New year brings new major, minors

By Megan Gordon     8/30/16 10:50pm

The beginning of the academic year has seen the launch of new programs in three departments: a Bachelor of Science in environmental science, a minor in physics, and a minor in medical humanities. The new programs bring Rice’s total selection of undergraduate majors to 53 and minors to 20.

Bachelor of Science in environmental science

Rice will now offer both a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Science in environmental science.

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Dominic Boyer, director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences, said it was necessary to create a new environmental science program to serve students well.

“It’s about flexibility, it’s about filling the gaps in the curriculum, and it’s about meeting student needs,” Boyer said.

Richard Johnson, Director of the Administrative Center for Sustainability and Energy Management and a professor in the practice of environmental study and sociology, said the new Bachelor of Science in environmental science is a result of cross-departmental efforts.

“What we found was that a wonderful partnership emerged between earth sciences and bio sciences,” Johnson said. “They were both willing to share the degree.”

Prior to launch of the Bachelor of Science in environmental science, a Bachelor of Arts in environmental science was available, but Boyer said it failed to raise much student interest. The Bachelor of Arts initially was available only as a double major. In structuring this new Bachelor of Science program, Rice looked to similar programs at other institutions, Johnson said.

“We looked at environmental science major programs at other universities and used that as the basis for completely rethinking our own approach,” Johnson said. “We concluded we needed to offer a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Arts, and that they needed to be stand-alone degrees.”

The Bachelor of Science in environmental science includes a minimum of 73 credit hours of major requirements and a declared concentration in either earth science or ecology or evolutionary biology. The program is designed to be a rigorous course of study for students with defined interests in natural sciences and the environment.

Physics minor

Jason Hafner, professor of physics and astronomy, said the new physics minor was created to broaden the reach of the department.

“We just wanted to be able to reach out and teach physics to more undergraduates,” Hafner said. “That was really our motivation.”

To graduate with the new minor offered through Rice’s physics and astronomy department, students must complete a minimum of 35 credit hours from the courses laid out in the General Announcements. Hafner said the minor is designed to be fewer hours than the major, but still be comprehensive.

“We still wanted to give [students] the basic ideas of classical and modern physics,” he said.

Hafner said because it requires many lower-level courses, some students might have already taken steps toward completing the minor without realizing it.

“It’s got strong overlap with most science and engineering majors so a lot of students already have the intro part taken care of,” Hafner said.

For this reason, he said, the minor is well-suited for students who have completed these sorts of courses and want to go further in their physics education.

“I would say electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, computer science majors, people who has completed those intro science and math courses and have an obvious physical science interest are most likely to tack on a few extra physics classes,” Hafner said.

If this program is successful, the department hopes to construct similar minor programs in the coming years. Hafner said information on these programs will be forthcoming.

Medical humanities minor

Kirsten Ostherr, director of the medical humanities minor and a professor of English, said the new minor was created as a result of student and faculty collaboration, especially with the Rice Medical Humanities Club.

“There is a huge, very active medical humanities student group with whom I and the other faculty involved with the minor have had ongoing dialogue,” Ostherr said. “They were very vocal early on about how much they would love to have additional opportunities to take classes and do research in medical humanities. In addition, those students wanted to have some visible acknowledgment of their work in this field on their transcripts.”

Ostherr said the minor is designed to address another element of health that is often overlooked in the sciences.

“The social, cultural, human aspects of health and illness are shaped by many factors that students don’t learn about in science classes, or even in medical school,” Ostherr said.

Students take 18 credit hours of required courses to complete the minor. The program includes a practicum, which is designed to allow students to put into action the skills that they have learned in the program.

According to Ostherr, pre-medical and pre-health students would find great benefit in the program, but she noted that the omnipresence of health makes the minor a useful course of study for a number of other disciplines.

“There are few professions that do not bring some aspect of health into play, so if a student is interested in pursuing law, or studying literature, or becoming an environmental scientist, their approach to the field will be richer with a medical humanities minor as part of their education,” Ostherr said.

She said interested students should email her directly or enroll in one of the department’s course offerings. Introduction to Medical Humanities (HURC 201), the core course, is being offered this semester and will be offered again this spring.

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