The new Medicine, Science and Humanities major, an interdisciplinary major designed to give students the opportunity to study medicine and science from a humanistic point of view, was recently approved and launched by the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences (KSAS).
According to Charles Wiener, the interim director of the new major and a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the major will not include any core science courses.
“It’s a humanistic view of the sciences and medicine,” Wiener said.
However, Wiener emphasized that students will be able to fulfill their pre-med requirements by taking sciences courses in other departments. Wiener said he believes the major will be beneficial to pre-med students.
“This is not meant to be a pre-med major, although it’s clearly going to be designed as a major that I would love to see pre-meds do because I think this is exactly the kind of preparation physicians should have,” Wiener said. “The major is going to focus a lot on in-depth analysis, critical thinking, critical analysis, different ways of looking at problems [and] different lenses into humanity.”
Students who pursue the major will graduate with a Bachelor of Arts. Major requirements include three credits concentrating on classic scientific and medical texts in courses such as the History of Medicine and Great Books at Hopkins; 12 credits in a single humanities subject such as language, literature, philosophy, history or anthropology; and 18 credits of natural science courses. Additionally, the major will include “Humanities and Sciences” electives such as Social Networks and Beyond, Healing: Politics and Poetics, Science and Heresy and in Galileo’s Italy, and Intermediate Fiction: Nature Writing.
Beverly Wendland, the interim dean of the Krieger School, believes the interdisciplinary nature of the major is a valuable feature.
“Given our academic strengths, Johns Hopkins is ideally suited to create a course of undergraduate concentration that focuses on the intersection of medicine, science and the humanities,” Wendland said. “In the rapidly changing landscape of higher education in the 21st century, interdisciplinary approaches are needed to promote intellectual innovations and will forge productive connections between scientific and humanistic cultures.”
The major has been in development for several years. Bill Eggington, the KSAS vice dean for graduate studies, said that the major was designed to help humanities faculty members with interests in science connect with more students in scientific majors.
“These are things that our humanities faculty [members] have been writing about, studying [and] publishing [in] their research,” Eggington said. “It’s a natural fit for our science, engineering and pre-med students to be studying with them.”
Eggington also worked with former KSAS Dean Katherine Newman to develop the major, which they feel will provide much-wanted opportunities for science students to engage with the humanities.
“[The major serves] to break down the silo mentality of knowledge — that knowledge is either soft and humanistic or hard and factual and scientific,” Eggington said. “[The major is designed] to take advantage of the fact that so many of our humanists at Hopkins have an inherent research interest in the sciences — studying the way science is performed, what constitutes scientific knowledge [and] how we practice medicine.”
Eggington and Newman approached Wiener to lead the new major because of his interest in incorporating liberal arts courses in medical school curriculums.
“Charlie [Wiener] has long been a huge advocate for liberal arts training for people who are going to physicians [and] medical researchers,” Eggington said. “Since I’m going to be gone next year, Charlie said he would really relish the opportunity to lead the major in its first year, and we thought it was a terrific opportunity for us as well.”
Newman approached Wiener while he was stationed in Malaysia helping to found the Perdana University School of Medicine in partnership with Hopkins.
“She found out that I was interested in liberal arts preparation for physicians and that I [had been involved in developing] the new medical school curriculum at the [Hopkins] School of Medicine called Genes to Society.”
The School of Medicine’s curriculum was launched in 2009 and is similar in mission to the new KSAS major.
This past summer, Wiener returned to Baltimore after his project in Malaysia unexpectedly fell through. He met with Egginton to discuss the major and was appointed the interim director. He is currently focusing on his administrative duties but would welcome the opportunity to teach a course within the new major.
“Right now, I’m still trying to get a feel for what it means to be a major director,” Wiener said. “I’m not a humanities professor, and it’s mostly a humanities major. Most of my responsibility will be administrative, [but] I’d love to do some teaching. And if I have the extra [time] to help out, I’ll gladly do that.”
Wiener believes that the major will help reverse the trend of separating the humanities from the study of medicine.
“The forces that think about who should be going to medical school have clearly thought about having broader preparation, more liberal preparation, more humanistic preparation. The new MCAT is a reflection of that,” Wiener said.
Wiener stresses that the new major will not necessarily help students do better on the MCAT but will expose students to material that may be added to the exam and to medical school curricula.
“This major is like returning to focusing on people: thinking about how humans exist, how they behave [and the] humanistic experience. That’s the precept of the major. To me, it’s a great way to prepare to be a physician down the road,” Wiener said.
Wiener also believes the major is useful to students who do not plan to pursue medicine.
“It’s meant to be a major for people who are looking at the interface between science and humanity and how people process science through art, music, history [and the like],” Wiener said.
According to Wiener, the major has been attracting the attention of both current and prospective students.
“There has been a very, very rapid level of interest, including among the Early Decision students,” Wiener said. “Amongst current freshmen, there’s a great deal of interest also already. It will be possible for rising sophomores to backtrack into this major.”
Freshman Liz Winkelhoff is currently planning to pursue a double major in the sciences and humanities, and this new major piqued her interest.
“When it comes to this major, I feel like it makes sense particularly for a school like Hopkins with such a strong science community and such humanities community,” Winkelhoff said. “For students that are interested in both, it just makes a lot whole lot of sense.”
