Building an Integrated High School Curriculum Focused on the Biology and History of Smallpox

Recently we were challenged to develop curricular materials to explore system dynamics as a foundation for engaging high school students in interdisciplinary studies. We needed to: engage student interest, be responsive to the schools ’ need to meet specific learning standards, foster an appreciation for crossing traditional disciplinary boundaries to address “real-world ” issues, and provide students and teachers with opportunities to develop system dynamics mind-sets and tool-sets that could transfer to other scenarios. We revised our collegiate course, “Plagues and People, ” that focused on the impact of epidemic disease on human history. Here we chose to focus consistently on a single disease, smallpox, that has, over millennia, killed more than 100 million individuals. The package consists of 10 case studies; four of the cases have a primary biological focus, four focus on history, and two are interdisciplinary. Each is designed to be free-standing, but to also draw on the insights from other cases and to lead into yet others. Each utilizes a variety of system dynamics-based explorations and provides opportunities for students and teachers with widely differing system dynamics exposure and ability. Collectively, they provide a rich mosaic of intellectual explorations that bridge traditional but limiting barriers separating academic disciplines