Help Wes discover the scientist within

Artist, writer and protester are all words that come to mind when describing Wesleyan students; scientist is rarely among them. Yet the recent donation of a gene sequencer by biotechnology company Celera Genomics and the expansive list of publications produced by faculty and students in the science departments indicate the established, and growing, presence of science at the University.

Still, the science departments, and the research they produce, are often overlooked. For many students, the only exposure they have to science is in fulfilling their NSM Gen-Ed requirements by taking introductory-level courses that they often feel are a waste of time. Science should be recognized as one of the University’s strengths, especially given the amount of money and technology invested in these departments. Students and faculty should be proud to call themselves a part of it; the admissions office should sell this aspect of the school to prospective students; and alumni should be supportive of it. Wesleyan was one of only three schools to receive gene sequencers from Celera, and undergraduates have access to the machine, an opportunity absent at many other schools.

Departments should also look into offering more in-depth and challenging classes for non-science majors. Science majors have a wide-range of options for humanities and social science classes, but often non-science majors have to struggle to get into science courses. Furthermore, the classes offered to non-science majors are not as interesting or demanding as those available to majors. In particular, the Chemistry and Physics departments do not have many options for non-majors who are interested in those fields.

Creating more of these classes and increasing the visibility of the sciences will further promote these departments and make them more accessible to the whole community. The sciences are as much a part of a liberal arts degree as humanities or the social sciences, and we should make scientist another word we quickly associate with Wesleyan students.