By Janet Njelesani, Associate Professor in Occupational Therapy, and Grace A. Chen, Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow in Teaching and Learning, at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development
In 2019, the Steinhardt Arts & Humanities Collective began discussing how Steinhardt’s human development pre-professional students, including teaching, nutrition, art therapy, drama therapy, and occupational therapy students, would benefit from richer learning in the humanities. Human development professionals need to be able to understand historical contexts, engage in rigorous analyses and critical interpretations of social issues, and refine skills such as empathy, writing, listening, and creativity. In 2023, we applied for and were awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support this work. The following post summarizes some of the lessons we have learned.
In many professional fields, including education, engineering, and health, we’ve seen a growing shift toward techno-rational models of training. This often shows up as a proliferation of checklists, standards, and rubrics, many driven by accrediting bodies and professional organizations. These systems are rooted in the need to ensure quality, consistency, and accountability. But as educators in the human development professions, we’re concerned that this shift toward what is measurable, replicable, and efficient is sidelining the very elements that make these professions human. Bringing informed, purposeful elements of humanistic inquiry into STEM education can deepen and enrich student learning.
What are the Humanities?
When we refer to the humanities, we’re drawing from a wide array of disciplines: philosophy, history, literature, art, music, and theater, among others. And we’re also pointing to a broader approach to intellectual engagement that emphasizes meaning-making, interpretation, and critical reflexivity over standardization and control. And in doing so, we invite students to grapple with essential questions:
- What does it mean to be human, especially in contrast to artificial intelligence?
- What is a good life?
- What does it mean to care, to love, to suffer?
- What kind of society do, should, and could we live in?
These are the questions that shape identity and purpose, questions STEM students also carry with them, even if rarely voiced.
Humanities also bring with them distinct texts and methods. We engage with fiction, poetry, film, and philosophical essays. We use close reading, comparative analysis, oral history, and creative interpretation as ways of knowing that complement empirical social sciences research. These methods encourage imagination, empathy, and ambiguity, all essential in professional settings.
Why do the Humanities matter in professional education?
Incorporating the humanities into professional education brings many benefits:
- Skills: Critical thinking, analytical writing, and multimodal communication remain essential. But just as crucial are less quantifiable skills: listening, imagination, compassion, and creative problem-solving.
- Perspective: Humanities cultivate tolerance for complexity and ambiguity, empathy for others’ experiences, and an understanding of historical and sociopolitical contexts. These are vital for professionals navigating dynamic and diverse communities.
- Meaning: Many human-development professions, including teaching, counseling, and community health, can be demanding in time, skill, and emotional labor. What sustains people in these roles is often meaning, not metrics. Humanities help students reflect on why they do this work in the first place.
- Human Development: Our students aren’t just future professionals. They are also developing human beings. Especially for undergraduates, college is a time for reflection, exploration, and identity formation. The humanities create space for existential questioning that can shape lifelong values.
How can we integrate the Humanities into STEM?
One example of integrating humanistic inquiry into STEM education is Dr. Anne Washington’s Books to Blockchain: Quantification for Pattern Discovery, a cross-disciplinary undergraduate seminar. Enrolling approximately 30 students from NYU’s Steinhardt School, Stern School of Business, and Tandon School of Engineering, the course interrogated the systems of power embedded in practices of recordkeeping, counting, and archiving within financial institutions. Rather than simply teaching the technical mechanics of blockchain or financial databases, the course asked foundational humanistic questions:
- Who decides what gets counted, and who gets left out?
- How have systems of quantification shaped our understanding of value, history, and trust?
- What parallels exist between the centralized ledgers of the past and the decentralized digital ledgers of today?
Students conducted field observations and a digital ethnography to understand firsthand how data is generated, classified, and preserved in real-world settings. They each also created a field guide, a format borrowed from naturalists, inviting metaphorical thinking and visual storytelling. The course used the recurring image of a bird to playfully reference the field guide motif. The curriculum bridged historical and contemporary data infrastructures—Books referring to handwritten, centralized bank ledgers, and Blockchain to cryptographically secure, decentralized digital records. Images of vintage bank books were paired with screenshots of Bitcoin blockchain transactions to spark comparative analysis. Students curated and presented their projects in a public gallery exhibit.
Another example is a course taught by Dr. Grace A. Chen, Sociopolitical Contexts of STEME Education at Steinhardt. This in-person seminar course is designed primarily for undergraduate pre-service teachers preparing to teach STEME subjects, with a special focus on mathematics education. Rather than beginning with curriculum standards or classroom management, it begins with a much more personal and provocative question:
What does math mean to you—and what are you carrying into your future classroom?
Class sessions regularly open with activities centered on visual analysis and conceptual exploration. Students are shown diverse images and invited to respond with the prompts:
- What do you notice?
- What do you wonder?
This seemingly simple exercise sets the tone for the course: observation, curiosity, and critical reflection are foregrounded over rote answers. It creates an intellectual environment that validates students’ personal experiences while opening space for new ways of seeing.
Another class activity engages students in a conceptual unpacking of the word “math.” Each student brainstorms words they associate with the term, writing them on post-it notes. Once collected, students gather in groups to sort their words into categories. This exercise yields serious insight. Students often discover that most of their associations are negative, even though they are aspiring math teachers. Words like stress, right or wrong, boring, and test emerge far more often than creative, beautiful, or powerful. After reflecting on their groupings, students are asked to consider:
- What does this say about the cultural narratives we’ve internalized about math?
- What are we unconsciously carrying into our teaching?
By making the familiar strange, students develop a critical lens on disciplinary assumptions, one they can carry into pedagogical decision-making.
Conclusion: Reclaiming the Human in the Professional
In an era where professional education is increasingly defined by efficiency, accountability, and quantifiable outcomes, the humanities remind us of something essential: our work is fundamentally human.
Whether we are preparing students to become engineers, doctors, educators, or analysts, we must also prepare them to be ethical decision-makers, empathetic colleagues, and reflective citizens. Integrating the humanities into STEM education isn’t about watering down technical rigor; it’s about ensuring that the people we’re preparing for high-stakes, real-world roles are equipped to understand not just how things work, but why they matter.
To learn more about the work of Professors Chen and Njelesani on the humanities and professional education, you can watch their TeachTalk from last spring.