Undergraduate Adviser: M. Gregory
Associate Professors—Caulfield, Peel, Steier
NEXA provides a unique curriculum that may be used by students in several ways (major, NEXA minor, General Education, or electives). NEXA courses are focused on areas of interest and concern shared by a variety of disciplines and perspectives. Most NEXA offerings are taught cooperatively by pairs of instructors representing different, but complementary, fields of knowledge. NEXA faculty are drawn from the Colleges of Humanities, Science and Engineering, Behavioral and Social Sciences, Creative Arts, and Business. Faculty from sixteen departments participate in NEXA, and the program consists of about thirty courses, most of which are offered once each year.
The NEXA program is charged with maintaining a curriculum that demonstrates the historical, philosophical, and ethical interactions among humanities, arts, business, and the physical and social sciences. NEXA's general objective is to provide a point of convergence among diverse fields of knowledge, and to offer the student a form of liberal education that is both modern and substantial.
NEXA courses span western cultural history from Mesopotamian origins to the present day. An additional course has been introduced to investigate an array of alternate futures. The NEXA curriculum is divided into three groups: Concepts, Sequences, and Issues.
NEXA organizes and presents public events on topics of general concern to both sciences and humanities. These events range from talks to panel discussions to colloquia and symposia, all of which relate to some aspect of NEXA's mission of enhancing the possibilities of convergence among academic disciplines. For example, colloquia are often devoted to exploring the implications for ethical responsibility and public policy of such questions as recombinant DNA and nuclear energy. Symposia are addressed to such large intellectual issues as sociobiology, Einstein's cultural influence, and the cultural and technological relationships between China and the West. NEXA's public events are designed to place San Francisco State University at the center of new thought and creative debate, both locally and nationally.
NEXA courses are available to students, regardless of major, either for General Education or for elective credit. (NEXA 698, however, is reserved for NEXA majors and minors.)
The NEXA minor is designed to serve the needs of students who are primarily committed to other academic disciplines, but who believe that an understanding of the historical and humanistic context of science or, conversely, the influence of scientific thought on our cultural tradition, would be a valuable adjunct to their specialized educations.
Students choosing NEXA courses for elective credit or for a formal NEXA Minor should discover that this curriculum enhances their majors by providing interdisciplinary background, richness and depth. NEXA offers the kind of broadly humanistic experience that is often identified as desirable by post-graduate institutions, such as schools of medicine and law. In this way, NEXA supplements programs that prepare students for specific careers.
Inasmuch as NEXA focuses on questions of values, it exposes students to problems of value differentiation and value choice that are crucial in the practice of any professional career as well as in the conduct of one's life.
MINOR IN NEXA
The NEXA curriculum is divided into three groups: Concepts, Sequences, and Issues. Courses for this discipline are listed in alphabetical sequence (see NEXA discipline in the Announcement of Courses section).
NEXA 281 Mythic and Scientific Thought NEXA 327 Business and Culture NEXA 380 Cosmologies and Worldviews NEXA 382 Time in Human Consciousness NEXA 383 The City in Civilization NEXA 384 Words, Cultures, and Change NEXA 392 Culture and Technology
NEXA 330 The Marxian Revolution NEXA 331 The Feminist Revolution NEXA 340 The Nuclear Revolution NEXA 387 Origins of Modern Science NEXA 389 The Darwinian Revolution NEXA 390 The Einsteinian Revolution
NEXA 350 Explorations of the Future NEXA 357 Science as Social Process NEXA 362 Computers in the Arts and Humanities NEXA 369 The Demonic Pact: The Faust Myth in Music and Literature NEXA 391 Biological Sex and Cultural Gender NEXA 394 Split Brain/Split Culture? NEXA 397 Communication Between Humans and Other Animals NEXA 398 John Steinbeck and "Doc" Ricketts: Literature and the Sea NEXA 456 Reality and the New Physics
NEXA 698 Senior Project NEXA 699 NEXA Independent Study
NEXA 214 Second Year Written Composition: NEXAFor current information on the NEXA curriculum, please contact Dr. Michael Gregory, NEXA Program Director (415/338-1302).
The formal requirements for a NEXA minor are seven NEXA courses, with at least one from each of the Concepts, Sequences, and Issues subdivisions. A student electing the NEXA minor is required to consult a NEXA adviser no later than the second semester prior to graduation to discuss his/her interests and to draw up a plan for the minor program.
Program Requirements Units Seven NEXA courses including at least one Concepts, one Sequences, and one Issues course 21 Total for minor 21
last modified July 21, 1995