History of the STS Program at Penn State

by Rustum Roy, Evan Pugh Professor Emeritus of the Solid State, Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, Professor of Geochemistry and former director of the STS Program at Penn State.

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The origin of Penn State's STS program is deep in Penn State's history and it is connected to the science-religion two cultures debate. Penn State--unknown to the vast majority of faculty and students--was a hot bed of avant garde churchmanship starting about 1910. It had sent more graduates mainly from the Ag School as missionaries to bring the gospel and the gospel of technology, especially to China. Under Frank Buchman, Penn State's YMCA secretary, it was the originating point of the "cell" group movement (from which derived the house church movement, the communist cell; self-criticism in cells; the Oxford Group movement; Alcoholics Anonymous; group therapy, 12 steps, etc.--but that's another story told in several books). One key issue in post-WW II academia was the relation of religion to "science" and secular learning. Because of the earlier tradition (see above), Penn State--unique among State universities which had weekly chapel and a choir (for 1 credit) was an appropriate place to raise it.

This was the background in the fifties during which the science and religion dialogue started seriously. By the sixties, Harold Schilling, Professor of Physics, became Dean of the Graduate School and Maxwell Goldberg became the first Professor of Humanities in Liberal Arts. Various symposia and seminars, etc., on science and religion were held at Penn State under Schilling's regular leadership. Roy was active in these. He then became chair of the National Council of Churches' first committee on Science, Technology and the Church in 1966. He was also the founding chair of the first interdisciplinary graduate degree program (under Schilling) in Solid State Technolgy in 1959 and the founding director of the first interdisciplinary research laboratory on campus, Materials Research Laboratory, in 1962.

When the student riots started in 1968, a few faculty had interminable "rap sessions" with students on the Old Main lawn, etc. I made the case to Fletcher Byrom (Chairman of the Koppers (Chemical) Company, chair of Penn State's Board of Trustees) who joined me at one of these, that it was clear the students had never integrated their religious or cultural values to the technological world in which they lived. He agreed. And there were no courses to help do that. He mentioned it to President Eric Walker. In 1969, I presented to the Senate the clear-cut need for All Penn State students to have some understanding of their sci-tech-world. I moved in the Senate that we require one three-credit course in this area. It passed! By 1970 we had to implement it and a small group of faculty gathered a few times in the Materials Research Laboratory to plan courses and possibly a kind of interdisciplinary undergraduate program. Present were a real interdisciplinary mixture of faculty: philosophers (Goldberg, Kockelmans, Steve Goldman), from English, A.O. Lewis (Associate Dean of Liberal Arts), D.Walden, Paul Todd (biophysics), G.Barsch (physics), R.Heinsohn (mechanical engineering), T.Vallance (Associate Dean in Human Development), etc. We drew up a plan to give a few courses and met with Provost Althouse (who was not supportive) and finally with President Walker who okayed the begtinning of a program and set up a committee with a chairman to run it (1971). The chairmanship rotated every two or three years using Vallance, Heinsohn, Lewis, and Roy, where it kind of got stuck for about 10 years! The faculty had arranged for bout a dozen courses to be offered. Each one was taught by at least two faculty, one from each of the two cultures, in the classroom at the same time.

By 1970, I had started to receive substantial research grants for the Public Understanding of Technology (not science). Penn State became the national focal point for this activity with prominent conferences, television shows, and teaching materials. It was all run out of the MRL.

Between 1975 and 1985, Penn State's STS also convened all kinds of avant garde conferences: Rober Rodale on Alternative Agriculture; Tom Szasz on Alternative Mental Health. We had many of the world's "STS" leaders visit, record television shows, etc.: Fritsz Schumacher, Carl Friedrich von Weizacker, Alvin Weinber, Mel Kranzberg, Governor Richard Lamm, etc.

By 1985 Penn State's STS program achieved the following:

• Created the first genuinely interdisciplinary undergraduate (not research-oriented) program in STS.
• Became the prime mover in creating the national "STS" field, giving it that name and making it stick--as an interdisciplinary field (low church is a misleading term). The distinctive feature of all such programs is that engineers and scientists are leading or fully involved in the leadership. (Cornell and Stanford and Stonybrook, the three other leaders, all share this feature.)

All these real (interdisciplinary) STS programs--distinguished form traditional "4S" programs, which are accurately called "science studies" programs--had an emphasis on undergraduate, introductory, high enrollment courses (at Stanford, Cornell, Stonybrook, etc.). Penn State very carefully developed the "STS200" model: multi-professor, 7-14/semester, which has been continually described, studied and refined for 15 years (see enclosures).

The basic concept was clear: Aim to have every Penn State student have one STS course in their career, i.e. 8,000 students/year. The CES system was very much involved. The tiny STS budget was focused only on this.

In addition to this general education focus, of course, various faculty under their departmental protocols did their "research" in STS-linked areas as part of their departmental appointment. It was clear the University was never going to pay for STS research and scholarship in 20 different fields.

I had substantial research money from NSF for STS education. Kockelmans had NEH money for science and religion studies, etc. Through the conferences it ran, the materials it produced, and its advocacy of STS at the national level, Penn State's STS program emerged as a national leader. In 1985, I told Provost Richardson that I had spent a quarter century building up Penn State's MRL to national leadership and maybe I should turn over that Directorship and try to do the same for STS. I said it would take 4-5 half-time faculty and 4-5 one-fifth time faculty--about three FTE. In 1985 Richardson agreed. I changed from Director of MRL to one-third time Director for STS. The program got much national visibility. Because of personal contacts, we attracted Ivan Illich and were able to get private funding for his entire group for several years. We became the founding headquarters for the National Association for Science, Technology, and Society (NASTS) with Carnegie Foundation money. Again this was made possible because we were so thoroughly networked nationwide. Throughout the first 20 years, Penn State's STS program had three characteristics: it was highly interdisciplinary; it was activist, not scholastic; and it was deeply involved in college and K-12 education in STS, not research in any sub-field.

Among the nation's STS programs, Penn State's was not only the prototype of the interdisciplinary activist program; it was the base for academic challenges to the sacred cows of the S/T establishment. Since it provided Illich and his team with its U.S. base, it was the headquarters for the scholarly critique of medicine, schooling, development, etc. Roy was designated by Newsweek as the leading contrarian among scientists because of his systematic and reasoned challenges to Big Science (such as the supercollider) and Establishment Science (peer review, big equipment). While essentially in all these challenges Illich and Roy have been proven by history to be prescient, it has not increased our popularity among some agencies and academic groups.

The secret to the entire low-cost operation was one fact-STS ran as a totally collegial, friendly cooperative among faculty. The obvious proof of the success of this mode of friendly interaction was the two decades of faculty volunteering their time, together with enthusiastic (though underpaid) fixed-term faculty, and the deep involvement of CES. The total University budget until 1990 was less than two senior faculty salaries.