WHAT IS STV?

STV courses may be taken for a variety of purposes:

1. To constitute an STV Minor Program (15 semester hours) complementing any standard major, including majors in the Colleges of Science, Engineering, or Business,
2. In student-designed "course clusters" to enrich a particular course of study,
3. As general elective courses,
4. To satisfy certain University distribution requirements.

WHY STV?

-- The ‘REAL WORLD’ is Inter-Disciplinary:

Educators everywhere are recognizing the need for students to acquire skills in ways of thinking that go beyond those furnished by the traditional academic disciplines. Physicists must be politicians, politicians must grapple with medical research funding, medical researchers must come to grips with ethical and philosophical aspects of their science. Engineering in the real world involves economics, policy, and ethical issues; doing business on an international scale is a matter of integrating economics with anthropology, technology policy with history. New knowledge and new techniques radically increase the complexity of decision-making in the modern world.

The STV Minor addresses such issues in courses like "Technology and Social Change (395/30195), "Cultural Aspects of Clinical Medicine" (454/40154), "Technology in History" (487/40187), and "History of Chinese Medicine" (472/40172).

-- The MOST PRESSING MORAL PROBLEMS which we have to face will come from Science and Technology:

In so many cases, the problem of whether we can accomplish a certain task has been replaced by whether we ought to. With technical power comes problems engendered by the exercise of that power, social issues about which institutions are to be entrusted with it, moral problems about how to exercise our technical virtuosity while being fair and respecting the humanness of others: green revolutions, industrial automation, sophisticated medical technologies, genetic engineering; the issues arise almost everywhere we look. STV courses in this area include "Medical Ethics" (245/20245), "Environmental Ethics" (247/20247), and "Ethics of Development" (483/40283).

-- Above all, CITIZENSHIP demands integration of the technical, the ethical, and the social:

Today no effective citizen can afford to be ignorant of technology and science. Nationally and locally, we are asked to make informed, ethical, and prudent choices on issues equally technical and moral: on AIDS research funding, on strategic defense initiatives, on responses to contamination of our ground water or closings of our factories. Sample STV courses in this area would be "Energy and Society" (204/20304), "Environmental Chemistry" (206/20306), and "Self, Society, and Environment" (419/40319).

-- Finally, understanding OUR UNIQUE PLACE IN HISTORY means understanding Science and Technology:

Our identities, individually and as a people, are a product of the history of western science. Scientists, from Copernicus to Darwin to Freud, have shaped our understanding of where we live, where we came from, and who we are, and a battle to define human nature still rages. Achieving maturity in our society involves gaining some perspective on how conceptions of ourselves and our world are generated through the interaction of science and culture. Typical STV courses in this area are: "History of Modern Astronomy" (466/40166), "Science and Religion" (263/20163), and "Philosophy and Cosmology: A Revolution" (231/20431)

-- YES, but is STV good for anything PRACTICAL?

Completing an STV Minor can be a springboard to a career in public service, science-and-technology policy, science education, international economic development, or medical administration, not to mention science journalism, technical sales and service, and museum work. Graduate programs exist in many of these fields as well as in the history, philosophy, and social studies of science, environmental science, bioethics, risk assessment, and technology and public policy.

An STV Minor also provides excellent preparation for a subspeciality in law, business, and medical schools.

IS STV RELEVANT TO YOUR COURSE OF STUDY AT NOTRE DAME?

For liberal arts students:
STV offers an opportunity to study modes of thinking and problem-solving characteristic of science and engineering, as well as to explore the social, philosophical, religious, and aesthetic roots of science and technology.

For science, engineering or pre-professional students:
STV offers a way to complement specialized, technical studies with courses on ethical, social, and cultural aspects of modern technology, medicine or science.

For business students:
STV offers a way to explore ethical, political, historical and cultural aspects of science and technology that effect both the environment in which business must be conducted, as well as the character of business practices themselves.

THE STV MINOR

The STV Minor Program is open to students in any major. STV courses, with the exception of the STV 256/20556 core course, may be taken as electives on a space-available basis by students enrolled in any of the four undergraduate Colleges.

Admission to the Minor: Interested students are encouraged to elect the STV Minor in their sophomore year, though later enrollment is possible for those with some flexibility in their schedules. The Minor is selected after a consultation appointment with the Associate Director of the STV program, and appoinments may be made in 309 O’Shaughnessy. Students are urged to take the STV 256/20556 core course as soon as possible, although this may not always be possible.

Program Requirements: A Minor consists of five STV courses (15 semester hours). One of these must be STV 256/20556, "Science, Technology, and Society," which is taught each fall semester. This need not be a student’s first STV course but it should ideally be taken in the first year of the Program.

Students must also satisfy a distribution requirement by completing one course in each of three areas.

Cluster 1 (one course):
Human Dimensions of Science &Technology  (course numbers: xx1xx)

Cluster 2 (one course):
Science, Technology, & Ethics  (course numbers: xx2xx)

Cluster 3 (one course):
Science, Technology, & Public Policy (course numbers: xx3xx)

The additional course required to complete the Minor may be selected from any of the Clusters or from the list of optional electives offered each year.  (Elective courses in STV are numbered xx4xx.)

To receive Minor credit an STV course must be completed with a grade of "C" or better. Completion of the STV Minor will be certified on a student’s final University transcript.