By Dean Saitta, Department of Anthropology
About five years ago, American scientific and educational organizations—including the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Association of Universities—produced a bumper crop of reports suggesting that interdisciplinary teaching and research was the wave of the future in higher education. Since that time many universities (some more than others) have been experimenting with strategies to promote interdisciplinary and collaborative work. DU is now looking to better invest in such work as one part of its Strategic Positioning Initiative.
I’m a member of the Strategic Positioning Committee charged with developing three priorities for interdisciplinary work on campus. Other committee members include Phoenix Cai (Law, Co-Chair), Barbara Wilcots (AP Graduate Studies, Co-chair), Doug Allen (DCB), Andy Goetz (Geography), Frank Laird (JKSIS), Julia McGahey (AP Planning and Budget), Nicole Nicotera (GSSW) and Tim Weaver (SAAH). Chris Riordan (Dean, DCB) and James Herbert Williams (Dean, GSSW) are ex officio members. We’d like to use this blog to solicit ideas and stimulate conversation about priority development and the strategies we might use at DU to better promote interdisciplinary teaching and research.
Our committee’s Portfolio site (http://portfolio.du.edu/IDC) primes the pump for creative thought and dialogue about what we might do. It contains a wealth of background reading about interdisciplinary work (including the reports identified above), comparative information about what other institutions are doing (including many web links), a summary of takeaway lessons about interdisciplinarity that’s been distilled from the work of experts who specialize in studying it, a list of 12 strategies that have been employed elsewhere, and examples of interdisciplinary work that’s on-going here at DU.
Based on committee discussions thus far, we’ve drafted the following three priorities that are still subject to revision:
1. Removing administrative barriers—real or perceived—to interdisciplinary work and building better bridges between schools, colleges, and divisions.
2. Establishing mechanisms or strategies for promoting interdisciplinary work; i.e., for strengthening the “campus culture of interdisciplinarity."
3. Identifying "signature areas" for interdisciplinary work capable of exciting a broad base of faculty and having the potential to culminate in new Centers or Institutes (e.g., around such topics as sustainability, globalization, urbanism, social entrepreneurship, etc.).
We invite you to contact any one of the committee members with ideas and suggestions. However, we also hope for a broader and more interactive conversation via the Forum blog’s comment feature. Many thanks for your input and advice.
I'd like to thank the Interdisciplinary Strategic Planning Committee and all of the folks working to promote interdisciplinary initiatives on campus. In my experience studying and teaching at two previous institutions, I was frustrated by the lack of support for interdisciplinary work. DU already seems more welcoming, and I expect these conversations will lead to more concrete support. I enjoyed working with colleagues in History for the Writing in the Majors Project, and I can imagine a number of interdisciplinary research projects around teaching writing in the disciplines, multimedia composing across the curriculum, and evolving discourse conventions in multimodal and online publishing.
ReplyDeleteMy current interdisciplinary quest is on a smaller scale; in the fall, I will be teaching an FSEM titled "Using Our BRAINS: An Interdisciplinary Study of Zombies in Popular Culture." The readings will include articles from film studies, critical theory and cultural studies, history, biology and epidemiology, but I would love to have interdisciplinary ties beyond the texts. I hope to invite faculty members from other programs in for class discussions or coffee hours, so if you or anyone you know in any discipline has an interest in zombies, please email me at jennifer.campbell@du.edu.