School of Engineering and Applied Science: Minor Programs
In conjunction with the History Department, the Engineering & Society Department offers a minor in the history of technology and science. Open to all undergraduates, this minor provides students with an opportunity to become familiar with humanistic perspectives of technology and science. For the engineering student, the minor offers an occasion for placing his or her professional education in a larger social and intellectual context; likewise, it provides the liberal arts student with a better understanding of science and technology as key components in human culture.
To qualify to earn the minor, the student must complete 18 credit hours of qualifying courses, all with a grade of C or better.
It is the student’s responsibility to determine which classes are likely to qualify as classes in the history of science or technology, and to refer them to a faculty member in the Department of Engineering and Society for approval as qualifying courses. The faculty member then judges if the proposed classes indeed qualify. In many cases a course title with a course description will suffice, but in nonobvious cases the student will provide the faculty member with a course syllabus.
Major history survey courses, the kind typically offered by the History Department over two successive semesters, may account for up to two of the six qualifying courses (or 6 credits of the 18). Examples of survey courses include American or U.S. History to 1865, U.S. History since 1865, and comparable 2-course sequences that review over a century of history at a national or continental scale anywhere in the world. Such courses may be mixed; i.e. the student need not take both survey courses in a two-course sequence.
For more information about the History of Science and Technology Minor, please contact minor advisor Prof. Peter Norton pdn2p@virginia.edu
