The program welcomes premedical students and science majors interested in thinking beyond the problem sets assigned in their specialized courses, as well as students in the humanities and social sciences who aspire to overcome the division of knowledge that accompanied the rise of modern science.

Students join the program because it offers them a chance to integrate their understanding of science, medicine, and technology into a liberal arts education, and because it offers them the freedom to tailor an adjunct major or minor to their own particular interests. Above all, the major appeals to students who rebel against the claim that human knowledge can be sharply divided into disciplinary fields, or into the "two cultures"?so neatly symbolized at Northwestern by the north and south ends of campus.