Three years ago, Associate Professor of Art Jennifer Printz and Visiting Assistant Professor of Physics Brian Gentry launched a January Short Term class whose philosophy, rooted in the Renaissance, is now regaining attention among 21st<\/sup>\u00a0century teachers and learners.<\/p>\n Printz<\/p><\/div>\n Engaging Reality: Interpreting Matter, Energy, Space, and Time Through Science and Art immersed students in the concept of blending two disciplines that have been largely kept separate for hundreds of years. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing that convergence as artists are wanting to play with scientists\u2019 technology, or scientists [are] realizing there\u2019s a crucial importance to the creative act,\u201d Printz explains. \u201cLearning how to see and learning how to be creative are paramount to making new discoveries or coming up with new ways of doing things.\u201d<\/p>\n Printz and Gentry had such a positive experience with the class, especially after team teaching it again in 2018, that they wanted to share their energy and excitement with the campus community and the public at large. In March, they conceived and presented Transect\/Intersect\/Transform, a weeklong symposium\u00a0featuring readings, discussions, performances, lectures, and exhibitions, all focusing on the connections between the sciences and the creative arts.<\/p>\n Gentry says the symposium was designed in part to complement Hollins\u2019 growing focus on entrepreneurship. \u201cEntrepreneurial activity is inherently creative, and we need to focus on that process in order to solve difficult problems. This has helped open doors to a renewed sense of overlap. We\u2019re going from STEM, which is\u00a0science, technology, engineering, and math, to STEAM\u2014science, technology, engineering,\u00a0arts<\/em>, and math. Large problems such as climate change are going to require everything we\u2019ve got, and that means we\u2019ve got to approach it from all sides. These types of issues are bringing people together in that sense.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf we stay in silos,\u201d Printz adds, \u201cwe\u2019re limiting the way we have a discourse on what we can do. But when we start to integrate, it becomes much more powerful in how we can change what we\u2019re doing in the classroom or out in the world at large. If an art student, for example, creates work that deals with the sciences, or history, or whatever, it becomes so much richer. They\u2019re working from an informed place. I can always see the level of quality in their work go up once they\u2019ve got that kind of hook into something else. I\u2019ve certainly seen that in our team-teaching efforts. Students will come into the class and say, \u2018I am an artist\u2019 or \u2018I am a scientist,\u2019 and they begin making this amazing work and taking down those labels.\u201d<\/p>\n Gentry<\/p><\/div>\n Transect\/Intersect\/Transform featured academics who are actively embracing both disciplines. These included Andrew Yang of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, whose scholarly interests range across the visual arts, the sciences, and natural history, and David\u00a0Trinkle, M.D., associate dean for community and culture at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, where the training of new physicians reflects the needs of today\u2019s workplace.<\/p>\n \u201cMost medical schools are sending a lot of their first-year students to take art and art history courses because they want that well-rounded person who has sharp skills of observation, which is one of the greatest assets a physician can have,\u201d says Gentry. \u201cMedical schools don\u2019t want cookie-cutter scientists anymore. It\u2019s not enough to have strong MCAT scores and good grades in your biology and chemistry classes. They want students who are interesting, doing things outside of science, and know how to talk to other people.\u201d<\/p>\n Gentry is encouraged to see this mindset gaining a foothold. \u201cWhat parents, alumnae, and students are thinking about is the job market. People change jobs all the time and whether they graduate now or in five years, students have to be prepared to respond creatively and flexibly, because they may end up somewhere way, way different than the degree they earned.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Jeff Hodges is director of public relations.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Integrating science and the creative arts prepares students for a changing job market and global challenges. By Jeff Hodges M.A.L.S. \u201911 Three years ago, Associate Professor of Art Jennifer Printz and Visiting Assistant Professor of Physics Brian Gentry launched a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8651,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[75],"class_list":["post-8601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-spring-2019"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8601"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8606,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8601\/revisions\/8606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Photo](\"http:\/\/www.糖心传媒.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/printz-jennifer-1.jpg\")
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