Over the next few weeks, students will pore over maps to develop a sampling plan; "hire" airplanes to do magnetic surveys that narrow the field of search (the airplanes are toys, the survey data are real); and keep their sampling plan within budgetary and logistical constraints (the cards deal out Monopoly-style fates: "Your vehicle has broken down" or "A worker has found a large, colorless stone!"). Sites selected, it's off to the lab to analyze real samples -- rocks and soil collected from diamond "pipes" (gem-bearing formations) in Africa. Finally, students must justify their exploration prospects to a working geologist employed in precious mineral exploration, brought in just for the occasion.

Tewksbury's class is a far cry from traditional introductory geology: a "survey" course where students learn a little about a laundry list of topics. Her course is interdisciplinary by design, encompassing geology, history, sociology, politics and geography. "Chalk talks" (traditional lectures) are kept to a minimum; Tewksbury feels students learn best when they are teaching themselves, teaching peers or working independently to solve problems.

Diamond exploration is an advanced subject for an introductory geology class, notes Heather McDonald, chair of the geology department at the College of William and Mary, and, like Tewksbury, a past president of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers. "Other faculty can't believe Barbara's first-year geology students can complete these sophisticated problem-solving assignments," McDonald says. "But they do."

Tewksbury, who currently serves as the president of the American Geological Institute, has received numerous grants from the National Science Foundation to lead workshops on innovative teaching. She says she likes to take an approach that is "topical, narrow and deep." "By learning a lot about a narrow range of topics, students become experts," Tewksbury notes. "Instead of 'learn a little, memorize, go on to the next topic,' they quickly get to the point where they can do interesting things."

"I think Barbara is one of the most creative teachers I have met in my life," says McDonald. Others agree; last year Tewksbury's course was recognized by the American Association of Colleges and Universities as a "model college science course" for the way it links science teaching to human issues. Through a program called SENCER (Science Education for New Civic Engagement and Responsibility), the course materials will be available to other college professors nationwide.

"You learn a great deal of geology without really realizing it," enthuses Keith Tyler '06, who took the course his first year. "You get a better grasp on the subject when it's more hands-on." Tyler wasn't planning a geology major when he came to Hamilton but changed his mind after taking the class -- as did four of his classmates.

The next stop on our classroom tour is the Beinecke Student Activities Village Fillius Events Barn. Backlit by sunlight streaming through big windows, two students hold slender, stringed instruments called berimbau. A third student explains how her group made these instruments -- by hand, from native maple wood bent in the shape of an archer's bow.

The traditional instruments accompany a playful, dance-like Brazilian martial art called capoeira, created 400 years ago by African slaves who needed to hide fighting skills from their captors. The students demonstrate how the instruments produce varied sounds -- a coin pressed to the lone string changes its length and hence, pitch; a dry gourd serves as a resonator. Finally, two at a time, the students clasp hands ceremonially and, to the berimbau's percussive melody, whirl across the polished wood floor in the one-armed handstands and low, scissoring kicks of capoeira.

This is no dance class, however, or even a history class; it's a sophomore seminar, specifically The Physics of Musical Sound, co-taught by music professor Samuel Pellman and physics professor Brian Collett. For this assignment, students selected an instrument and studied it from various angles: its history, construction, how it is played, its cultural role -- and the physics behind its sound. Custom sound analysis software, developed by Collett, lets students record sound clips on personal computers, then compare such aspects as frequency, pitch and amplitude to sounds from other, similar instruments.

Alicia Cardina '05, who plays French horn in the Hamilton orchestra and sings with the College Choir and the Hamiltones, took this class last year, and she appreciated the interdisciplinary approach to a challenging subject. "I've been interested in music all my life, but I'd never taken a physics class," she says. "I was a little intimidated. This seemed like a good way to reach into the subject."

Hands-on class activities were Cardina's favorite part of the class. For the instrument-making exercise, she built a French horn from polychloride pressure tubing, with a poster-board bell. "It only had resonance for certain frequencies," she laughs. "So I could only play certain notes."

She also liked the class activity to investigate the acoustical properties of indoor spaces; walking around campus, students took measurements in Wellin Hall, the Chapel and a conference room, among other places. "We popped balloons, then used an oscilloscope and stopwatch to measure how sound faded away in the different rooms," Cardina says. "When our choir goes on tour now, I have a much better understanding of why some spaces are resonant and others are acoustically dead, or how environmental factors affect my horn playing."

For now, only a virtual tour of Hamilton's new bioinformatics facility is possible. The 500-square-foot facility will have a central location in the department -- close to the introductory labs, Festin explains. Inside will be dedicated desktop computers, a cart loaded with laptops and servers. The design is intentionally flexible so the room can be used alternately as a classroom, as a resource for students in labs and as a study room. Meanwhile, if another class calls for access to technology -- say, to download data from the Internet or do a library search -- "We'll just roll in the cart and hand out laptops," Festin says.

A cancer researcher who has worked at the National Institutes of Health, Festin says one of his personal goals in coming to Hamilton was to adapt cutting-edge technologies for use in the undergraduate biology curriculum. "My students use the same software and equipment in their classes that I use in the research lab," he says, citing Sequencher, used to assemble bits of genetic code into longer strands, and Genespring, used in silicon genetics research to analyze how genes are expressed when disease is present.

You'll find cutting-edge technology everywhere in Hamilton's science departments, like UV-Vis spectrometers, an isothermal calorimeter and -- coming soon -- a 500 MHz High Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometer (NMR), which is to be purchased through an NSF Major Research Instrumentation Grant recently awarded to chemistry professors Robin Kinnel, George Shields and Ian Rosenstein with biology professor Herman Lehman. Characterized by chemists as "the most powerful tool available for elucidating the structure of molecules," NMRs are used to identify unknown substances, look at the arrangement of atoms within molecules and study how molecules interact in solution; Kinnel, for example, will use the instrument to study the bad-tasting and poisonous compounds that plants use to defend themselves from leaf-chewing herbivores. Only a few liberal arts colleges have NMRs as powerful as this one.

Some more major technology is on its way to the chemistry department -- an atomic force microscope. Capable of resolving particles as small as individual atoms, the instrument is being purchased through an NSF curriculum development grant to chemistry professor John LaGraff and will be a tool not just for LaGraff's research, but for students enrolled in a new nanotechnology course to be developed through the same grant.

Nanotechnology -- a hot news topic these days -- involves fabricating or manipulating structures that are vanishingly small (a nanometer is one one-billionth of a meter). At this scale, ordinary materials can show extraordinary properties of strength, chemical reactivity or electrical conductivity. "Quantum dots are a good example," says LaGraff; these nanoscale semiconducting powders, which "glow" different colors depending on their size, are the newest tool for labeling biological specimens.

Experts predict nanotechnology will have a profound impact on society. Hypothetically, it could produce "micromachines" the size of human cells to do some amazing tasks like precision drug delivery or cleaning up polluted water. Computer nanochips could store trillions of bits of information on a surface the size of a pinhead. LaGraff's own research looks at how biological molecules such as DNA and proteins can be integrated with microelectronic devices -- a line of inquiry that could lead to new tools for diagnosing disease.

Though promising, nanotechnology is also controversial, because nanoparticles penetrate living cells more readily than conventional particles with as-yet unknown consequences. Meanwhile, because nanotechnology deals with atoms and molecules rather than living organisms, this field hasn't been subject to much regulation or socio-political scrutiny. Because of the promise and the risks, the U.S. government has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to the National Nanotechnology Initiative, including significant funding to the NSF to educate the next generation of nanotechnologists. Starting this spring, some of them will enroll in LaGraff's new course, and starting in 2005, they'll be operating the atomic force microscope.

"I think one reason Hamilton faculty are so motivated to pursue these grants for major new technology is the support from the administration," notes Shields. The College matches all equipment procured via grants one-to-one; grants to new faculty members may be matched two-to-one. "This level of grant-matching is uncommon, I think," says LaGraff. Dean Elgren agrees that Hamilton's administration makes technology acquisition a priority. "We recognize that research takes state-of-the-art instrumentation -- that's why we've carved out part of the College budget to support faculty writing grants for equipment."
 

 

Considered the nation's top undergraduate award in the sciences, Goldwater scholarships are awarded on the basis of both academic merit and "demonstrated research aptitude." "If you don't get to do research, it's hard to demonstrate an aptitude for it," Shields points out. All four Hamilton winners already had research experience when they applied for the scholarships and two had already published papers in scientific journals.

Mary Bernadine Dias '98 says hands-on instruction and the chance to do research at Hamilton have had "revolutionary" consequences in her life. When she first arrived on campus, Dias barely knew how to turn on a computer. Yet she enrolled in physics professor Brian Collett's Electronics and Computing class, which, Collett explains, is "about how stuff works -- everyday stuff, like electronic devices." The lesson plan for each class is straightforward. "First the students read about how things should work," says Collett. "Then they sit down and check it out for themselves."

"Definitely one of the fun things about the class was the hands-on experience," Dias recalls. "That was my first exposure to robotics, and I found it quite fascinating." For her class project, she programmed a robotic arm to pick up a cup of water. That led to her senior project: designing and building an "intelligent" robot with cameras for eyes and wheels for legs.

"To learn about the cameras I visited a Hamilton alum (Andrew Miller '95) at Columbia University," says Dias. "He introduced me to his advisor, who asked about my project and said, 'You must go to grad school in robotics!' I came back to campus and told my advisor, 'Isn't that funny? -- me getting a Ph.D. in robotics?' And he said, 'Not at all,' and handed me a bunch of grad school applications to fill out!"

For the past four years, Dias has been working on a Ph.D. in robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. There, she's part of a team of NASA-funded researchers working to develop robots that collaborate in groups; the ultimate goal is to put a team of research robots on Mars, but Dias has her eyes on another goal -- a career where she can use computers and technology for positive social change in developing nations.

Dias credits her acceptance at several prestigious grad schools to her solid research experience at Hamilton. "In science there's a kind of bias against students who apply to grad schools from liberal arts colleges," she notes. "So it's impressive that Hamilton sees so many of its students accepted to grad school. It's partly because of the way teaching is structured, but it's also the way students are encouraged to do research."

Biology's Festin agrees. "I believe Hamilton students have an advantage over other students," he says. "They are exposed to grad-level resources at an undergraduate institution. If they decide to go on to grad school, they are very well-prepared."

At the same time, Dias appreciates Hamilton's identity as a liberal arts institution. "Having gone through that curriculum, I find myself much stronger in communication skills -- writing papers, presentations, even interacting with others -- than students who had a straight science education," she says.

Hamilton's new Science Center is on budget and on schedule. The stairs are in, most of the roof is on, and on the north side of the building, huge plate-glass windows are in place. Inside, carpenters are hammering away, building casements and cabinets from sustainable hardwoods. The 622 tons of Pennsylvania limestone needed to finish the building's exterior are on order.

It's obvious that this physical structure is built on a strong foundation. Undetectable via Webcam, but just as strong, is the building's philosophical foundation: that science exists not as a body of facts to be transferred from professor to student, but as a dialogue and a mutual experience of discovery. Reflecting back on his own experiences in college science classes, Weldon revels in the changes at Hamilton. "Science is, by its very nature, hands-on and collaborative," he says. "By teaching science this way, with hands-on labs and opportunities for research, we prepare first-rate scientists. What's more, we prepare first-rate citizens -- people who understand how science impacts everyday life."
 

 

Cynthia Berger has worked as a lab instructor for large-enrollment first-year biology classes. She is currently a science writer living in central Pennsylvania.