“Out of 34 countries, the United States was ranked second in scientific literacy,” Miller said. “But 28 percent is not good enough — we shouldn’t be satisfied with a democracy where one (in) four people can figure out what is going on.”

Increasing as the 21st century continues, the issues that people are going to face will be complex, he said.

Nobody can tell what the scientific issues will be 50 years from now, Miller said. But professors can teach about principles that aren’t going to change in 100 years, such as the basic structure of matter.

“If students don’t know what a cell is or DNA, you are going to have zero chance of knowing what a stem cell is,” Miller said.

Laurie Thorp, the director of Residential Initiative on the Study of the Environment, said her job as a professor is to prepare future citizens.

“The act of being a citizen means that you participate in the democratic process of being a citizen of this country, a citizen of the state and of the town or city where you live,” Thorp said. “In order to do that, you have to be informed about these issues and think critically about them.”

Richard Snider, a zoology professor, said science classrooms are supposed to teach students how to examine the facts and be able to make informed decisions from those facts.

Thorp said she wants her students to learn there are political notions embedded in science.

“It’s not innocent. All science has some kind of agenda by the nature of who is doing it and who is funding it,” Thorp said.

However, she said, there are courses taught without any policy or political implications.

There is a substantial movement toward professors teaching students the basic tools to understand topical scientific issues, Miller said.

“Michigan State has been a national leader in this,” he said.

But, he said this is a continual process.

“We have a lot of integrated science courses where there are courses for nonscience majors that gives them an understanding of a topic in science,” Miller said.

The intent of the integrative studies courses is to bring many disciplines together so students can think of them more holistically, Thorp said. Students need a place where they can pull ethics, values, policy and science together.

“The nature of the teaching has been changing and there are fewer and fewer cases where you just have to memorize things for the sake of memorizing,” Miller said. “There is a lot more effort to get students to understand the basic ideas behind it and the applications of those ideas.”