CMC's Future History: Inside Integrated Sciences

As CMC moves closer to realizing its bold integrated sciences vision, President Hiram Chodosh addresses this important moment in CMC’s accelerating trajectory.

Interview by Thomas Rozwadowski

Two students working with tubs in a lab.

Photos by Anibal Ortiz and Isaiah Tulanda '20

The start of the 2025-26 academic year will be historic for CMC. This summer, the Robert Day Sciences Center—the College’s iconic new BIG-Bjarke-Ingels Group designed building and home to the Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences—will open before its grand unveiling to students returning for the fall semester, and later, community members at a special public event on Sept. 26.

As CMC moves closer to realizing the full impact of its bold integrated sciences vision, we spoke with President Hiram Chodosh about the decision points, planning, and momentum that led to this important moment in CMC’s accelerating trajectory.

He began the interview by giving credit to the “epic leadership and teamwork” of the Board of Trustees, the President’s Executive Cabinet, the entire staff of the College, and the Advisory Council for the project; the “unrivaled, record-breaking generosity” of CMC’s donors; the “insightful feedback and creative ideas” of hundreds of students and alumni; and the “unparalleled brilliance” of CMC’s entire faculty, including our founding and new faculty in this “revolutionary” program, who brought the “triple threat” of “research brilliance, student-centricity, and start-up ethos to design and launch the Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences.”

Let’s start with the building, as it’s impossible not to be excited by the visible construction progress of the Robert Day Sciences Center (RDSC), which will anchor campus for decades to come. By the time this article appears in print, we’ll be near the end of the spring semester and only a few months away from its expected completion and opening. How does it feel to be so close to this ambitious goal—and do you have a favorite moment or story from the RDSC construction phase thus far?

Impossible, really. It’s not even proving the possible—it’s disproving the impossible. When we started down this path, we had a sub-zero chance of getting to this moment. But this is CMC. This is what we do. I remember the moments. My first talk to students in the spring of 2013 when I said, “you can’t lead in business today, without a sophistication in science; you can’t do smart policy today, without a sophistication in science.” The very difficult decision to develop our own program as the only feasible way to double the size of science capacity for the three colleges in Keck. The walk down North Mall to the baseball field that everyone thought was just too far. The first, head-snapping budget estimate from BIG. Each incredibly generous gift. Every creative idea that we could pack into one facility to become the home for the revolutionary program. Impossible.

The Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences (KDIS) has been churning on campus this entire time, waiting for its new home. This year’s incoming class was the first to be able to major in Integrated Sciences. New faculty are being hired. New classes are being offered. Not many institutions can build a program from the ground up, in just a few years. As you reflect on everything that has gone into both the construction of RDSC and KDIS, what has been core to the strategy and vision coming to life on campus?

First, the core DNA in our founding. Liberal arts to grapple with the big questions, and responsible leadership to actualize the answers. The commitment to bringing big disciplines together (economics and political science) at our founding. The original idea of the College to deliver a rationally balanced education to prepare students for their future world of affairs. Second, loving the problems in undergraduate science education. Siloed disciplines within and outside sciences, including ethics, policy, and economics; just-in-case pedagogy (focused on remembering content for some indeterminate future); separate tracks for science and non-science students; and other problems. Third, the imagination and commitment to find responsive solutions that were CMC-purposed with a triple threat faculty: researchers who are head and shoulders above the field, teachers who are dedicated to student-centric pedagogy, and academic leaders with the entrepreneurial energy to build a completely new program from scratch. Finally, a North Star focus on creating the next great generation of responsible leaders in business, government, and the professions. Leaders who understand and are ready to surmount the challenges and seize the opportunities of our time. Genetic targeting and editing to improve human health. Mapping of neural-networks and mental processes to understand how to keep our brains healthy and our decisions sound. New green technologies to protect our planet. Human intelligence to make the best use and avoid the harms of artificial intelligence.

Major milestones: This year's incoming class is the first to major in Integrated Sciences at CMC. Among the spring semester offerings for students: the introductory Codes of Life course, team taught with KDIS Professor Ran Libeskind-Hadas (below-left), and Neurobiology of Learning and Memory with KDIS Professor Diana Williams (below), who joined CMC in 2024.

To lead responsibly, we cannot rely on making breakthrough discoveries alone. As noted surgeon and author Atul Gawande taught us when he visited our Athenaeum, we must prepare students to follow through in increasingly innovative ways, as well. This means understanding and integrating foundations in economics, policy, and ethics in the application of new discoveries to improve human conditions.

This all leads us to the vision and formation of KDIS as a new, revolutionary undergraduate integrated sciences program at CMC. Outward-focused on grand challenges; problem-based learning; hands-on research; computational core; engaged teamwork and faculty expertise; and the integration of scientific and other disciplines in one curriculum for all of our students. KDIS is prepared to deliver what the world needs from our next generation of responsible leaders.

Professor Ran Libeskind-Hadas teaching a course.

What are the programmatic elements of KDIS that stand out most to you? How do you think CMC’s approach to integrated sciences differentiates it within higher education?

I call them revolutionary commitments because I truly believe what we are doing is a game changer for higher education. First off, KDIS is not organized in traditionally siloed departments. It is one. One major leading to limitless student achievements built around three grand challenges—Health (genomics, systems biology, and health); Brain (brain, learning, and decision sciences); and Planet (climate, energy, and the environment). Each of the grand challenges will naturally bring together faculty members with complementary backgrounds to engage in collaborative teaching and research. This is crucial because it will proactively develop a culture that allows KDIS to remain nimble, adaptive, and reconfigurable for the long term.

We have also created an integrated problem-based pedagogy that reinforces these commitments in each of our students, not just those pursuing a major. Universal literacy in scientific method and computational tools, including computer and data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. Each student creates his or her own generative AI, called ChatCMC, in the context of a serious social-scientific problem. That problem provides the opportunity for just-in-time learning that also integrates economics, policy, and ethics. Students engage in deep research, teamwork, and collaboration inside and outside the classroom. They pursue their post-graduate aspirations through our institutes, centers, and labs, and work with public institutions, private industry, and the local community. The Innovation Studio inside the Robert Day Sciences Center allows students to develop new solutions at the intersection of hardware, software, and real world challenges. The department offers a uniquely flexible, self-driven major, including opportunities for students to develop their own interests and expertise.

You’ve used the phrase “just-in-time learning” at some public events, too. Can you briefly expand on what you mean by that?

We have instants, moments in which we suddenly want to learn, know, do something, and boom, we go get what we need, just in time. We hunger for something we don’t know. We have a problem to solve. Our brain is primed to absorb what we need in real time. That learning integrates immediately into our experience. Once learned, we can recall it instantly. That’s just-in-time learning.

This contrasts with just-in-case learning. We have to learn something “just in case” we may need it someday, not sure when. Learn this content, master these techniques, “just in case” you may one day have to use it. Take these courses, “just in case.” Do these labs, “just in case.” The problem is that even if we have incredible memories, it’s hard to retrieve this knowledge when we actually really need it.

Many traditional science curricula are just-in-case. Our Codes of Life course (SCI 10) is just-in-time.

Professor Lars Schmitz, Kravis Associate Professor of Integrated Sciences and Biology expert, was recently featured on WIRED sharing his passion and knowledge on the evolution of eyes throughout the animal kingdom.

Yes, we wrote about Codes of Life when it first launched in 2023. For those who may not remember, why is that class such a powerful example of how KDIS operates?

Well, every CMC student, whether they intend to pursue the major or not, takes Codes of Life as an introductory course. And this foundational learning experience reflects each of the KDIS commitments. It will change the way students learn science and computation and their relationship to the problems they care about most in society. This is how KDIS invites every student to think through complex problems by exploring their own research projects with an opportunity to make a positive impact.

So, let’s say you are a student who didn’t particularly like science in high school, or you have never coded before. You walk into Codes of Life. You are immediately given a problem, not a problem set. This problem also does not live in the abstract. It has a context—and requires a real solution for a real local stakeholder.

The challenge, in this case, is antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a global health crisis that is responsible for over five million deaths per year worldwide. This is an increasingly urgent challenge, as new pathogens are emerging that resist current antibiotics. By deploying various methodologies—DNA isolation, amplification, and sequencing, for starters—you and other students will soon understand how AMR affects the biology of water across scales, locally and globally. Meanwhile, you will also simultaneously learn how to code and build your own generative AI model, ChatCMC. No prior experience necessary.

As you learn the biology of water, you also learn about the economics of the biology of water, the policy of the economics of the biology of water, the ethics of the policy of the economics of the biology of water. Is your head spinning yet? You bring it all, in one set of findings, developed in collaboration with classmates as a team, to present to a public authority in charge of a live water system, in our case, a local water quality agency. One instance of a global health challenge. One instance of what it means to learn integrated science. One instance of what it means to learn integrated science in the Kravis Department at Claremont McKenna College.

Beyond the next few months with the RDSC opening—which we’ll be dedicating much of our fall magazine to—is there still a grand goal or ideal on the horizon for CMC and its approach to the sciences? What do you want the CMC community to be thinking about?

The grand challenges in the human condition are complex. (An alum once taught me that getting to the moon is complicated, but raising a child is complex!). No one discipline can fully contemplate or respond to a wicked problem. No one person can answer a complex question. The highest value solutions are unknown. If we already knew how to answer them, no one would care. So, the question is: How do we prepare this next great generation of responsible leaders in business, government, and the professions to respond to the challenges of their future world of affairs? Our entire liberal arts curriculum, our entire leadership program is designed to answer that question. Yet, here too, we cannot do that alone. We need everyone, all in, on the Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences, on the Robert Day School of Economics and Finance, on political economy and policy, on the critical role of the humanities in developing, in an era of AI, our best human intelligence.

Interior of the continuing construction of the Robert Day Sciences Center.

Progress Check:
Robert Day Sciences Center

Exterior and interior construction of the Robert Day Sciences Center (RDSC) is progressing as planned, with the building expected to begin mobilization in June. The mobilization process will enable the set-up of teaching and research labs, among other spaces, throughout the summer. The RDSC’s “official” opening will mark the first day of classes (Aug. 25, 2025) as students arrive to use the building for the fall semester. A special public gathering and ribbon cutting will follow on Sept. 26.

High-Powered Research

Thanks to a $918,485 Major Research Instrumentation grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), CMC is acquiring a powerful, high-performance computing (HPC) cluster to help expand computational capacity and facilitate advanced research across several disciplines.

Four professors standing in front of new high-tech equipment.

CMC and Harvey Mudd College were awarded the consortium grant to prepare the next generation of students in the natural, computational, mathematical, and social sciences.

Paul Nerenberg, Kravis Associate Professor of Computational Science, served as the Principal Investigator (PI) on the consortium grant, with support from Shibu Yooseph, Kravis Professor of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics; Angela Vossmeyer, Rothacker Family Associate Professor of Economics and George R. Roberts Fellow; Jamie Haddock, Iris & Howard Critchell Assistant Professor of Mathematics at HMC; Bilin Zhuang, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at HMC; and several other colleagues from CMC and HMC.

Nerenberg said he was drawn to the promise of assembling the new Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences (KDIS) for moments like this.

“KDIS is an interdisciplinary science department that is building expertise among the entire CMC student body about how to use computation in service to answering whatever questions interest them,” he said. “We want our students to graduate being knowledgeable and equipped with skills relevant to current and future workspaces. I think graduates who are coming out of college with those skills will automatically have a bit of a leg up on ones who don’t.”