In my three decades at Interlochen, I have found that many young artists arrive here with the notion that the arts and sciences are on opposite ends of the spectrum. They believe that science is a boring, vocabulary-laden, overly-exacting, strictly intellectual exercise in minutia - one that is not only beyond them, but plays no role in their artistic lives. I am happy to say that once they go into the field or to work in a lab, their experiences show them the value of science and great similarities between the artistic and scientific mind.

My colleagues and I believe in hands-on teaching. Most students learn best by experience, by doing and by using numerous senses at once. Whether learning new choreography, a new symphony, or a new play, an individual must often engage with the work from many different angles before getting it right. Not just in the sense of learning the right steps or notes or lines, but also probing the piece to understand its true depth and significance. This type of problem solving is also at the heart of the scientific method.

The hands-on approach of taking students into the field where they can engage with and try to understand the workings of the natural world simultaneously appeals to and nurtures their artistic minds. Only through frequent intimate contact with the beauty and diversity of the natural landscape does one develop a deep and lasting sense of appreciation and caring for the world. For my course, this is a major goal: to create ecologically literate and environmentally sensitive individuals. Whatever future career a student might pursue, there are few aspects of citizenship more important than recognizing our interconnectedness to and dependence upon the earth.

Some students discover that they love being in nature and trying to understand the world around them. They begin to understand the infinite number of questions that are waiting to be explored and answered. This is what happens when an art student goes on to become a biologist, entomologist, hydrologist, a solar physicist, etc. And perhaps this shouldn’t be too surprising. After all, the best artists and scientists share similar traits: passion, curiosity and a love of collaboration.

Perhaps the key to understanding the similarities between science and art is not in terms of the end results, but in the type of person who practices the discipline. All my former students who have gone into the sciences have been eager, inquisitive, insightful and open to new experiences. They tended to be disciplined and committed to taking charge of their educational quest to figure things out. They were willing - and wanted - to see the world in a new way.

I may have just described Steve Goodman. Steve was an exceptionally talented ceramics student - strongly self-disciplined, bold, creative, passionate and tirelessly dedicated to his art. Similarly, as an ecology student, Steve wanted to go beyond the class. So I helped him devise a number of field research experiences. How many high school students would get up before sunrise every single day for three months and lay next to the school’s sewage lagoons to record and graph fall duck migration patterns? Steve did. For his spring ecology project, he built a tree blind twenty feet up in a tree from which he studied the behavior of a nesting pair of red-shouldered hawks. In his research projects, Steve was strongly self-disciplined, bold, creative, passionate and tirelessly dedicated. The same traits that made him an accomplished artist undoubtedly contributed to his success as a world-renowned scientist.

For me, the two things that make the human experience richest are the creative arts and the beauty and integrity of the natural world. Perhaps it is this viewpoint of mine that makes me see a similarity in temperament between artists and scientists. They seem to share a common sensitivity to the world around them, as well as a need to experience that world and then express that experience for others. More importantly, they come to realize that science is both attainable and relevant to their lives - and maybe even fun. I can think of few greater achievements for the Academy’s Science Department than helping to shift our students’ outlook on the world and for them to carry these ideas and sense of wonder out into the world.

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