One of the key characteristics and benefits of the Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies Program is that you can pursue interdisciplinary interests by studying in two distinct areas with the minor-minor combination path. The article below from The Chronicle of Higher Education recently featured a study on the impact of double majoring and the benefits of bridging different domains of knowledge!

From The Chronicle:

Students who major in two fields are more apt than their single-majoring peers to think both integratively and creatively, according to a new study.

“Double majors give students the opportunity to build bridges between domains of knowledge, and many students travel those bridges regularly,” said Steven J. Tepper, an associate professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University and a co-author of “Double Majors: Influences, Identities, and Impacts,” a report describing the study

Mr. Tepper, who stuidies creativity, said the ability to see connections between very disparate methodologies and ways of knowing allows students to generate new ideas and novel theories.

[Source: http://chronicle.com/article/Double-Majors-Produce-Dynamic/137917/]

Kip Hodges firmly believes that solving the world’s major problems requires a multidisciplinary approach, yet much of the education

students receive is parceled out in separate, non-overlapping subjects.

“The problem is that most of the really exciting questions that face our society can only be solved using multidisciplinary modes of analysis from multiple fields,” said Hodges, who is a professor at Arizona State University and founding director of ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration. “We need to teach our undergraduates to think creatively beyond the boundaries of specific disciplines.”

Read the essay, “Solving Complex Problems,” by Kip Hodges.

See some of the final presentations from the MIT interdisciplinary course Solving Complex Problems.

Source:

Course that Takes Creative Approach to Complex Challenges Wins Science Prize

As the Shalem Center introduces Israel’s first liberal arts college, Prof. Steven Pinker (Harvard), Prof. Lera Boroditsky (Stanford) and Yoram Hazony (Shalem Center Provost) speak about the importance of a Liberal Arts (Interdisciplinary) education.

The typical defense of the status quo involves spinning the value of a liberal arts education, pitching the curriculum as promoting the ability to problem-solve, learn to learn, and thrive in a knowledge economy. If the curriculum is teaching such skills as adapting to a knowledge economy, why can’t the professors that teach such great skills to thrive in a changing world employ them with some grace and poise? How can the liberal arts, itself, adapt to a changing world?

Simply put, we need to rethink what our students do to demonstrate their understanding. I’m not suggesting that we stop teaching literature and history and economics and psychology – or that students stop majoring in these fields. But we need to ask students to create, to experiment, to be bold and possibly fail with projects and deliverables relevant in today’s world. We’re too limited by Blue Book short essays and term papers — in which success is easily measured and bell-curved. If we shift the way we ask students to demonstrate their knowledge within liberal arts fields, we can prepare students for employment by advancing the liberal arts.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/10/16/essay-calling-new-skills-be-added-liberal-arts-disciplines#ixzz2A27Mcw6I
Inside Higher Ed

From the Christian Science Monitor:

If ever there was a time to emphasize a classic liberal arts education – more than distributing information or training for specific jobs – this is it. Students today can easily find information. The challenge is making sense of the whole, finding connections, dealing with complexity.

Read this Opinion piece offered by Kenneth P. Ruscio (President of Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA.) 

The AAAS (The American Association for the Advancement of Science) has recently published this practical guide concerning Interdisciplinary Research and Education. The guide is available for free download in PDF format from their website (listed below) and includes sections on Creating Interdisciplinary Culture, Processes for Creating Interdisciplinary Programs, and Interdisciplinary Education.

Click here to go to the website and download the guide today!

From OpenCulture:

Damon Horowitz, a philosophy professor and “serial entrepreneur,” recently joined Google as an In-House Philosopher/Director of Engineering. Prior to his work at Google, Horowitz co-founded Aardvark, Perspecta, and a number of other tech companies. In this talk at Stanford University’s 2011 BiblioTech conference on “Human Experience,”  Horowitz explains why he left a highly-paid tech career, in which he sought the keys to artificial intelligence, to pursue a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Stanford.

Horowitz describes his intellectual journey from “technologist” to philosopher with passion and candor, and concludes that as a result of his academic inquiry, he “no longer looks for machines to solve all of our problems for us,” and no longer assumes that he knows what’s best for his users. This kind of humility and intellectual flexibility is, ideally, the outcome of a higher degree in the humanities, and Horowitz uses his own trials to make a case for better critical thinking, for a “humanistic perspective,” in the tech sector and elsewhere.

Source: Open Culture

You have to understand that interdisciplinarity is always a promise. It’s a commitment you make to go where your research problem takes you. You don’t start with interdisciplinarity because you can never know enough. If that’s what you did, you’d never start your research because you never know enough.

 

Read the full article here at Language on the Move.

Welcome back everyone! Classes for the  Fall 2012 semester start today at 5:00 PM. We are excited for the start of a great new school year and can’t wait to get things started! Lots of great stuff will be happening this fall here. Not the least of which is the 2012 AIS (Association for Integrative Studies) conference to be held here at OU October 11-14! Check out more information here

Regular blog posting will also resume, directly following this post.

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Have a great semester, do well in your classes, and hope to see you around on campus!