Quantum theory is a mind-bending idea, suggesting that, at the subatomic level, particles can exist in multiple states at the same time. Scientists often give the example of physicist Erwin Schrödinger's cat, which is thought as both alive and dead until observed. Rhona Trauvitch, associate teaching professor of English at FIU, prefers Miss Piggy.
Though entirely fictional, Miss Piggy is a celebrity, fashion influencer and pop culture icon. She has graced the covers of Vogue and Time, been a guest on daytime and nighttime talk shows and even landed a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her influence is very real, even though she is not. Miss Piggy blurs the line between fiction and reality, much like the strange paradoxes of quantum mechanics.
That interplay between the real and the imagined is exactly what Trauvitch explores through FIU's Science & Fiction Lab — and it's the foundation of a teaching method that just earned a $400,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant. The grant will support the lab's next phase: "Enhancing Multiliteracy in STEM with Fi-Sci Pattern Mapping Pedagogy." The project will measure how fiction, as a rhetorical tool, helps students make complex and counterintuitive scientific ideas more accessible, bridging the gap between the humanities and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).
It is worth noting, less than 5% of NSF grants are awarded to humanities researchers.
"We want to use this power of fictionality to help communicate and understand science better — because humans understand fiction very easily," Trauvitch says.
At the heart of the lab is fiction-science pattern mapping, a method that guides students in uncovering surprising links between literature and science. One computer science class, for example, might examine ethical dilemmas inspired by Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot," debating how robots might make decisions in unexpected situations. Through exercises like this, students aren't just learning concepts — they're practicing how to think across disciplines.
Since its inception in 2021, the lab has introduced students to the practice of applying and communicating their expertise across disciplinary divides. In 2022, seed funding from FIU's Honors College, the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and the Office of Micro-Credentials allowed faculty fellows to co-create and implement a series of "jigsaw modules:" stand-alone lessons that can be slotted into existing courses, engaging hundreds of students in interdisciplinary content. Building on this momentum, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded the lab a $150,000 grant in 2023 to expand its programming.
Trauvitch initially expected the lab to help non-science majors better grasp STEM concepts. She did not expect the work to impact STEM students, but it did. They were also gaining a richer understanding of fiction.
Now, with NSF funding, the team will develop a detailed rubric to measure whether the fiction-science framework tangibly improves students' understanding across both humanities and STEM.
"We are using a multiliteracy approach," Trauvitch explains. "To truly understand something, you need multiple approaches. It's no longer enough to just know one thing. You need to access it through different disciplines, different media, maybe even different languages. With this rubric, we'll be able to see whether students can take a multiliterate view of science."
She hopes students will learn to spot unexpected connections, bridge imagination and reality and, ultimately, discover that understanding often begins with seeing the familiar in entirely new ways. Beyond measurable outcomes, Trauvitch hopes the lab encourages students to explore interests outside their majors and helps them explain their field to non-experts.
"This doesn't mean dumbing things down," she adds. "It means having interdisciplinary fluency — so students can share their expertise with anyone, not just fellow specialists."
The approach also prepares graduates for a globalized job market, equipping them to explain what they do — and why it matters.
"If we show this works the way we think it does, we might even include it in the general education state curriculum," she says. "That would help people not only understand and communicate science better, which all of us desperately need, but it also gives humanities students confidence in their expertise."
It's the students' imaginative analogies that keep Trauvitch and the lab inspired. She recalls one moment in particular: a student explained a connection they had made between Virginia Woolf's "Jacob's Room" and dark matter. In the novel, Jacob exists only through the perspectives of others — a brother, friend, neighbor — leaving readers to piece together who he really is. Dark matter, the student argued, works in much the same way: invisible, elusive and known only through the effects it leaves on the universe around it.
"I still can't believe she came up with that," Trauvitch says. "It actually made me cry because I thought, 'Oh, they're getting it!'"
