The STSS Graduate Certificate Program is designed to serve graduate students in the humanities, social sciences, and in STEM programs (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) in complementary ways.
If you are a student in the humanities and social sciences, our goal is to provide access to interdisciplinary STSS research that will help you situate your disciplinary interests in science and technology in a broader interdisciplinary context.
If you are a STEM student, the STSS Graduate Certificate offers an opportunity to systematically explore questions about research ethics and science policy, and the history, social context, and philosophy of the research traditions in which you work.
For students in both constituencies, the STSS Graduate Certificate will make visible the interdisciplinary training many of you are already seeking out informally.
The benefits of this include:
- For social science and humanities students: access to the growing number of faculty positions that require interdisciplinary STSS expertise;
- For STEM students: demonstration of research ethics training and expertise relevant not only for prospective STEM practitioners who must address normative issues pro-actively, but also for STEM graduates who seek positions as science and technology policy analysts, managers, and advisors;
- For all students: given the enormous and growing importance of science and technology in the contemporary world, STSS training provides key resources for addressing the challenges posed by scientific and technological innovation and cultivating informed citizenship.
The central learning goals of the STSS Graduate Certificate Program are:
- To develop a critical, historically informed understanding of the STEM fields in social context;
- To build robust content knowledge of relevant STSS research beyond one’s disciplinary program and an appreciation of what different disciplinary research methodologies can contribute to studies of science and technology;
- To integrate STSS concepts and methods with the core ideas of one’s home discipline;
- To cultivate a sophisticated understanding of research ethics, policy, and equity issues in the sciences and sharpen the critical reasoning skills necessary to navigate normative issues as they arise in practice;
- To develop the ability to successfully navigate a world where problems will increasingly demand a detailed knowledge of the interaction of science, technology, and society.
The STSS Graduate Certificate Program has welcomed ten cohorts of students and congratulates the 16 graduates who completed the program. We now have a total of 21 graduate students enrolled in the program from 14 departments, across three colleges. Thirty-two faculty members participate in the STSS Network, from 19 departments across all three campuses. This is truly an interdisciplinary endeavor!