I used to think that a Capstone course at Concordia was just a course with a special title because I thought all my classes accomplished the five goals of liberal arts education. Even when we went over the 5 goals of the Capstone course the first day of class, I was a little skeptical as to how we would accomplish these goals differently than we had in other classes. Over the semester, I learned not only that “Capstone” is not just a title, but also that Neurochemistry was the perfect Capstone for me.
Before I launch into my raving reviews of Neurochemistry, here are the five goals of liberal learning:
- Instill a love for learning
- Develop foundational skills and transferable intellectual capacities
- Develop an understanding of disciplinary, interdisciplinary and intercultural perspectives and their connections
- Cultivate an examined cultural, ethical, physical and spiritual self-understanding
- Encourage responsible participation in the world
Instill a love for learning
Neurochemistry reinforced my love for learning in a variety of ways. First of all, this course required active learning. We were not able to sit back and absorb information as it was presented to us, we had to seek it out on our own. As a student about to enter my final semester of college, the ability and motivation to find information on my own will be incredibly valuable in graduate school and beyond.
Develop foundational skills and transferable intellectual capacities
Not only were we asked to find what we wanted to know on our own, we had to be able to teach it to our classmates and relate it to the big-picture problem we were addressing. This is an essential skill to develop, because knowledge is pretty useless in an isolated environment. It is best utilized when it is shared with others and used to address larger-scale issues.
Develop an understanding of disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and intercultural perspectives and their connections.
This class was not only limited to chemistry and biology majors, it was open to social science students and neurobiology students as well. I learned so much from my classmates because of their diverse backgrounds and experiences. We heard stories about people’s life experiences dealing with the topics we discussed, and learned about how academic areas aside from chemistry can contribute to the knowledge required to solve neurochemical problems. Neurochemistry does not only involve or affect neurochemistry. Its effects are seen throughout the body and in behavior and physical deterioration, and having multiple perspectives with which to assess these problems gave us a well-rounded idea of the many paths that would need to be explored in order to completely understand the issue.
Cultivate an examined cultural, ethical, physical, and spiritual self-understanding.
When you are discussing end-of-life care, the morality of genetic engineering, or whether women should take antipsychotic medication during pregnancy due to risk of autism, you inevitably examine your cultural, ethical, physical, and spiritual views. This class fostered an environment in which we could discuss very difficult topics and respectfully disagree with each other. I really appreciated the opportunity to hear my classmates’ opinions as well as to express my own, and to combine science and personal ethics to further develop my views about these challenging concepts.
Encourage responsible participation in the world.
During our discussions, the conversation almost always turned toward what we can do about tragic diseases like autism, ALS, or obesity. I think this framed our discussions in terms of what we can do in our careers to be aware and active in these areas. Additionally, our community outreach project exactly accomplished this goal. For our project, we worked to increase awareness, knowledge, and intervention ability of students in situations of opiate use and abuse. In this way, we were being responsibly engaged in the world and encouraging our fellow Concordia students to do the same.
Overall, neurochemistry was an awesome course that initially looked at various health problems from a neurochemical perspective, but then broadened the view to a multi-disciplinary approach that is the epitome of liberal arts education.
