The Science, Technology and Society Graduate Certificate is designed for students already enrolled in a graduate degree program at Georgia Tech. This certificate is for graduate students who would like to demonstrate additional competence in some aspect of STS or special competence in STS in their home discipline. The certificate is open to students in good standing in any graduate program at Georgia Tech.
The 12-credit certificate program helps students to:
- Understand the social, cultural, and epistemic dynamics of science and technology
- Explore these dynamics across world societies and cultures
- Develop sensitivity to issues of gender, race, and justice across areas of knowledge, including: engineering, medicine, environment, cognition, security, innovation, design
- Employ STS approaches as scholars or practitioners (e.g. engineers, scientists, or policy makers)
Program of Study (Four Courses Total):
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Core Course: One Required
- HTS 6743 / PUBP 6743 / LMC 6743: STS Core Seminar
- HTS 6118: Science, Technology and the Economy
- HTS 6121 / INTA 8803: Science, Technology and Security
- HTS 6123 / LMC 8803: Social and Cultural Studies of Biomedicine
- HTS 6124: Science and Technology Beyond Borders
- PUBP 6748 / LMC 6748: Social Justice, Critical Theory and Philosophy of Design
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LMC 6749 / PUBP 6749: Feminist Theory and STS
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Up to One Other Elective, Subject to Student Interest and STS Coordinator Approval
- Many appropriate courses are offered across the Ivan Allen College and the Institute, for example, CS 8893: Cognition and Culture
STS COURSES FOR SPRING 2023
PUBP/LMC 6748: Social Justice & Design
Robert Rosenberger
Spring 2023, Mondays 6:30-9:15pm
This course investigates issues of social justice through their instantiation in material culture and practice. We consider theoretical perspectives from the philosophy of design, critical theory, feminist theory, and the field of science & technology studies. Some examples of topics we will cover include homelessness, surveillance and facial recognition, incarceration, disability studies, environmental justice, and urban infrastructure design. The course includes readings from the history of the philosophy of justice, contemporary case analyses, and the development of our own critical perspectives within our own ongoing research projects. The focus of course writing (in addition to weekly reading reactions) will be on projects with practical outputs, such as conference presentations, potential professional publications, public op-ed writing, and thesis chapters—whatever forwards your own research work, informed by course content.
LMC 8001 - NJ: Digital Media Studies
Nassim Parvin
Spring 2023, Thursdays 12:30-3:15
How do we know what we know? What are the grounds for knowledge claims? What is the nature of evidence? The Digital Media Studies course explores responses to these questions by putting various research methods in conversation (i.e., those grounded in positivist, interpretive, pragmatic, and dialogic traditions). Through a comparative approach, we explore their key assumptions and grounds in philosophy of knowledge while tracing their historical and political roots especially as related to contemporary debates around indigenous, feminist, and postcolonial ways of knowing and doing. Students will learn how various disciplinary approaches to research are themselves 'designed' in the ways that they are positioned to frame problems; collect and share evidence; make claims about validity and objectivity; and shape arguments in response to theoretical and practical problems. More broadly, this course facilitates an appreciation of the intertwined nature of theory and practice and their entanglement in social and cultural ideals while rejecting a relativistic standpoint that renders all knowledge claims as equally valid. In doing so, the course equips students to participate meaningfully in current debates about the nature of scientific knowledge and related issues related misinformation, disinformation, and other truth claims. The course is comprised of weekly reading and writing assignments alongside in-class discussions to examine various methodological strategies and their significance. Last year’s syllabus is here and will be updated soon: https://designstudio.gatech.edu/dmstudies_2022.html
This course has capacity for up to eight PhD students from across Georgia Tech. The purpose of the course is to lay a foundation for better understanding of philosophy of knowledge with an emphasis on research methods for the systemic study of computing technologies and media applications. This course is particularly relevant for students in the College of Design, Ivan Allen College (Schools of LMC and HSOC), and College of Computing (Human-Centered Computing). Students in the College of Sciences and College of Engineering who are interested in leadership careers with the aim of facilitating interdisciplinary research are welcome to join. The class meets on Thursdays from 12:30-3:15.
For all inquiries and permission to enroll please contact Professor Nassim Parvin at nassim@gatech.edu with a brief statement of why you are interested in the class and your GTID. A brief overview of the course and a tentative syllabus (from Spring 2022) is below.
CS 4803/8803 CRD (Interactive Computing) / ARCH 4833/ 8833 (Architecture):
Computation + Repair in Design: Practices, People, Technologies
Vernelle Noel
Spring 2023, Tuesdays 5:00-7:45pm
This course will examine and present the fields of craft and computation as fields of scholarly and creative inquiry to expand the scope of design practice and critically engage with technological change. Advocating for exploratory, experimental, and improvisational processes of inquiry, the course seeks to renegotiate designing and making as new and exciting sites of creative, sociotechnical inquiry that imaginatively and materially reconfigures practices and theories of craft, computation, and technology in design. Weekly readings, writing, discussions, and assignments will familiarize students with themes, concepts, and methods coming out of craft studies, and science technology and society studies (STS) for contributions to HCI, design, computation, architecture, art, and other creative fields. The craft of wirebending will be our site of inquiry. Topics include practices and theories as they relate to: • making and repair; • craft and material entanglements; • situated, embodied design knowledge; • tools; and • people, technology, and society. Research/ Graduate students preparing theses or dissertations and undergraduate students interested in developing a critical understanding of computation, craft, and technology are welcome.
If interested, see: https://forms.gle/xtS1rm3zeTapfQyGA
LMC 8803: Data, Design and Society
Yanni Alexander Loukissas
Spring 2023, Monday and Wednesday 3:30-4:15
What can data make us feel? Can data enhance our senses, inspire wonder, invite curiosity, unsettle us, induce anxiety, or help us become more resilient? In this project-based graduate course in Digital Media, we will use design as a form of inquiry to explore what data can do to us, not just for us.
In recent years, the fields of data science (computing), data visualization (design) and data studies (humanities and social sciences) have explored how data function instrumentally, as evidence. By this definition, data are rhetorical instruments. They exist to support the rational claims made by scientific, scholarly, commercial, and civic organizations. This perspective on data is important. However, it can overlook questions about how data work experientially, as perceptual and aesthetic artifacts. Indeed, data have an emotional impact, with social implications for what counts as data, where can data work, who can make use of data. How data make us feel is at least as important to their effectiveness as the logical arguments they support.