The CNS-ASU Program

Education


CNS-ASU is involved in extensive formal and informal educational activities. Many of these activities are tightly integrated with research and outreach activities, and most maintain as their central focus the building of broader societal capacity for anticipatory governance. They include:

Undergraduate Education and Training

Courses: CNS-ASU has created new undergraduate courses, including:

  • A Learning Community on Nanotechnology in Society
  • Justice and the Future
  • Human Enhancement and Democracy
  • Perspectives on Nanotechnology

CNS-ASU also supports the undergraduate design course, InnovationSpace, and has integrated nano-in-society themes into such courses as "Science and Democracy" and "Technology and Society."

Honors Theses: Numerous undergraduates have written honors theses with CNS faculty. Topics have included religion and nanotechnology, and the attitudes of persons with visual impairments toward nano-enabled therapies and enhancements for vision. Undergraduates - mostly from ASU's W.P. Carey School of Business - also complete honors theses in conjunction with their InnovationSpace coursework. One student won a Fulbright Scholarship to study "Nanotechnology in Mexico: Scenarios, Outcomes, and Democratized Science Policy."

Internships: CNS-ASU trains undergraduate interns, who work on research or other projects in collaboration with CNS-ASU faculty.

Graduate Education and Training

Core Research: Graduate students involved in CNS-ASU's core research activities - from across the social sciences and humanities disciplines - have drawn on CNS-ASU research to develop their theses. In any given year, CNS-ASU may be training as many as two dozen graduate students across its collaborating universities.

ASU NSE Researchers: For ASU nanoscale science and engineering (NSE) graduate researchers, CNS-ASU created the CNS-Biodesign Fellows program, in which CNS pays one-third of their support. These students then participate in CNS-related curricular and co-curricular activities and participate in the PhD+ Program, adding societal implications material to their doctoral research. We have graduated two PhD+ students to-date and attracted others to CNS beyond the fellows program.

Washington, D.C. Seminar: CNS-ASU conducts an intensive two-week immersion seminar in Washington, D.C. "Science Outside the Lab: A Policy Dis-Orientation" offers graduate students a chance to leave the lab and explore the relationships among science, policy and societal outcomes. Students meet government officials, lobbyists, staffers, regulators, journalists, academics, museum curators, and others who fund, regulate, shape, critique and study science. They engage in hands-on policy learning through tours and exercises, such as a mock congressional hearing in a congressional hearing room, chaired by a former congressional committee staffer and with many staff in attendance.

ASU Graduate Courses: In association with the Ethics in Science and Engineering Education (EESE) grant, CNS-ASU participates in the new Biological Design Graduate Program's core course, "Fundamentals of Biological Design." The nine-credit course, which meets for 15 hours a week, introduces the students to the technical aspects of directed evolution, synthetic biology, and immunology among other topics. Each class had fully integrated discussions of the social, ethical or political aspects of the research discussed there.

CNS-ASU also has developed a partnership with a new Professional Master of Science degree program in nano-science, led by ASU's departments of physics and chemistry, by offering a required 3-credit graduate course in the societal aspects of nanotechnology.

For those students in traditional departments and schools, as well as those in interdisciplinary programs, CNS-ASU has established six graduate courses at ASU:

  • "Science Policy for Scientists and Engineers" is a 1-credit seminar for nano-scientists and engineers to explore questions and issues of science and technology policy in society that are relevant to their own research. The class produces cart demonstrations designed to educate the public on the technical aspects and social implications of nanotechnology. The students have presented these to the public at the Tempe Festival for the Arts and at the Arizona Science Center.
  • "Energy" is a 1-credit seminar for Ph.D. students in chemistry that explores the dynamic interplay between scientific research, technological innovation, policy development and cultural change surrounding large-scale energy system change in the 21st century.
  • "Governing Emerging Technologies" explores CNS-ASU's core concept of anticipatory governance and synthesizes many CNS-ASU's findings. Students in the course are tightly integrated into CNS-ASU's activities through workshops and conferences.
  • "Nanotechnology, the Brain and the Future" is a variable-credit course offered as part of CNS-ASU's Thematic Research Cluster project - TRC 2 End-to-End Assessment (E2E). Students and faculty used it to prepare research projects for E2E and the CNS All-Hands meeting.
  • "Science, Technology & Societal Outcomes" explores the basic relationships among science and its societal aspects.
  • "Nanotechnology, Law and Policy" is taught in the Sandra Day O'Connor School of Law and involves significant participation by CNS-ASU faculty.

CNS-ASU also has been an integral part of the development of a new doctoral program at ASU, Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology (HSD), which admitted its first class in August 2008.

Post-Doctoral Training

CNS-ASU contributes to the next generation of scholarship and education by training post-doctoral associates. At any given time, there are three or four post-doctoral associates working with CNS-ASU across its collaborating universities. These post-docs are working on their own research agendas as well as learning to conduct research in the kind of large, interdisciplinary teams that are central to CNS-ASU.

K-12 Education

CNS-ASU developed a first-of-its-kind graduate course in nano-in-society for in-service K-12 teachers, providing them with research experiences and helping them develop curricular materials for their own classrooms on societal aspects of nanotechnologies. CNS-ASU personnel also have consulted with teachers about the development of curricular materials and visited classrooms. One teacher motivated by CNS-ASU's assistance, for example, had her students choose specific technologies, analyze their social, political and cultural aspects, and then promote a policy position through an oral presentation to their class and a letter to a congressional representative. CNS-ASU has also has arranged for in-service teachers to receive continuing education credit for its monthly Science Café, a public program held in conjunction with the Arizona Science Center.

Informal Science Education & The Public

CNS-ASU sponsors Science Café, a monthly public event during the academic year, at the Arizona Science Center. CNS-ASU has pioneered a new format in which two ASU experts - usually one from the natural sciences or engineering and one from the social sciences or humanities - begin the dialogue. The CNS-ASU Science Café is included on a Web site, created by WGBH Science Unit, all about science cafes throughout the country.

CNS-ASU has an important partnership with the Nanotechnology Informal Science Education Network (NISE Net) to incorporate research on the ethical and societal implications of nanotechnology into engaging museum programs and exhibits around the country.

Practitioner Training

CNS-ASU has developed and piloted training modules in the ethical and societal implications of nanotechnology for scientists and engineers working in user facilities at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT) and the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN).