Science and Global Change has helped in my understanding of global change primarily because I initially did not have any concept other than a basic definition of what global change meant. Additionally, this program has forced me to critically think about my major and where or how to apply the solutions I learned in other courses I have taken. If I were not in the Scholars program, I would have assumed that any change to the globe was automatically bad. That is not true, simply we have now started excessive global warming which is too “artificial” of a change and the Earth cannot keep up since society keeps using Earth’s resources. This is a concerning issue given that we created this crisis, have no way to fix it, and it concerns our only habitat.
Although my major is not heavily related to the environment, Fire Protection Engineering will still deal with the design and safety of all the inventions or innovations created to combat climate change. In the Science and Global Change colloquium series the set of materials that enhanced my approach to my major of the Search for Solutions project. The Search for Solutions project provided insight into the various places where my major could be applied. All the solutions arguably had a large aspect that was engineering, regarding design, building, or analysis. With Fire Protection Engineering, I would not necessarily be designing the systems themselves that attempt to solve some issue of climate. However, all those systems have the possibility of catching fire or spreading it. This may harm people and places. As a result, I was posed to think more deeply about solutions to ensure the safety of new designs. A wonderful example of this is high-rise buildings constructed out of wood that considered “ecologically friendly” because they use a renewable resource, wood. New trees can be planted to replace the old ones as well as assisting in diminishing the carbon monoxide in the atmosphere. However, wood cause many safety issues from the perspective of fire safety. Wood is highly flammable and is spreading fire. Hence, an entire high-rise building being constructed out of this poses many new challenges to the Fire Resistance Ratings of wood or how many and different fire suppression systems will need to be placed around the building.
A large portion of Science and Global Change was spent properly and accurately defining the hypothetico-deductive method of science to create a factual understanding of how reliable science and evidence was found. Luckily, knowing this method had become very useful in other aspects of my life and classes. The most prominent one being Physics 261. This is a lab course that is paired with the Physics 260 course. Due to the nature of the course, we would complete an experiment to prove a previously made hypothesis. From my knowledge of Science and Global Change I was able to know the steps to follow to complete my lab assignments in an accurate way. Additionally, this method was used in many other projects completed in my engineering courses. Although, the hypothesis proven was often not an unknown but rather an issue that had to be fixed. Nevertheless, the hypothetico-deductive method was useful because I followed a scientific method to find a solution to the given problem.
The Science and Global Change Program gave students the opportunity to take supporting course work that would both further the understanding of global change while also advancing our knowledge of our own majors. One of these courses I already briefly mentioned before, Physics 261, which is a lab course. This class helped me further comprehend how research would be completed in a professional workspace. I would be using the scientific method to carry out experiments that would further my understanding of physics. Of course, understanding physics is crucial to understanding other engineering courses as well as the design and implementation of new structures. Additionally, because it was research based, I saw how labs were created, which made me familiar to new apparatuses I could use if I even need to design an experiment for Fire Protection Engineering. Another course that applied to my major and Science and Global change was Chemistry 135. As one would imagine there is a lot of chemistry happening when things burn. As a result, that basic chemistry knowledge is crucial to understanding how something will burn or react based on its chemical properties. In terms of Science and Global Change, in chemistry 135 we learned a lot about the natural aspects of chemistry and where it appeared in nature. This would often explain many of the phenomena that we learned about during the Science and Global Change colloquium.
The Science and Global Change Program is at its core a living-learning community; because of this I was able to interact with other Science and Global Change students with ease. The programs had various assignments that varied in structure and implementation. Due to the global change focus of the program the classes, projects, and homework’s led to intellectual discussions of climate change, and how it affects the world. The living-learning community provided proximity to people who understood the global change topic to have and informed academic discussion with peers creating an open and safe environment for a conversation to be prompted at any time.
Due to the interactive nature of this program and the close contact to students it was easy and exciting to get more involved in the program and within colloquium. The most interactive space was during group projects completed in class. This gave students a perfect opportunity to delve deeper into the course material and have academic discussions with their peers. A wonderful example of this is when we worked on the in-class project of being assigned a country and determining the budget for various research projects. Not only did we work in groups for this project, but groups would then collaborate to benefit their subsequent countries. In this manner everyone was able to collaborate on something communally created.
The living-learning community brough me into close contact with people who quite naturally thought differently than I did. As a result, I had to think more deeply about subjects I would have previously dismissed. Although this course is not centered on politics, it is very much a current issue. And as I mentioned previously my peers allowed for open discussion of global change. These issues are often tied to politics and hence the conversation would often shift into political beliefs. These conversations were always civil and although they were not directly related to global change did force me to critically think about previous beliefs.
The Scholar’s experience has greatly impacted my life and will continue to inform my future as an engineer. I believe the most impactful thing I will take away from Scholars is the hypothetico-deductive method. This method will be crucial when conducting any future research I do, whether that be while I pursue higher education or in the workforce conducting research.
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