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 FALL 2021
HTS/LMC/PUBP 6743: Science, Technology, & Society: Core Seminar
Professor Robert Rosenberger
Fall 2020, Monday, 6:30-9:15
The STS Core Seminar serves as a general introduction to the ideas and themes of the field of Science & Technology Studies and its various overlapping discourses. We cover major figures, concepts, case studies, and core readings. The course is structured around visiting guest class instructors, professors from across campus who bring their special perspective on STS to our class. The course is also broadly interdisciplinary, and includes readings from sociology, anthropology, history, philosophy, media studies, design, and other disciplines. We consider science and technology in their various social and political situations, and as such this course (and the STS Grad Certificate courses generally) may be of interest to graduate students from across Georgia Tech. The STS Core Seminar also functions as the one required course for the STS Graduate Certificate, and is offered every fall.
HTS 6123/LMC 8803: SOCIAL AND CULTURAL STUDIES OF BIOMEDICINE
Professor Jennifer Singh
Thursday 5-7:45pm, Old Civil Engineering, Room G-10
This course is a graduate seminar that explores current scholarship in the social and cultural studies of science, technology, and biomedicine in the 21st century. Although many of the themes addressed have a long history, the emphasis will be on recent interdisciplinary science and technology studies scholarship of current conditions, drawing together work in sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, and related fields. Objects of attention range in scale from molecules to bodies to environments of risk, and the texts for this course attend to diverse contexts of laboratory practices, clinical encounters, scientific research, and broader social debates.
Project Studio - 89446 - LMC 6650 - NJ: Social Justice and Ethical Imagination in Design
Professor Nassim Parvin
Tuesdays, 12:30-3:15
What are the grounds for rethinking dominant trajectories of emerging technologies such as smart cities, digital assistants, image-recognition tools, self-tracking technologies or various forms algorithmic decision-making? Technology-centered and industry- driven, discourses around such technologies are techno-utopic, upholding ideals such as speed, efficiency, and control. But are we stuck with these values or are there alternative possibilities? If so, what might they look like? This course is centered on theoretical readings in philosophy, ethnography, STS, and design studies to critically engage the historical, social, and cultural grounding of emerging technologies while drawing on design-based practices and methods of inquiry to question their dominant logic and imagine alternate possibilities. The course does not require prior design experience.
Pub Policy 6417: Perspectives on Science and Technology
Professor Mary Frank Fox
Wednesdays, 6:30pm, 303 DM Smith Bldg
The seminar focuses on key dimensions of science and technology as major institutions and activities. We consider and discuss perspectives about:
1) Growth of science and technology
2) Social structures of science and technology, and ways they are changing in:
a) Norms, deviance, and social control.
b) Patterns of participation, performance, evaluation, and rewards.
3) Major sectors of science/technology - and the connections between them: government, academia, industry.
4) Scientific/Technological knowledge and practices:
a) Discoveries and ways they occur
b) Cultures in workplaces
c) Feminist perspectives
LMC 6399: Discovery & Invention
Professor Yanni Loukissas
Monday and Wednesday 2:00 - 3:15pm, Room 209 TSRB
“What does “good design” mean for digital artifacts?” In order to answer this question in a rigorous way, you will need to adopt some sort of design research method. Such methods, which are the subject of this course, are innumerable. But they might be broadly characterized by the terms discovery and invention.
Design research can mean collecting evidence about the process of design through interviews. It can mean evaluating the use of design artifacts using direct observation. It can also mean using design as a mechanism for learning about your own life experiences or those of others. Throughout the term, you will read about design research methods particularly suited to digital media and test them out for yourself.
We will begin with a brief introduction to design, then explore methods with fundamentally different assumptions: scientific, interpretive, reflexive, critical, and speculative, to name a few. Finally, we will wrap up with a discussion of social justice in design research.
There will be a number of assignments, which will be graded using a contract-system (see below). Each of you will lead us in the discussion of one reading sometime during the course of the term. Small-scale design research projects will give you an opportunity to apply what you learn from those readings. Finally, the findings from your own research projects will provide the basis for a final research report in which you answer the question posed above: what does “good design” mean?
This course has no prerequisites, but is required for Master’s and PhD students in Digital Media.
And we already have some courses planned for Next Spring! Look out for:
LMC/PubP 6749: Feminist Theory and STS with Rachel Dean-Ruzicka
HTS 6114: History of Science with Kristie Macrakis