Instructor needed to teach Contemporary Issues in Science course for a summer interdisciplinary STEM in London study abroad programme run at the Global Education Oregon (GEO) London Centre. The GEO London Centre is located in Bloomsbury and hosts hundreds of U.S. university students throughout the year on a variety of study abroad programs. The course description is appended below and a full proposed syllabus is available upon request.

Program Dates: 31 July to 25 August 2023. 40 contact hours total, roughly 10 hours per week Monday – Friday.

Contact Information:

GEO London Director: Dr Amanda Milburn
Email: amanda@geolondon.org.uk

Applications will be assessed on a rolling basis.

Contemporary Issues in Science course description

Contemporary Issues in Science: Life – or sailing through chaos on quantum mechanics. In this course, students will investigate research and scientific discoveries with broad implications across disciplines as they build their skills as scientists. Specifically, students will understand quantum mechanics and how its properties relate across other STEM disciplines as we explore different course topics: Q-eating, Q-feeling, and Q-being. Students will learn how quantum physics, which analyses the behaviour of everything on an extremely tiny scale – protons, electrons, quarks or photons – is closely related to our life. Indeed, we will experience how biology is directly influenced by quantum physics and how important a pair of electrons may be for a bird or how crucial a few protons could be for evolution. With the broad scientific topics of study, the course is open to students across all STEM majors.

Students will read and discuss scientific primary literature, design and perform experiments to understand scientific perspectives and reflect on the process of discovery, the implications of research, and avenues for future study. We will examine cross-cutting concepts such as cause and effect, scale, proportion, quantity, systems and system models, structure and function or stability and change. Students will engage in independent writing projects and field trips will connect classroom discussions to place-based understanding of the science.

More specifically, this adventure will be triggered by a question: ‘What is life?’ Different historical theories will be proposed and analysed, working particularly on Erwin Schrödinger’s theory that suggests quantum physics as a key element to answer such a complex question. From Schrödinger’s hypothesis we will study quantum physics origins, researchers (Plank, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Bohr, Pauli, Broglie), and specific properties (particle-wave, tunnelling, superposition, entanglement, decoherence). Once such bases are settled, we will start an adventure around London in which STEM-related fields will be discovered and discussed through three different sections (Q-eating, Q-feeling and Q-being). At the end of each one, we will reflect on how quantum properties, so highly confined to the subatomic world and so difficult to maintain outside it, are able to control our most basic processes. Students will realise how (and how much) quantum mechanics permeate our biology and our planet, thus permeating our life.

Global Education Oregon in London

New Jobs

Contemporary Issues in Science Instructor