Critical Empathy in the Liberal Arts: The Sociological Imagination as a Mechanism for Re-envisioning Interdisciplinary STEM Education

This chapter describes a co-taught, interdisciplinary course titled “Being Human in STEM” (HSTEM). HSTEM was designed in response to a growing recognition of deep-rooted STEM inequities that marginalize students based on race, class, and gender. The course is structured to deepen student, staff, and faculty understandings of inequality and identity within STEM while also inspiring student-led actions to enhance equity and inclusion in a liberal arts setting. The course is co-taught by a STEM professor and a humanist or social scientist in collaboration with instructional staff with expertise in teaching, learning, and community engagement. For instance, instructional staff with experience in community engagement and library sciences help to facilitate the research and development of students’ action projects, while individuals with expertise in pedagogy and assessment support co-facilitators in the course design process. Alumni also join different segments of the course as guest speakers and discussion facilitators. The course enrolls undergraduate students from a multitude of disciplines, both STEM and non-STEM, who hold a wide range of race, class, and gender identities. The full structure of the course has been described in detail elsewhere (see Bunnell et al. in Int J Students Partners 5(1), 26–46, 2021; Bunnell et al., forthcoming). Here, we wish to focus specifically on a core course assignment in which students employ a sociological imagination to create their own “Being Human in STEM Story.”