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An interdisciplinary group of Amherst College faculty will be proposing this year an innovative major in film and media studies. We think it advantageous to situate the study of film in its aesthetic, technical and socio-cultural dimensions within a wider history of media, analog as well as digital. Our major will also seek to integrate the formal and historical analysis of film and other media with hands-on production experience. Given that the new media blur productively the distinction between the consumption and creation of images, we believe that, while a portion of our majors will put production at the center of their program, all majors should have some basic experience in production. Whatever their individual emphases, all majors will take two required courses—a second-semester sophomore introductory class with a production component, and a first-semester senior integrative or capstone seminar—and at least six other classes chosen in consultation with two faculty advisors with whom each major has formally “contracted.” We are particularly excited about these required courses since they have no model elsewhere.
We anticipate drawing students and faculty from the humanities, arts, computer science, the social and natural sciences—from across the entire College, in short. The faculty affiliated with the major will take responsibility for staffing, in addition to the two classes required for the major, an annual “general education” course in film study suitable for first- and second-year students as well as for junior and senior non-majors. In addition, the faculty will coordinate the College’s course offerings in the aesthetics and cultures of national, regional, and global film and new media and in the production of the moving/sound image; administer the academic program and certify majors for graduation; help to maintain and expand the College’s library holdings in film and new media; invite artists and scholars to give lectures and classes; run film screenings and other media events both for majors and the general public—in short, be the primary locus for film and media culture on the Amherst campus.
A group of faculty in the social sciences and sciences have begun a conversation on how to expose students to methodologies that transcend disciplines. Their particular concern is the need to provide students with the multiple and interdisciplinary skills required for empirical thinking. Clearly all citizens need to be able to produce and consume data. The systematic use, organization and production of qualitative and quantitative data should be a skill that rises to the same level that writing does in the college curriculum. Some of the skills all students need to acquire involve choosing good problems; research design; and data collection. In particular:
How do you find data?
How do you evaluate data?
For whom was the data produced?
What is the bias and how do you account for/counteract it?
A team of faculty will further explore the most productive avenues of “overcoming the structural impediments to interdisciplinary curricular development” in this area and hope to produce new models for “interdisciplinary teaching and learning” for empirical thinking. Possibilities include development of an interdisciplinary general education course targeted at first or second year students and/or a faculty seminar that would teach faculty from multiple disciplines fluency in unfamiliar methodologies, including how to handle empirical data and use it in their courses.
In keeping with its liberal arts mission, Carleton has for decades been engaged in a variety of interdisciplinary work reflecting faculty expertise and interests that regularly test disciplinary boundaries and have often resulted in significant curricular innovation. In the near future, interdisciplinarity could experience, however, some harder times on our campus. The College is currently undergoing a major curriculum review and planning a reduction in the annual number of formal courses faculty are required to teach tentatively beginning in 2009. In light of all these imminent changes, our team proposes to explore the following crucial questions for our campus: how can Carleton best support interdisciplinarity as our institution moves to a lighter faculty teaching load? In a period in which departments will be asked to reduce their course offerings, how can the College continue to provide unique, but competing, interdisciplinary opportunities consistent with its commitment to the highest standards of excellence?
Some corollary inquiries might be: what are the best ways that interdisciplinary work can structurally be built into the curriculum? How can we best help students appreciate the value of interdisciplinary study? How can students be taught interdisciplinary modes of thought most effectively? What can be done to help faculty develop interdisciplinary curricular initiatives and research agendas, especially in the case of untenured faculty who might be interested but who face formidable hurdles, both practical and political? The team hopes to develop ideas and strategies that will help increase the likelihood of success as we enter Carleton’s new curricular era.
Working to expand our efforts in internationalization of the curriculum -- through strengthening area studies and supporting internationalization across the curriculum -- in more courses, through faculty development, through international internships, by expanding international student-faculty research, by creating international opportunities for alumni, etc.
Furman’s team will focus on integrative learning as it relates to a new curriculum approved by the faculty for implementation in the fall of 2008. The new curriculum includes a revised general education requirement and new first-year seminars – as well as a strong encouragement that faculty create integrate and interdisciplinary learning opportunities for our students. We will consider several ways that such integrative/interdisciplinary learning might be made concrete in the new curriculum:
(1) “Clustering” within First Year Seminars. Each student will be required to take two seminars, one in the fall and one in the spring semester. These seminars will be thematic and reflect the intellectual passions of the faculty. We are exploring ways of formally facilitating clusters of first-year seminars that will enable students in multiple seminars to focus on topics of intersecting relevance and interest.
(2) Interdisciplinarity within our Individualized Curriculum Program (ICP). The ICP program enables students to design their own majors. We will consider ways to conceive and support ICP interdisciplinary courses. We see such courses as stimulating student involvement in the conception and creation of their major curriculum, opening previously unexplored connections among faculty, and exemplifying the connected nature of knowledge that lies at the heart of a liberal arts education.
(3) Encouraging ad hoc connectivity by facilitating faculty conversations about interdisciplinarity. This approach moves beyond – or is a complement to – formal connectivity that typically is bounded by academic courses. A key to this approach is to help faculty discover the latent connections between their intellectual interests, which we will do in various ways, ranging from structured, interactive face-to-face events to a semantically indexed database of faculty teaching materials. Such connections have great potential for enhancing various intellectual interactions between and among faculty and students (e.g., in First-Year Seminars and ICPs, among other possibilities).
The Grinnell College team project will develop a strategy for implementing interdisciplinary curricular development pertaining to the broad area of “Environmental Challenges and Responses.” This project is linked the Expanding Knowledge Initiative (EKI) of Grinnell's recent strategic plan, which envisions the enrichment of our curriculum by offering courses and making new appointments in interdisciplinary and "new knowledge" areas.
Why this Area?
The broad area of "Environmental Challenges and Responses" offers a range of possibilities for interdisciplinary teaching and learning. Environmental issues cross all disciplines. They address pressing concerns of today, offer opportunities to explore the historical record, and invite interdisciplinary collaboration of faculty and students in teaching and learning. Topics related to “Environmental Challenges and Responses” include:
- Cultural and artistic responses
- Energy
- Environmental science and public policy
- Ethics
- Public health
- Resource distribution and consumption
- Sustainability and sustainability science
Goals of the Project:
We expect to explore the enrichment of Grinnell College's curriculum in the area of "Environmental Challenges and Responses" and develop a combination of strategies for doing so. These strategies, which have been pursued individually so far, include
- The appointment of individuals specifically trained in interdisciplinary approaches who will share that expertise by teaching and also by helping develop it in our existing faculty members, and
- Developing a number of models for interdisiplinary teaching, including and various kinds of collaborative teaching such as team teaching, course clusters, interdisciplinary"concentrations," and "mega-classes."
For the Mellon 23 project, we propose to explore their wholistic application to a broad area of inquiry. We have already issued an invitation to faculty members to discuss what we might to in the area of "Environmental Challenges and Responses" and soon will begin meeting with groups of faculty members to identify faculty interest in related topics.
Harvey Mudd College and Pomona College will use the Mellon 23 Assembly to host a planning retreat by the faculties of four Claremont Colleges to establish an intercollegiate program in Environmental Studies. Currently we have such consortial programs in Neuroscience and Media Studies, but not in E.S. In addition to our own colleges, we will bring to St. Paul faculty from Scripps College and Pitzer College (please note that Scripps is using its funds to bring its own team on Women’s Studies). Each of the undergraduate Claremont Colleges has an interdisciplinary program in environmental studies. Each program is distinctive, building on the particular strengths of its faculty. Although students may enroll in environmental studies courses at any of our institutions, there is very little formal coordination or cooperation among the faculty in planning course offerings. Furthermore, there are gaps in the curriculum that would be best addressed collectively We would like to build greater collaboration so as to enhance the curriculum in environmental studies at each college and to expand student research opportunities. Recently, Pomona and Pitzer Colleges underwent independent self studies and external review team visits in this area, and both teams have reported that their main prescriptive advice to us is to exploit the resources of the Claremont Consortium to maximize the curricular opportunities in environmental studies.
Our team is excited about the timeliness of this Assembly and the opportunity it gives to look at the question of interdisciplinarity from the entwined perspectives of structure and content.
Within the past decade, Macalester renewed its academic structure to comprise disciplinary departments, interdisciplinary departments, and interdepartmental concentrations. The numbers of the latter have remained the same until the past two years, when a lively interest in developing interdepartmental concentrations began to take shape. Two new concentrations, Middle Eastern Studies/Islamic Civilization and Human Rights and Humanitarianism, are now being offered; and a third concentration in Global Citizenship is in the approval process. Concentrations in Public Health and Community and Global Health are in the planning stages, as are major revisions to our current concentration in Urban Studies, aimed at expanding its interdisciplinary scope.
Along with the energy and innovative thinking of these curricular innovations has come a number of questions regarding the adequacy of the interdepartmental concentration structure to support all that faculty would like to do with these initiatives. New graduation requirements, effective for this year's entering class and overlaid with already existing distribution requirements, make concentrations an attractive vehicle for students to be able to use as a "pathway" for their navigation, a possibility that was not envisioned at the time the current structure of interdepartmental concentrations was worked out. Second, although interdepartmental concentrations were intended to be curricular structures with many entry-points, restrictions on the presence of gateway and capstone courses are now causing some faculty to wonder whether a student who pursues a particular concentration will be able to easily benefit from the perspectives of others who are doing the same. Third, under our current structure, concentrations are not entitled to resources. How to effectively support concentrations whose "home" is the college as a whole rather than within specific departments is a question with which we must grapple, along with the question of the relationship between interdepartmental concentrations and interdisciplinary departments.
The composition of our team reflects our interest in looking at interdisciplinarity simultaneously from the perspectives of both substance and structure. In addition to being a faculty member in Psychology, Kendrick Brown chairs our Educational Policies and Governance committee, which in Spring 2008 will begin a comprehensive re-examination of the curricular structure related to concentrations. Jim Dawes, author of *That the World May Know: Bearing Witness to Atrocity* (Harvard, 2007) has taken the lead role in developing our new Human Rights and Humanitarianism concentration Our third faculty member will be the coordinator of our anticipated concentration in Public Health, which will be taken to the faculty for approval in the Spring. (Discussions to name the coordinator are currently taking place on this concentration's planning committee.) Because the Assembly will be held on the campus of Macalester College, we trust a fourth member can be added to our team: Jan Serie, the O. T. Tanner Professor of Biology and the Director of our Center for Scholarship and Teaching. As she is expected to be the project director on a grant designed to promote synergy among concentrations and their capacity to foster curricular coherence, her insights and presence on this team would be most helpful.
This project explores ideas raised recently at Oberlin and in national discussions on the study of literature and its relationship to the teaching of language. The team will explore further how literature is taught and studied at Oberlin and what collaborations could occur amongst departments and programs engaged in literature.
Among the broad goals for our team:
• to enhance all programs that engage in literary studies
• to create more curricular support for small programs with large numbers of enrollments and/or majors
• to create new opportunities for scholarly dialogue conceived of as a form of collective faculty development.
More specifically, we hope:
• to re-ground the literary studies curriculum now that language departments are no longer perceived (by some students and faculty) as the most appropriate basis for literary studies.
• to engage in dialogue with related fields (Cinema/Media Studies; region-, nation- or area-based cultural studies and social sciences; the sciences (e.g. cognitive science); and disciplines focusing more on cultural production than criticism, i.e. Creative Writing, Rhetoric & Composition, Cinema Production, Art).
• to begin thinking about literary studies in terms that are fundamentally different from the nation- and coverage-based paradigms that the current program structures still largely reflect.
• to foster communication among literary-studies faculty and between literary studies and related fields
Specific projects might include:
• a “Center for Literary Studies”
• a large, cross-departmental introductory course in Literary Studies
Harvey Mudd College and Pomona College will use the Mellon 23 Assembly to host a planning retreat by the faculties of four Claremont Colleges to establish an intercollegiate program in Environmental Studies. Currently we have such consortial programs in Neuroscience and Media Studies, but not in E.S. In addition to our own colleges, we will bring to St. Paul faculty from Scripps College and Pitzer College (please note that Scripps is using its funds to bring its own team on Women’s Studies). Each of the undergraduate Claremont Colleges has an interdisciplinary program in environmental studies. Each program is distinctive, building on the particular strengths of its faculty. Although students may enroll in environmental studies courses at any of our institutions, there is very little formal coordination or cooperation among the faculty in planning course offerings. Furthermore, there are gaps in the curriculum that would be best addressed collectively We would like to build greater collaboration so as to enhance the curriculum in environmental studies at each college and to expand student research opportunities. Recently, Pomona and Pitzer Colleges underwent independent self studies and external review team visits in this area, and both teams have reported that their main prescriptive advice to us is to exploit the resources of the Claremont Consortium to maximize the curricular opportunities in environmental studies.
The Rhodes team would like to address a number of interrelated dimensions of enhancing interdisciplinary teaching and research at the college: the curricular implications of increasing interdisciplinary course offerings; the various models for interdisciplinary teaching and learning available to faculty members; and the strategies of overcoming the structural impediments to interdisciplinary curricular development. Rhodes is particularly interested in finding ways to embed interdisciplinary teaching and research opportunities into our new curriculum, which in any case takes a more interdisciplinary tack toward student learning than did our old curriculum.
Scripps' 2007 strategic plan, Scripps College in the Next Decade: Leading with Excellence, calls for the establishment of a Center for Research on Women and Women’s Leadership and a Leadership Studies Program. The goal of this initiative is two-fold: to promote research on women’s lives and the issues that impact them and their communities, and to prepare our graduates to be reflective, responsible and compassionate leaders.
For many women, “leadership” is necessarily embedded in a matrix of social affiliations and practical processes that have historically limited access to conventional, titled positions of leadership. Nonetheless, women have exercised leadership in numerous ways that are not always recognized as such. An analysis of women in leadership is therefore an important component of our program, both to bring historical depth and accuracy to the project and to offer a way to develop practices beyond conventional models. We expect that this interdisciplinary program will present diverse models of leadership, inclusive of organizing local communities, entrepreneurship, and elective office.
Our team will define the program’s specific parameters, including its administrative structure, e.g., as a stand-alone academic unit with faculty appointments or an institute with a director rotated from our faculty. We need to address several unique challenges including the need to integrate this new initiative with Scripps interdisciplinary, humanities-based, core curriculum and the desire to engage alumnae in the center’s operations. We will use the Mellon seed money to understand similar programs at other institutions and to host a major workshop on our campus in 2008 that brings together directors of such programs for a structured discussion of their experience and suggestions.
Smith has just completed it Strategic Planning and Reaccreditation processes. Those two efforts have resulted in the Smith Design for Learning, an effort to ehance cohesion, coherence and focus in an open curriculum. A central part of the design is the consolidation of our interdisciplinary efforts in international studies, enviromental studies and civic engagement. The Mellon 23 Assembly will enable three key faculty leaders of these efforts to discuss with colleagues from other liberal arts colleges how best to launch our efforts. The assembly will provide the opportunity to think about the best ways to coordinate the inaugural programing of the centers with exisiting departments' curricula and the best ways to devise the appropriate infrastructure to support the centers.
In addition to renewed emphasis on the development of student capacities and intellectual skills, the College will establish three interdisciplinary centers through which opportunities for student faculty research, student internships and intellectual exchange across disciplines will be enhanced. Specifically, the Center for International Studies and Intercultural Exchange will be the venue for cross-national and interdisciplinary approaches to learning, teaching and research in the international field. Smith has a long history of study abroad and a high percentage of international students. The Center will show case research. seminars and other activities directed at thoughtful reflection about U.S. culture and intercultural dialogues among American and international students as well as Smith faculty and visiting international faculty.
Similar goals and programing will be pursured in the Center for the Environment, Ecological Design and Sustainability. Environmental literacy will be advanced and interdisciplinary student faculty research projects will be supported as will educational outreach on environmental problems. The CEEDS center will facilitate collaboration and synergies among environmental interests on campus.
Finally our center for Civic Engagment will coordinate and expand the College's efforts in community-based learning. The College's long standing commitment to public service is reflected in the strong public policy focus of our social science units and the strength and scope of our educational outreach programs particularly in the sciences and engineering. Our efforts in this critical domain will be enhance by greater visibility, coordination and focus and the new interdisciplinary center will foster closer ties with the Smith curriculum.
In sum the Mellon 23 assembly address questions that we are confronting as we launch our efforts to create and sustain these interdisciplinary centers. Members of the Smith team will be especially interested in addressing the issues which emerge between traditional departments and curricula while enhancing multidisciplinary opportunities for learning and research. In particular we find the following themes of particular concern:
• Curricular implications of increasing interdisciplinary course offerings
• Models for interdisciplinary teaching and learning
• Overcoming structural impediments to interdisciplinary curricular development
• Student learning goals and outcomes assessment for interdisciplinary studies
• Encouraging interdisciplinary research and faculty development
We hope that we can make a contribution to the conversations in the area of structuring interdisciplinary appointments. We look forward to participating in this inaugural assembly.
In 2004 Vassar initiated plans for major new science facilities. Since then, Vassar faculty, students and administrators have been envisioning and planning science facilities that will support not only our core science departments but also thriving multidisciplinary programs that bridge the natural sciences with the social sciences and the humanities. Clearly, our goal is the design of facilities that will support and enhance existing programs and encourage the development of new ones. In this context, the Vassar team is interested in 1) the development of new academic bridges between the arts and the sciences and 2) identifying possible institutional mechanisms for prioritizing and addressing infrastructure needs which can act as barriers to multidisciplinary curricular development. In the year following the Assembly we will involve administrators and interested faculty from a variety of departments including Art, Music, Computer Science, Physics, Film, STS, Drama, and Media Studies in conversations about these issues. The relationship of new multidisciplinary initiatives to existing graduation requirements, such as the quantitative analysis requirement, and programs, such as the college course program, will be addressed. In addition, we will take the opportunity that the Mellon 23 Assembly provides to begin a campus wide consideration and assessment of the processes and procedures in place for appointing, reviewing, and supporting interdisciplinary faculty members, whether new hires or mid-career faculty who are developing new scholarly and teaching interests.
Interdisciplinary Studies: Challenges and Opportunities
Wesleyan’s team will focus on the structural, theoretical, and procedural aspects of interdisciplinary studies. The faculty team is comprised of three associate professors, each of whom has had experience working in and/or administering interdisciplinary academic endeavors:
Ethan Kleinberg is an Associate professor with a join appointment in both the Department of History and the College of Letters. The College of Letters is an interdisciplinary program, encompassing study of literature, history and philosophy. Kleinberg has served as chair of the College of Letters for the last two years.
Renee Romano is also an associate professor with a joint appointment in history and African-American Studies and has chaired both the program in African-American Studies and its associate academic center.
Manju Hingorani is an associate professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, a department that is, by nature, interdisciplinary. She has collaborated with faculty in the arts to design courses in film and science.
Among the topics on which the team will focus:
• The evolving nature of interdisciplinary study
• Development and maintenance of interdisciplinary curricula
• Balancing the needs of traditional department curricular with those of interdisciplinary programs
• Faculty appointments, tenure, promotion, and related personnel issue
• Interdiscipilinarity within an open curriculum
• Developing new majors and concentrations
• Capstone experiences and independent study in interdisciplinary majors
• Advising students
We anticipate that the team will learn from other schools and word toward addressing these issues. The outcome of the team’s work will be a report addressing these issues which will guide University planning in the years to come.
Many faculty at Williams College share a common set of curricular concerns. We worry that the undergraduate curriculum has become fractionated and overly specialized; that students come into higher-level courses without sharing intellectual understandings; that students’ intellectual worlviews are increasingly ahistorical; that students are unfamiliar with axiomatic thinking; that students are not offered an adequate opportunity to integrate knowledge from diverse disciplines; and so on. Clearly, the problems we see cut through disciplinary boundaries and the solutions we seek are necessarily interdisciplinary as well. For the past several months a group of Williams faculty have been engaged in conversations aimed at understanding the nature of these curricular issues and plans to continue working on ways to address them. Seventeen faculty, representing thirteen disciplines, are actively engaged in a seminar at the college’s Oakley Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences, led by the chair of the college’s Interdisciplinary Studies Program. A number of additional faculty have expressed keen interest and are following our proceedings through an online wiki. Pending support, we hope to bring scholars and colleagues from other institutions to campus to include their perspectives in our deliberations. While the exact shape of the project continues to evolve, we hope to bring some kind of curricular initiative to the administration and faculty at large in the next eighteen months.
Last Update 9/24/08
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