Incorporating art and humanities-based aspects for pre-professional undergraduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses is necessary for developing more humanity-driven pre-professional students. Pre-professional programs are tracks in undergraduate programs that prepare students for advanced professional training like medical and dental school after earning their bachelor’s degree. A student may major in any degree program but still enroll in a pre-professional program, although most select a major that is related to their future career aspiration, such as biology or physiology for a pre-medical track. Although this results in reasonable overlap between requirements for graduation and graduate/professional school requirements, most students must still take courses outside the degree program they’re pursuing at their four-year institution, such as an organic chemistry sequence for a physiology student or anatomy and physiology for a chemistry student interested in applying for medical school. Any “free” time these students have is often directed toward prerequisite classes, volunteering hours in research labs and/or clinics, and/or part-time jobs, families, or athletics. These students may not have the time to travel abroad, whether for academics or not, during their undergraduate career and thus may lack experiencing the global dimension that is the basis of STEM fields. In fact, unpublished data collected by Mani & DeVita (in revision) found that “too busy” was selected as a reason for not traveling abroad by 40% of respondents (a close second most popular explanation: “too expensive” [74%]).
Work such as that published by Costa et al. (2020) revealed that coordinating the undergraduate curriculum with the pre-professional programs like health professions education is vital for enhancing the development of student capabilities associated with arts and humanities, which includes the study of history, philosophy and religion, languages and literatures, art, and cultural studies. While programs can be designed and implemented to target small groups of pre-health professional students to develop interpersonal skills through humanities (Poirier et al., 2017), most students are not afforded these opportunities: they may not have the ability to take additional courses, are not enrolled in small groups like honors programs, and may not even have these types of classes offered at their institutions.
Internationalization (O’Dowd, 2018) and virtual exchange (De Wit & Leask, 2015) in courses already within the curriculum of student degrees and pre-professional programs may be the key to developing more humanity-driven future healthcare providers. Internationalization involves curriculum development and change to integrate an international/global dimension into content and/or form (Leask, 2015), while virtual exchange is one method by which courses may be internationalized. As defined by O’Dowd (2018), virtual exchange is the engagement of students in intercultural interactions in a virtual setting, comprising a connection with some partner(s) from other cultural contexts and/or geographical locations as an aspect of the classroom curricula. Knight (2012) points out that competencies related to effective development of international knowledge and intercultural skills inspire students to create superior understanding of collegiality between nations, sustainable world economies, holistic leadership, and lifelong learning, which can be interpreted as “humanity-driven.”
By connecting students with diverse people of differing backgrounds and perspectives but in relevant fields, often across the globe, students may become more aware of the diversity and perspective of others, as exemplified in a Neuromuscular Aspects of Exercise course taught in the Department of Applied Physiology & Kinesiology at the University of Florida. In this class students interviewed scientists from across the globe to gain awareness of cultural and even ethnic impacts on science across four semesters in one of three formats: (1) fully in-person, (2) hybrid (partially in-person and online), or (3) fully online. Summed across the four semesters, 183 students self-reported a higher level of compassion and understanding about the individual they were connected with via video-conferencing technologies like Zoom or Skype: 91-95% of the students noted that they felt more positive about their ability to “communicate with someone from another culture,” self-“adaptability,” “respect for culture, political, and/or economic systems,” and “personal cultural values and biases.” One student (Fall 2019) shared the following at the end of the term: “I loved the experience. It really changed my perspective on presenting research papers and on scientists. I was scared for the interview but realized that they are regular people. It made me see that I could see myself doing research.” Even without acknowledging the global dimension, the student is humanizing the researchers that establish material taught in the STEM field is recognized. All feedback was collected anonymously and with no impact on student grades in the course.
The virtual exchange experience may be the closest the students get to communicating about science and/or healthcare during their entire academic career, which is quite limiting. However, it is predicted that experiential learning opportunities like the one afforded the students in the undergraduate Neuromuscular Aspects of Exercise course will resonate with them throughout at least the remainder of their undergraduate career, if not through their professional school. For example, a student with a pre-health track during the course may retain the intercultural skills augmented in their virtual exchange experience through medical school, thus engaging in similar activities during their professional education as they develop into a more conscientious and humanity-driven physician. Integrating diverse perspectives and humanities-based activities, with or without virtual exchange, is not lost on our students. For instance, observations presented by Adkins and colleagues (2018) reveal that the integration of life science and visual arts can augment even undergraduate biology classrooms. No doubt, educators can and should consider the integration of relevant global issues in courses that target pre-professional students and incorporate artistic and humanistic dimensions in their STEM courses.
Colleagues interested in incorporating virtual exchange to internationalize their STEM course(s) may consider partnering with a colleague’s classroom in a different country to simply have students read and evaluate a selected research paper over videoconferencing. This experience may last no more than half a class session but can result in the development and appreciation of intercultural skills within relevant academic topics that will hopefully be held through post-graduate experiences such as graduate programs.
References
Adkins, S. J., Rock, R. K., & Morris, J. J. (2018). Interdisciplinary STEM education reform:
Dishing out art in a microbiology laboratory. FEMS Microbiology Letters, 365(1).
Costa, M., Kangasjarvi, E., & Charise, A. (2020). Beyond empathy: A qualitative exploration of
arts and humanities in pre-professional (baccalaureate) health education. Advances in
Health Science Education, 25(5), 1203–1226.
De Wit. H., & Leask, B. (2015). Internationalization, the curriculum and the disciplines.
International Higher Education, (83), 10–12.
Knight, J. (2012). Concepts, rationales, and interpretive frameworks in the internationalization of
higher education. The SAGE Handbook of International Higher Education. 27–42.
Leask, B. (2015). Internationalising the curriculum. Routledge.
Mani, D., & DeVita, P. (In revision). Virtual exchange integration in upper-division undergraduate
neuromuscular physiology course demonstrates successful STEM internationalization.
Advances in Physiology Education.
O’Dowd, R. (2018). From telecollaboration to virtual exchange: State-of-the-art and the role of
UNICollaboration in moving forward. Journal of Virtual Exchange, 1, 1–23.
Poirier, T.I., Stamper-Carr, C., & Newman, K. (2017). A course for developing interprofessional
skills in pre-professional honor students using humanities and media. Currents in
Pharmacy Teaching and Learning. 9(5), 874–880.