The motivations and impacts of an art-science collaboration at Princeton University

The Princeton University Council on Science and Technology (CST) and Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM) have collaborated on several projects over the last five years. CST works to broaden and deepen engagement in science and engineering, in part through fostering projects that cross academic divisions. The collaboration with PUAM is motivated by student attitude surveys indicating a low percentage of students (<33%) who report that they are often or very often creative when they solve science and engineering problems. Students majoring in the natural sciences are well below the average of all students, at <10%.

Educational staff and curators at PUAM host several undergraduate courses, across all academic divisions, for one or more meetings throughout each semester. Faculty surveys indicate that the motivation for science and engineering faculty to teach with the PUAM collection include building specific content knowledge—such as analyzing materials, techniques, or moments in history—as well as universal skills like communication and close observation. The overall response of the science and engineering faculty to teaching in PUAM is strongly positive.

For the geosciences, courses use the collection to discuss the properties of materials used in, and historical data that can be extracted from, the art pieces. In Fall 2018, we will implement a pre- and post-exercise survey of introductory climate students using a landscape painting from 1875 by Albert Bierstadt to discuss paleoclimate proxy data, the environmental context of the late 19^thcentury, and the process of inductive reasoning inherent to almost all geoscience research. If these survey results are consistent with anecdotal experiences from previous semesters, students will by strongly engaged, will improve their content knowledge, and will better understand the scientific process.