About the course

Science originates from our curiosity in understanding nature. Throughout continuous development in the past centuries, science has evolved into specific disciplines and incubated new technologies that benefit the society. However, contemporary global challenges such as climate change and infectious pandemics often require expertise that goes beyond a specific domain and integrates across disciplines. As one of the teaching innovations at Duke Kunshan University (DKU), the Integrated Science (IS) courses aim at equipping our students with an organically synergized view of nature and consequently the capacity of solving complex problems they will be facing in their future careers and lives.

IS courses are important divisional foundation courses for all science-oriented students at DKU. Currently, our teaching model has three IS courses on the three key cornerstones of modern science – Physics, Chemistry, Biology – each transmitting disciplinary knowledge and training scientific skillsets as well as mindsets; meanwhile, they are also intended to cross talk with one another in connecting and integrating concepts, equations, theories and applications. Physics, chemistry, biology professors co-teach this set of courses.  Our science students can take all of them, with the goal of establishing an integrated picture of sciences.

IS Teaching Team and Instructors

IS teaching team involves a group of instructors working cooperatively to set course goals and contents, select common materials such as textbooks, decide topic sequence, and evaluate outcomes. Meanwhile, IS instructors use individual teaching styles and interpretations of materials for a diversified pedagogical delivery. Dedicated lab managers and instructors also support the teaching activities. Currently, three instructors serve as course lead persons (the web links provide their academic background, interests and experience):

Physics: Dr. Changcheng Zheng, Associate Professor of Physics

https://scholars.duke.edu/person/changcheng.zheng

Chemistry: Dr. Song Gao, Professor of Environmental Science/Chemistry

https://scholars.duke.edu/person/Song.Gao

Biology: Dr. Chang Chung, Professor of Biology

https://scholars.duke.edu/person/chang.chung

All materials are contributed by Duke Kunshan University.