velocity of a particle.

15. The role of the unconscious/ Importance of feeling Peter Elbow • “Free writing” • “Low-stakes” writing

16. Watch and Write After watching “Home,” a trailer that sends a message without words, tell us… • what patterns you saw • What meaning emerged

17. Practicing withHome Watch: Home (2009)by YannArthus-BertrandDocumentary trailer with Vivaldi's"Nisi Dominus, RV 608; IV. Cum Dederit“soundtrack www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns_n30ZzcWU

18. Write! tell us: • what patterns you saw • What meaning emerged • Continue writing until time is up, about 5 minutes, then STOP!

19. Piloting the Focus on Nature Course Catalogue Description Environmental Studies Major This course is a basic introduction to environmental studies. Students will learn to apply various concepts in the biological, physical, social sciences and humanities in order to understand the causes and consequences of environmental problems facing the world today, and what can be done to address them. Students will also be encouraged to explore how these concepts and issues relate to their own lives, from both global and local perspectives. One weekend field trip is required.

20. Piloting the Environmental Course The Assignments: • Reading: When the Claim is Implicit rather than Explicit(Fiction, Poetry, Plays, Film, Art & Expository) • Expository, Argumentative Texts with Explicit Claims • Final Exam

21. Composition II: Focus on NatureFinal ExamThe Paradox of SciencePromise and Peril / From Certainty to Uncertainty The challenge in this interdisciplinary essay is to use a thematic focus on Science to explore the controversies surrounding scientific discovery from the 17th century to the present. Your sources in this essay should include a reference to Galileoand at least two contemporary texts, either articles handed out in class or texts of your own choosing. The sources can be drawn from print or media, film or the internet. Your research may come into play, but only as an additional resource and not a substitute.  Minimum: 1000 words or five pages double-spaced

22. Conclusion • Root-Bernstein • E. O. Wilson

23. Root-Bernstein “Our foray into the hearts and minds of inventive individuals demonstrates that imagination can be encouraged and trained through the exercise of thinking tools and the desire for synosic understanding… We need not change what we teach. A synthetic education requires only that we change howwe teach.”

24. E. O. Wilson 2011 “The central task of science writing for a broad audience is… how to make science human and enjoyable without betraying nature. The best writers achieve that end by two means. • present the phenomena as a narrative, whether historical, evolutionary, or phenomenological, and • treat the scientists as protagonists in a story that contains…the mythic elements of challenge and triumph. Fields of Reading, Motives for Writing p. 748, 749

25. Adrian Lee TurnerGeothermal Energy: An Underutilized Resource • Why did you take the course? • How did you feel about writing before the course? • How do you feel about writing now? • What made the difference? • What connections with science/environmental studies do you see in a course that involves reading and writing about literature? • What is your research topic? • How did it emerge as a topic, and change? • Why does it matter? What is its importance? • What has this process taught you about research? • Has the course influenced your career goals?

26. Jesse O’ConnorThe Ecology of Long Beach Island: The Threat of Sea-Level Rising due to Climate Change • Why did you take the course? • How did you feel about writing before the course? • How do you feel about writing now? • What made the difference? • What connections with science/environmental studies do you see in a course that involves reading and writing about literature? • What is your research topic? • How did it emerge as a topic, and change? • Why does it matter? What is its importance? • What has this process taught you about research? • Has the course influenced your career goals?

27. Multimodality in Composition Studies:Piloting a Case Study of Students’ PerceptionA Qualitative Pilot Study Jessica Darkenwald-DeCola Questions Related to English Composition II: A Focus on Nature: • Why did you decide to take this particular section of English Composition II? • What are some positive aspects, in your opinion, of taking a themed course like this? • What are your thoughts about your research project so far? • Some relevant themes/patterns that are emerging in the data related to the course: • Interdisciplinary Study/Themed Courses • Relevance and Connection to the Real World • Expanded Audience • Choice - Multiple Ways In

28. Questions?