STEM at Cal State East Bay: A conversation with Dean Kathleen Rountree of CLASS
- October 4, 2010
When I began this series of columns in the spring about CSUEB’s STEM education vision — each involving a discussion with one of our college deans, and most recently our university’s librarian —there was a great deal of uncertainty in the university community about what it meant to become a “STEM university.” Through these conversations, I have shared with you a number of different perspectives, each offering additional insights into why STEM education is so critical to the University’s future and how it will transform the Cal State East Bay educational experience.
This month, I had the opportunity to further extend this series of conversations to include our new interim dean of the College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences, Kathleen Rountree. She came to CSUEB in August from Ithaca College, with a background in music and fine arts as well as university administration. We are very pleased to have her join the university, and welcome her broad, progressive view of what constitutes a liberal education.
Although she is new to Cal State East Bay, Dean Rountree not only has a clear understanding of the University’s STEM education vision, but she also is excited about how this initiative relates to the academic mission of CLASS. “There is a role for every academic department at CSUEB and in CLASS to play in our future as a STEM university,” she said in our recent conversation. “Every department benefits from the recognition that there are deep systemic linkages among all disciplines, and they are all required to educate the whole person.”
CLASS disciplines are STEM disciplines
Since we began this initiative, I’ve heard concerns that increasing our focus on math and science would be exclusionary. Dean Rountree and I agreed that this is not the case. Rather, what we are calling for is an extension of academic programming through and around the intersections of science and technology — in every college, CLASS included.
Dean Rountree explained it this way: “When I think of ‘STEM disciplines,’ it seems to me that the disciplines and courses we offer in CLASS fall into four clusters related to STEM education. First, those that are heavily science-based, as seen in several of our professional programs. Second, those that are STEM-intense, reliant on technology or statistically heavy, such as communication, the social sciences and in some cases the arts and humanities. Third, those that play critical roles in training professionals who will support our region’s need for safe and healthy families and communities. And fourth, there’s the role CLASS plays in the instruction of non-majors and general education.”
The idea that science does not exist outside the College of Science and does not relate to non-science fields is an imaginary separation, borne out of collegiate tradition. Programs in the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, for example, have a heavy component of biology and anatomy. Anyone who thinks CLASS is not directly at the heart of CSUEB’s STEM education initiative is overlooking several core fields that are incredibly important to a 21st century education — fields like anthropology, geography and environmental studies, human development and sociology.
Students in social sciences study many of the same disciplines, but from different angles. “Any time you are talking about the environment, for example, you are dealing with biology and chemistry,” Dean Rountree said. “When you mention human development, biology, the human brain and anatomy come into play.”
Beyond the social sciences, many of the other programs offered in CLASS are, as Dean Rountree stated, increasingly “STEM-intense.” Dean Rountree mentioned Criminal Justice as an example of field deeply affected by technology. “Criminal justice has been revolutionized in the past 20 years, and will be revolutionized again tomorrow, as technology is developed in forensics, cybersecurity and other areas,” she said. “It will continue to be a rapidly-changing field.”
Along with all of the other CLASS programs, even core liberal arts fields such as music, art, theatre and communication are being redefined by technology, as artists and media specialists utilize new capacities and react to changing demands in their professions. Conversely, fields such as statistics and mathematics, though not housed within CLASS, are fundamental to the understanding of academic fields within CLASS — not only the social sciences, but also history, political science and public administration.
CLASS and community
As I’ve discussed a number of times in my columns, as an urban-serving university, CSUEB has a responsibility for regional workforce development, economic vibrancy and healthy communities. Consequently, I was particularly interested in exploring the third intersection of STEM and CLASS that Dean Rountree mentioned — the role of students, faculty and graduates of CLASS in creating healthy communities and delivering on this stewardship mission.
Our STEM education plan, as you know, has three components: graduating STEM-ready professionals, increasing the quality and quantity of teachers of STEM disciplines in K-12 grades, and partnering with industry and community groups to build a pipeline of students prepared to study STEM at a college level.
We’ve talked with Dean Carolyn Nelson of CEAS about the role of teachers, but Dean Rountree pointed out that we must include family and community to truly effect change in the pipeline. “To accomplish what I hope we will in STEM education, we need to have healthy communities, families, and environments,” she said. “That means that the University — and all of its colleges, programs, as well as its partners in business, industry, government and education — must work together on programs and policies that support underrepresented families and communities and encourage new awareness and attitudes about success, college and STEM education.”
As we discussed this further, I was impressed by Dean Rountree’s vision for an expanded role for CLASS, its programs, faculty, students — and most certainly its graduates — in helping the University step up to a larger role in outreach and community service. The college’s social work programs are just one example she cited to illustrate how CLASS can help foster healthier communities and stronger families — essential ingredients in building a strong pipeline of students for STEM education as well as higher education overall.
“Social work and social services are so important in helping to overcome negative attitudes and environmental effects that keep students from going to college,” Dean Rountree added. She went on to explain that although students often get the wrong message from society, our outreach efforts can send new messages about who “can” or “cannot” succeed in science and math, or earn a college degree in any field. This is especially important to reach underrepresented groups, like girls and minority students, who need not just models but also greater encouragement. With support from revitalized school programs joining support at home, these students will, as Dean Rountree put it, become “STEM students of tomorrow.”
Citizenship and critical skill development
The fourth element Dean Rountree and I discussed was the role CLASS plays in ensuring all CSUEB students receive the type and quality of well-rounded college education that is required for success in the 21st century workforce.
Students in all fields rely on CLASS to meet their general education requirements —not necessarily true for other colleges. Though most of our students do take classes in more than one college, CLASS has a hand in the education of every single CSUEB student and therefore can influence the development of key skills.
All students — whether they major in core STEM disciplines or not — will need to learn to work in teams and communicate effectively, orally and in writing. Employing the lessons of history and the best thoughts of great philosophers, they must be able to comprehend and analyze complex information presented in myriad ways, often seeking solutions to problems that will defy simple, clear answers. And in every way, students must be prepared to succeed and thrive in the rich cultural and ethnic diversity that characterizes our society. These skills are in great demand, as both Dean Rountree and I have heard from the region’s employers. The general education requirements in language and culture, philosophy, history and art provide the foundation for a STEM education just as algebra, biology and advanced sciences do.
“Consider the non-major student in CLASS, and what they gain from their studies in English, history, communications, for example,” said Dean Rountree. “It helps equip them with the perspective and critical thinking skills they’ll need for personal and professional success, as citizens and community members — skills required to interpret information accurately and communicate their ideas clearly and efficiently.”
Responsible citizenship is also an essential part of our university’s mission and values; Dean Leung of the College of Science and I also mentioned this in our conversation about STEM education in the spring. But in addition to technological fluency, which Dean Leung and I agreed is essential for informed citizenship, it’s clear that skills such as multicultural awareness, communications competency, critical thinking skills, and historical perspective are also required to assess information and make policy and electoral choices effectively.
These skills and abilities will be especially critical as our economy and society become increasingly globalized and technological. We do know that as we prepare our graduates to make meaningful contributions as part of the next-generation workforce, we are also preparing them for careers that will evolve and change repeatedly over their lifetimes. As Dean Rountree noted, “We wouldn’t have thought 20 years ago about many of the challenges we have today,” she said. “It’s hard to know what we will be challenged with 20 years from now.”
Facts and figures alone cannot prepare them for the unknown. It will be an understanding of ethics, philosophy and history that allows students to adapt, laying the groundwork for lifelong learning.
Creativity and context
At one point in our talk, Dean Rountree recalled struggling with a biology course when she was an undergraduate herself, and then contrasted that class to a later science course on the physics of music. “It wasn’t easier, but it was so much more interesting, because we had a context for the information that was exciting to us,” she said.
This reminded me that it was the artes liberales — the trivium and quadrivium, which I’ve discussed often — that were the traditional foundation of Western education. (They were called “liberales” because they were considered essential for the education of a free person in classical antiquity.) These brought depth, breadth, scope and integration with what we would today consider “hard” technical and non-technical disciples; together they provided a robust foundation for the development of rational inquiry, thinking, and intellectual maturity. The dean and I agreed that the further modern Western education has moved from these roots, the less context it has for many students, and therefore the more compartmentalized — and less effective — it has become.
What our STEM education initiative will enable us to do is change how we teach undergraduate general education to recover that context in a way that will engage more students more deeply, better preparing them for the workforce and world of tomorrow. I believe this university is uniquely positioned to lead the way in reinventing education to encourage the type of exploration and interdisciplinary teaching and learning that has been lost over the centuries, much to the detriment of so many students and to the workforce.
Dean Rountree said: “Rather than think of STEM in silos, we need to teach all our disciplines more creatively, using all of the tools and disciplines we have as part of our academic offering. In this way, science becomes not only a possible focus for a traditional major, but an essential, relevant and accessible tool for our entire academic community and society.”
With its offerings ranging from fine arts to social sciences, CLASS provides a model for this broad-based, interdisciplinary approach to learning. Like all of our colleges, it has much to offer in reinventing STEM education — and also much to gain from the efforts.
In closing, I want to thank to Dean Rountree for joining me in this series of conversations with each of our college deans about the University’s STEM vision. Next month, Provost James Houpis and I will discuss the synthesis of all of these views on STEM education and see how they relate to the development of a cohesive plan for the student experience at Cal State East Bay tomorrow.
President Qayoumi invites and welcomes your comments. Submissions are not published on the news site but are sent directly to, and read by, the president.