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Because to this integrative process, we offer only five courses as follows:
1. How to set up and maintain a functional science lab. Not a lab for chemistry,
physics or biology but an all purpose lab. This starts you on the path to becoming
a scientist and a lab person. This course also opens doors to all science based
jobs and careers. Persons trained via this course can also help improve
science education in our schools and colleges;
2. A basic and applied course in Microbiology which is the root of all that we know now in
biology including biochemistry, physiology, molecular biology, genetics,
biotechnology and genetic engineering, and on the applied side about food,
pharmaceutical, cosmetic and a host of fermentation industries producing not just
wine and beer but also alcohol as fuel and fermented foods such a yogurt and
many others, plus sanitation, water purification and sewage disposal including
environmental issues and their control, medical and paramedical professions,
including treatment and prevention of infectious diseases plus the exploration
of extraterrestrial space and the biology if any of other planets. The application
and opportunities provided by this subject are endless.
Unfortunately, the biggest disservice the academia, specially the Microbiologists have
done to the society is to make Microbiology a specialty subject and take it
out of the public awareness which is adding to our health care costs because the
public is now not practicing simple means of hygiene to prevent infections and
other diseases and thereby adding to our mounting health care cost becoming a
drain on our already stressed economy. This is such a drain on our economy that
we often have to take funds away from other important services such as
education to just meet the rising health care costs; >
3. How science, art, and humanities including religion, sociology, anthropology,
psychology and economics interrelate and how this sort of integrative learning
and knowing becomes a recipe for meaningful living and life long growing;
4. How to do research which is a system and not the haphazard way much research is
now being done, especially by the beginning unprepared students who are
brought in to connect with an on-going research activity without ever knowing or
even taught how to do research. They thus feel euphoric that they are doing
research but in fact they are not. In many cases they are just a couple of extra pair
of hands to do the nitty-gritty busy work of someone’s research and in fact are
quite helpless when it comes to finding, planning and designing their own. This is
a big void for the student and we try to fill that void by showing them step by step
how research is done. Simultaneously we either assign them a research project
of their own or guide them to design one of their own. It is the groping with that
research project where the methodology to do research develops and becomes a
functional reality.
5. Professional development courses and workshops for teachers. Most if not all of the
teachers currently teaching in our schools and colleges are the products of the
fragmented mode of teaching and learning. They thus teach in a
compartmentalized fashion teaching subjects or disciplines but not in an
integrative fashion leaving the integration and understanding part to the students
who, due to their limited background, have hard time doing the required sort of
integration. Learning thus suffers plus the fragmented mode of teaching is also
expensive and time consuming. The integrative form of teaching resolves this
dilemma enabling a teacher to teach better and faster with retention and
administrators to become conservative in the allocation of time, space and
resources. Being an integrative center of learning, we are recommending that all
teachers, not just the specialty teachers teaching certain subjects need to take
such courses and workshops.
Collectively these five courses are the seeds which set the stage for life long learning
making a person versatile, creative and self reliant.
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