Exploring Science in the Studio: NSF-Funded Initiatives to Increase Scientific Literacy in Undergraduate Art and Design Students

Abstract:

The project Exploring Science in the Studio at California College of the Arts (CCA), one of the oldest and most influential art and design schools in the country, pursues ways to enable undergraduate students to become scientifically literate problem-solvers in a variety of careers and to give content and context to their creative practices. The two main branches of this National Science Foundation-funded project are a series of courses called Science in the Studio (SitS) and the design of the Mobile Units for Science Exploration (MUSE) system, which allow instructors to bring science equipment directly into the studios. Ongoing since 2010, each fall semester a series of interdisciplinary SitS courses are offered in the college’s principal areas of study (architecture, design, fine arts, humanities and sciences, and diversity studies) thematically linked by Earth and environmental science topics such as water, waste, and sustainability. Each course receives funding to embed guest scientists from other colleges and universities, industry, or agriculture directly into the studio courses. These scientists worked in tandem with the studio faculty and gave lectures, led field trips, conducted studio visits, and advised the students' creative endeavors, culminating in an annual SitS exhibition of student work.

The MUSE system, of fillable carts and a storage and display unit, was designed by undergraduate students in a Furniture studio who explored, experimented, and researched various ways science materials and equipment are stored, collected, and displayed, for use in the current and future science and studio curricula at CCA. Sustainable practices and "smart design" underpinned all of the work completed in the studio. The materials selected for the new Science Collection at CCA include environmental monitoring equipment and test kits, a weather station, a stream table, a rock and fossil collection, and a vertebrate skull collection. The SitS courses and MUSE system provide two new, easily transferable models for scientific inquiry for other similarly sized colleges of art and design. Additionally, the MUSE provide a replicable model for bringing science instructional materials and equipment directly into classrooms at colleges that do not have stand-alone science departments or facilities.