Big History on Campus

Last month, freshmen at Dominican University of California spent a night stargazing with the help of 20 amateur astronomers from San Francisco. The night under the stars was part of their academic year, in which they will study the history and evolution of the universe.

This emerging approach to teaching is called Big History, and it is a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the origins of the universe and the complexity of its development, from the Big Bang to the future of the planet, mixing topics that at many colleges would be covered separately in courses on biology, physics and philosophy, among other fields....

"It is unique because it is more than one Big History course," said Mojgan Behmand, director of general education and the first year experience at Dominican. “We look at Big History through the lens of a discipline, and our coursework is based on the collective wisdom of 35 faculty members."

Half of the course precedes human history, Behmand said. Other universities have offered Big History before, she said, but only as a single course.

At Dominican, students will learn Big History in a first-year seminar in which they will learn about the life cycles of stars, the emergence of life, the Industrial Revolution, and sustainability, among other topics. In the next semester, they will have a chance to examine some issues more closely through a specific area of study, like religion, sex and gender, or philosophy....