Science on Stage (Spain) awards online UPM-Complutense course
The competition “Science on stage (Spain) 2010” awards the project “Science and Conscience to the University”, designed by teachers from Polytechnic and Complutense Universities.
The promotion of science between Madrilenian graduate students and the development of a critical and responsible attitude towards the scientific discoveries are the two principal aims of the on-line course “Science and Conscience to the University”, that this year has been awarded with the first prize into the contest Science on stage (Spain) inside the category “Science, Engineering, and Values”. This prize is worth 1500 Euros.
Javier Galeano and Juan García Villaluenga, professors at EUIT Agrícola from Technical University of Madrid (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid) and Faculty of Physics Sciences from Universidad Complutense de Madrid, respectively, have designed the course. This course is offered into the list of on-line free credit subject of ADA-Madrid program.
To develop this course, teachers used as historical framework the fifth Solvay Conference in 1927. In this course, an alter ego scientist was assigned to each student. Thereafter, the students must write individually a report about their assigned scientist, and then publish it in the course blog (http://galeanojav.wordpress.com/). The second part of the course is focused on the study of the consequences of the creation of the first atomic bomb, and the subsequent nuclear weapon race. The students should express their opinion about nuclear weapons, as well as that of their alter-ego scientists enroled in the nuclear weapon programs.
The creators of “Science and Conscience to the University”
Professor at the Escuela Universitaria de Ingeniería Técnica Agrícola of the Technical University of Madrid (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid), Javier Galeano is graduated in Physics at Universidad Complutense of Madrid and Ph.D in Physcis at UNED. Juan García Villaluenga is graduated and Ph. D. in Physics at UCM, is professor at this University. Both of them met at university UNNE in Argentine during a pre-doctorate stay. In 1995, they were awarded by Intercampus scholarship to study in Universidad Nacional del Nordeste (UNNE), Corrientes, Argentina, in the department of Biophysics. Since then, they keep in collaboration, making possible to design together this awarded course in Science on Stage (Spain).
About Science on Stage (Spain)
This International competition is open to the participation of science teachers of Spanish and Portuguese languages. This competition is divided in different categories, until fourteen, to cover a wide variety of scientific disciplines. The last edition was held in Santiago de Compostela (Spain).
In the organization is developed by Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Ciência Viva – Agência Nacional para a Cultura Científica e Tecnológica (Portugal), la Real Sociedad Española de Física, la Sociedad Geológica de España (SGE) and Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED).