Course Info

Objectives

Course Design

Grading

Required Texts

Readings

Writing Assignments

Final Project

This class is the first of its kind at Grinnell College: a semester-long MAP seminar. The idea of a MAP seminar is to bring together students working collaboratively on mentored advanced projects on a set of closely related topics. This seminar also seeks to increase the coherence of the students' liberal arts experience by providing an opportunity for interdisciplinary study applied to an issue of broad public interest. By participating in this seminar, students can begin to take part in one of the most interesting public discussions of our time: the discourse on how the enormous powers of biomedical technologies should best be used. An important objective of the liberal arts is to nurture active and informed citizens, and this seminar will contribute directly to that goal.

In keeping with the main objectives of the seminar, our emphasis throughout the semester will be on communication and collaboration across disciplinary boundaries. The team of instructors includes a biologist and a sociologist, and teams of students drawn from different majors will be given responsibility for much of the work in the seminar, including the final project.

Three teams of four to six members each will be selected corresponding to the three major topics of the course: the biotechnology of (1) genes and reproduction, (2) remolding of the body, and (3) development of pharmaceuticals. In the first half of the semester, we will devote roughly two weeks to each of these topics, and teams will share the responsibility for commenting on the readings, structuring class sessions, and leading discussions of their topic. In the second half of the semester, we will return to each of the major topics in more depth, and teams will take responsibility for selecting additional readings and for conducting class sessions, as well as for organizing and presenting public presentations or roundtable discussions about their topic.

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