The STSS Interdisciplinary Group was recognized by the UW Graduate School in March 2012, and the Certificate was approved by the Graduate School and the Board of Regents in May 2014. Its official launch was Fall 2015.
The primary goal of STSS, as a domain of scholarship, is to understand the jointly intellectual, material, and social enterprises of science and technology in all their complexity. Nothing could be more urgent or more consequential at this juncture!
The interdisciplinary community of scholars engaged in STSS at UW share an inclusive vision of the field; they seek to understand how natural and social knowledge of the world is produced and authorized, how it evolves and is inflected by the contexts of its production and use, and what its normative implications are. They draw on the resources of a wide range of disciplines, including the cognate fields of history and philosophy of science, social and cultural studies of science and technology, and interdisciplinary studies of ethics, equity, and policy issues in the STEM fields.
The Certificate offers graduate students an opportunity to pursue a richly interdisciplinary program of STSS study. Its core faculty, drawn from across campus, jointly teach an introductory core course, provide Certificate students one-on-one advising, and oversee a portfolio capstone experience.