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President Daniel F. Sullivan
Remarks at Johnson Hall of Science Dedication Ceremony
October 20, 2007

I want to say just a few words about where this building fits in my own personal history.  I am a sociologist by training, though with a peculiar primary research specialty.  Most of my academic research and writing has been in a sub-field of sociology called the sociology of science, which involves study of such things as how science is organized, its culture (including how scientists of different kinds actually decide day-to-day what to believe about the natural world), how the economics, politics and social organization of science affect or do not affect the evolution of scientists’ beliefs—imagine social scientists looking at scientific communities as if they were primitive tribes. 

So when I began teaching in a liberal arts college, how science education does or does not happen also became a question of interest to me.  Before leaving Carleton to become president of Allegheny College, I was in 1985 on the fringes of the preparation of what came to be called the Oberlin Report, in which data from 50 selective liberal arts colleges showed that they produced roughly three times the number of science and mathematics baccalaureates on a proportional basis as the top U.S. research universities.  And St. Olaf College (in Minnesota and about the size of St. Lawrence), actually produced more undergraduate mathematics majors than most of the top research universities, on an absolute basis.  Even further, the report showed that these same institutions produced almost as many women science and mathematics majors as men, at a time nationally when women in science and mathematics were in very short supply.

How could this happen?  What was it about those institutions that made them so different?

A few years after moving to Allegheny College I was asked to be part of a new study group funded by the National Science Foundation to explore these issues further and to try to energize colleges and universities to be even more productive.  That, in 1989, was the origin of Project Kaleidoscope the national, informal network of colleges and universities that still today works to improve undergraduate science and mathematics education nationally, and of which I am now chair of the board of trustees.

In our seminal 1991 report—What Works:  Natural Science Communities—we showed that highly science-active liberal arts colleges were so productive of science and mathematics majors because their approach to teaching and learning was investigative, research-rich, and hands-on.  Those colleges—St. Lawrence among them—practiced what we called a “cultivating” mentality as opposed to a “weeding” mentality—they saw their role as stimulating and maintaining students’ interest and commitment to science education rather than identifying early the best and brightest and weeding the others out so they wouldn’t have to waste time on them.  This approach involved students in learning communities that were welcoming, supportive, collegial, and collaborative—oddly, exactly the way scientific research itself was increasingly being practiced.  Undergraduate women, and men, were highly attracted to this kind of educational experience, and the differential productivity of these colleges was the result.
What does any of this have to do with science buildings?  Well, without exception each of these colleges’ science facilities had been designed 30+ years earlier for an approach to science teaching and learning that envisaged large lecture classes with or without associated cookbook laboratories—lots of passive learning, lots of weeding, lots of wastage.  They were succeeding at science education despite having to do it in buildings designed for a very different kind of science education, and all of their buildings were in need of renovation or replacement—a huge capital need for them and for the nation, but also a wonderful opportunity to start fresh.

Project Kaleidoscope stepped into this need with both feet, having discovered that no-one really knew how to design the buildings that would actually foster and facilitate this new kind of science education.  We held conferences with colleges getting ready to build new buildings, invited architectural firms to come to them, and helped create a whole new generation of undergraduate science building architects focused on providing designs for this new form of teaching and learning. And when the time was right, Project Kaleidoscope also helped campuses think more and better about sustainability.

All of these strands come together for me in Johnson Hall in a most pleasing way.  That we could realize this fusion of pedagogy and building design at my own alma mater, and also be at the cutting edge in the sustainable design of science buildings fills me with an almost indescribable pleasure.  And I must say also that, for the most part, all I did was watch our extraordinarily talented faculty, student, architectural design, and contractor team figure this out for us.  My job was primarily to help find the money, and you already know the rest of the story—how all of this was made possible by the extraordinary generosity of Sarah Johnson Redlich, Charles and Ann Johnson, and an array of other wonderfully generous donors we will recognize later in the program.
For me, this is as good as it gets.  It is truly good to be with you here on this day!