Medical Humanities Minor Enriches STEM Experience for UC Davis Students
- by Maria Sestito
- May 20, 2025
This article was originally published on the Letters & Sciences website
Khushi Jain has been taking STEM classes all her life. The UC Davis undergraduate, a third-year genetics and genomics major in the College of Biological Sciences, admitted that her STEM curriculum of science, technology, engineering and mathematics has often come at the exclusion of other types of courses, particularly in the arts and humanities.
“I'm STEM groomed essentially,” Jain said recently.
The focus on STEM makes sense, particularly for students who plan to enter medicine. STEM courses provide a strong foundation for health care professionals and scientists who create technological innovations and breakthroughs towards curing cancer and preventing genetic diseases. A strong STEM curriculum may provide more opportunities and better-paying jobs for students who make it through.
But an education focused on these hard, technical skills alone isn’t what medical schools and hiring managers are looking for today, according to Meaghan O’Keefe, a bioethicist and associate professor of religious studies in the College of Letters and Science.
“One of the things they often say is, ‘We can teach the science, but that’s not all you need to be a good doctor,’” she said.
O'Keefe is one of the creators of the Critical Medical Humanities Program at Aggie Square in Sacramento. The new program offers undergraduates an immersive, cohesive learning experience looking at medical issues from multiple cultural and ethical perspectives, giving students a more well-rounded baseline to work from. Taking place across just one quarter, the program meets the requirements for the medical humanities minor.
The program welcomed its first official cohort of students this spring.
Listening to patients
The focus on STEM courses in the U.S. and other countries has become increasingly intense and ubiquitous since the early 2000s. At the same time, understanding patients and a patients' family’s diverse perspectives is critical. It's difficult for medical schools to give a lot of time to this because of the constraints on the curriculum so it's a great advantage for students to come in with some background already, O’Keefe said.
O’Keefe has spoken to medical school admissions officers who say that a background in humanities helps build these softer social skills as well as critical thinking skills and the ability to empathize with people who are from different cultures, religions and socioeconomic backgrounds. They want applicants who know how to ask questions and are open to listening to their patients’ needs and concerns beyond the clinical.
“As a future medical professional, it's sad, but you don't really think about that,” Jain said, recognizing the gap she’s had in her education so far. That's why she signed up for the Critical Medical Humanities Program.
Looking for a ‘right’ answer
Jain was candid about her experience growing up on the STEM track — and very aware of the areas where she thought she lacked a more holistic education. She and many of her classmates in the program have similar backgrounds, remiss in prior humanities courses. And the first two weeks of classes were rough on many of them.
The students didn’t know how to read the material or what to take away from it. They’re used to bold-font definitions in structured textbooks. They expect to be told — or, at least, be able to find out — what the right answer is to every question.
“When you are in STEM, it's like, there's always a right answer,” said Rebecca Boles, a transfer student and third-year global disease biology major. “There's always the right approach. It's black and white.”
Rebecca Boles, a third year UC Davis transfer student, works with her group during a Critical Medical Humanities course at Aggie Square this spring quarter. (Maria Sestito/UC Davis)
To move into the gray area and take a course where there are no “right” answers — just differing theories and perspectives, weaker and stronger arguments — was unfamiliar territory. The courses require close, critical readings of complex and nuanced articles written in more narrative styles. They discuss concepts such as ethics and morality — things that are not constrained to specific definitions or values.
“I come from a very, very science-y background,” Jain said. “So, it’s a mindset switch."
At some point, students in the class of 25 started to share their struggles with O’Keefe who helped them brainstorm strategies and come up with some reading solutions.
“If all you ever read are novels, news stories and textbooks, which is what I think our students read, it’s hard to be faced with a very complicated argument,” O’Keefe said. “The truth is that, in the world, outside of school and outside of very constrained circumstances in laboratories, we’re dealing with complex situations all the time. So, they have the skills to think through this, but they don’t think to apply them to things that they read.”
O’Keefe explained the typical format of a humanities article, pointing out how each section was intended for a specific purpose, speaking to the more analytical thinking the students are used to.
“It was just really helpful to hear that we're all on the same page and we're all kind of struggling with the concepts, figuring out how to do it correctly,” Boles said.
Grappling with morality, ethics and conflicting values
Students are taken through real-life situations and ethical conundrums experienced in the health care industry. They’re asked to think through different approaches and to see differing perspectives — and are learning not to make assumptions about how people will respond or make decisions.
The curriculum guides the students to take what they’re learning in the classroom about the history of and the institutional processes and structures in the health care system — including the harms it’s done — and integrate that into their work in the field.
“When there’s a conflict between the care team and the patient and the patient’s family, how do you repair that therapeutic relationship or, if you’re not able to, how do you try to come up with advice that takes into account respect for the patient’s wishes and the family’s concerns while still adhering to a set of ethical standards?” O’Keefe explained.
Sometimes that means asking the medical care team to change their approach.
“Instead of always making the patient accommodate the care team, it works the other way too,” she said. “Just having them think about what it is like to be with real people and having very hard conversations where there’s often a set of conflicting values.”
Smaller class sizes lead to better conversations
O’Keefe was able to go over student concerns and help guide them through the readings, in part, due to the smaller class sizes in the program. The students, she said, are also more comfortable opening up because they’re spending at least two full days each week together this quarter.
“I think having smaller classes where the students really know each other, they’re able to build up a level of trust for talking about really controversial and sensitive issues, and I think that’s sometimes hard to build in larger classes,” O’Keefe said. “In some ways, it’s the ideal liberal arts experience.”
The fact that the medical humanities courses primarily focus on in-class discussions and group projects also means everyone talks to each other.
“It also allows them to develop more complex projects because there’s enough overlap that they can look at the same problem from a bunch of different angles,” O’Keefe said. “I think it allows them to do deeper research and produce work that appreciates the complexity of the medical humanities.”