Perspectives on the Liberal Arts and Sciences: Course Proposal Narrative
General Education Advisory Committee 
Queens College, City University of New York
Course Title: Physics and the Future
Primary Contact Name and Email: Azriel Genack, genack@qc.edu
Date course was approved by department: November 23, 2009
Justification
Please describe how the course will address criteria for Perspectives on the Liberal Arts and Sciences courses. 
Be sure to include an explanation of the course’s specific learning goals for students to make a connection between these and the general criteria for Perspectives courses.

The course will acquaint students with the fundamental ideas and ways of thinking that will enable them to understand and make informed judgments regarding key technical issues related to the sustainability and wellbeing of our advanced technical society. The historical record and projections for the future regarding available resources and environmental impact of their utilization will be discussed. The development and meaning of physical concepts that have laid the technological basis of modern society and must also provide the solutions of problems that that emerge as a result of the technological implementation of these ideas will be described. Fundamental physical principles that will be discussed include energy, atoms, nuclei, heat, gravity, temperature, efficiency of the internal combustion engine and solar cells, chemical bonds, equivalence of mass and energy, electromagnetic and nuclear radiation, quantum mechanics and nanostructures. The presentation of these topics will emphasize the broad physical principles at work and will be at a level accessible to liberal arts students who have never had a physics course. Technological implications of scientific principles will be explored. The interpretation of primary data and evidence regarding changes over time in resource availability and in the environment will be examined. National and regional cultural and political contexts in which the issues raised will be addressed will be considered as will be the approaches to a viable global consensus on the way forward. Thus, students will develop qualitative and quantitative reasoning based on physical principles.  and will explore how these issues will shape the political decisions in different nations and globally. Students will gain experience in the use of the web to examine the nature of various problems and the promise of new technologies, and to assess and track efforts to address these issues. 

The area of Knowledge and Inquiry of this course is Natural Science. The course will present the issues and choices in different contexts including those of the industrial nations in North America and Europe, the rapidly industrializing nations in Asia and South America, nations with economies closely tied to natural resources, and underdeveloped nations. The course will address the extended requirement of Abstract and Quantitative Reasoning. The course will use primary data to reveal the existence and importance of change over time, to project future changes, and to guide political decisions.

Criteria Checklist
Please be sure that your justification addresses all three criteria 1-3, below.  For criteria 4-8, please check all that apply and discuss these in your justification.

A Perspectives course must:

1. Be designed to introduce students to how a particular discipline creates knowledge and understanding.
2. Position the discipline(s) within the liberal arts and the larger society.
3. Address the goals defined for the particular Area(s) of Knowledge the course is designed to fulfill.

In addition, a Perspectives course will, where appropriate to its discipline(s) and subject matter:

4. Be global or comparative in approach.
5. Consider diversity and the nature and construction of forms of difference.
6. Engage students in active inquiry.
7. Reveal the existence and importance of change over time.
8. Use primary documents and materials.

Course Materials, Assignments, and Activities
Please provide an annotated list of course readings and descriptions of major assignments or exams for the course, as well as distinctive student activities that will engage students in working toward the course goals discussed in the course description and/or justification.
Please include the author and title for each reading or text, along with a short description providing information about how the reading will contribute to course goals.

The required text for the course will be Physics for Future Presidents -- the Textbook, Richard A. Muller (McGraw Hill, 2009). This text provides much of the fundamental physical ideas that will be developed in the course. 

Because the subject is dynamic, it is important that assignments include newly published material. Such material will include articles in newspapers and news and science magazines, such as The New York Times, The Economist, Scientific American, Popular Science and Discover. There will be five short writing assignments each term in which students will discuss articles from the above sources or from similar sources. Similarly readings from additional books will also need to be current. In the first year, students will be assigned readings from Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak, Kenneth S. Deffeyes (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005). This will give students a view of the energy crisis and an overview of alternative energy sources. 
In addition, to five short essays mentioned above, there will be a longer capstone essay, in which students will present their view a central issue of the course of their choosing. In this essay, students will be expected to present the physical issues and global dimensions of the problem. They will be asked to indicate the interrelatedness of various topics in making their assessment.

Students will also be assigned readings of selected portions of recent evaluations by key national and international panels and by the Department of Energy. 

Students will participate in an individual and a group project. In the individual project, students will report on some aspect of the course that is of particular interest to them and to present this work to the class in a PowerPoint presentation. Students will consult with the instructor as they are choosing a topic. The group project will involve 2 or 3 students who will examine the workings of an organization actively involved in addressing the issues raised in the course. Examples are the Department of Energy, a private corporation or a university research laboratory. A close examination of the Department of Energy is of particular interest in the first year of the course. The Department is headed by Steven Chu, a Noble laureate in physics, who has expressed the desire to model the department’s approach to the energy crisis upon the Manhattan Project. In this project, the students could evaluate the rationale of a number of new thrusts that have been proposed, the success of the Department in obtaining funding for various efforts, and the success of the efforts that have been launched. 

Since the solutions to the problems raised in this course depends upon achieving consensus on complex issues and committed informed leadership, discussion in lecture and recitation are crucial. Student will be expected to have read the text or assigned reading before class and be prepared to participate in discussions and to take occasional quizzes at the start of class.

The quizzes and exams will be short essays and multiple choice questions. Some of the questions will include a set of facts that the students will be asked to assess or to use to reach a conclusion.

The course will meet for 3 hours of lectures and 1 hour of recitation each week and will be assigned 4 credits. Students will be expected to participate in discussion in all class meetings. The solution to model problems and homework assignments will be discussed in recitation classes with a maximum of students. Broader issues will also be discussed in recitation and all students will be strongly encouraged to participate in these discussions. 

Assessment
Perspectives courses must be recertified every five years, and we are seeking ideas for how to best carry out this assessment.  What forms of evidence that the course is meeting its goals as a Perspectives course would be appropriate to collect for this course during the next five years?  How would you prefer assessment to be conducted?  How might evidence of effective teaching and student learning be collected and evaluated?

A questionnaire at the end of the term will ask students a series of questions such as:
(1) Do they understand key physical principles presented?
(2) Do the students feel they understand the problems faced and various approaches to solutions? 
(3) Did the students appreciate the political context in which solutions will be proposed and implemented?
(4) Did the lecture help students appreciate technical issues and related policy issues?
(5) Did the recitation help students appreciate technical issues and related policy issues?
(6) Did the reading assignments help students appreciate technical issues and related policy issues? 
(7) Did the writing assignments help students better able to analyze technical issues and related policy issues?
(8) Are students motivated by the course to stay informed about science and technology?

Samples of the first and last essays will be available for review.
The last essay in the course will ask students to carry out an assessment of an issue of their choosing form among the central issues of the course. The state of knowledge and good judgment with which students treat a complex and controversial topic and their appreciation for the interrelatedness of issues within the course will be a measure of the success of the course. 
Final exams will be available for inspection.

Administrations
What process will your department develop to oversee this course, sugget and approve changes, and conduct assessment?  Who will be in charge of this process?  Also indicate whether the course will be primarily taught by full-time or adjunct faculty, or by a combination of the two types of instructor.

A faculty member will be designated by the Chair to evaluate the course based on the assessment materials outlined above.

In the first term the course will be taught by Professor Genack. In subsequent terms, depending upon enrollment in the course, the recitations will be taught by both the lecturer and a combination of full-time and adjunct faculty. We anticipate that the course will be offered each semester.