Essay
The lessons I learned about the ethics of science, and what can happen if those ethics are twisted or absent altogether, will definitely impact how I view and approach science in the future; it has made me aware that understanding how science is conducted is just as important as what is being discovered. Understanding the impacts of science without ethical boundaries has made more conscientious about the decisions that I will make and the impact that bad science can have on myself and others. I notice now when I read the news, I pick up on logical fallacies and false information when it is present. Things that normally would have escaped my notice or would have appeared to be sound arguments are things that I can see are actually unsound arguments supporting points of view that are not logical and can only be supported using illogical arguments. Understanding how logical fallacies are used and how to recognize them has made them more visible, which has allowed me to better assess what sources are good sources.
I took the SGC supporting courses GEOG123 and BIOE120. The geology course focused on the impact humans have on their environment and how humans can make efforts to mitigate and adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. The bioengineering course focused on thinking about biology from an engineering perpsective, and using good design processes and experimentation to get the most out of a biological system. In both of these courses I used the methods of spotting logical fallacies to weed out bad sources of information and conventions of the hypothetico-deductive method to think of problems from a more approachable standpoint, which made tackling those problems easier.
I am a commuter student, so I was never actually part of the living-learning community as I did not live in the dorms for financial reasons. Commuting meant being separate from the students who lived in the dorms, particularly as I live an hour away from the university; it meant to having access to all of the on-campus services for tutoring and student help because being on campus late was impractical.
Living so far away from campus and thus being isolated from many campus activities meant that I did not really have a chance to go on feild trips or participate in the larger Scholars community beyond the weekly Colloquium discussions.
I took classes in high school like AP Language and Composition and AP Environmental Science that focusses on many of the same core topics that Science and Global Change does; therefore, much of the content I was exposed to in Scholars was an expansion of content I had already learned and did not challange any the beliefs I had prior to entering college. What Scholars did instead was ask me to think more in-depthly about the content I was learning, and to reflect on the subject matter from a multi-diciplinary approach rather than seeing a topic as existing on its own with no impact on other areas of study.
Learning about science and the causes and consequences of global climate change has made me more aware of those issues, and more aware of how my actions and habits contribute to them. I learned better ways to aproach problems and better ways to approach solutions, and I will definitely carry those things with me for the rest of my time in college and whatever comes after.