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Phase III: Initial Curricular Proposals from the CEP

PROPOSAL: INTERDISCIPLINARY INITIATIVES

Interdisciplinary teaching/learning is a means of helping students to define the different ways of knowing and to bring different ways of knowing to bear on problems in the world, and should be an exciting element of curricular innovation. The CEP would like to open discussion and debate on three different models for increasing the role of interdisciplinary teaching in the current curriculum. These are: 1) The Institute model, 2) the Interdisciplinary Team-teaching model, and 3) the Faculty as One-Course Intellectual Free Agents model.

Overview

The CEP's discussion of the role of interdisciplinary teaching/learning in the curriculum began with the question: why do it? That is, what is the value of interdisciplinary learning, and how would it enhance the quality of a Williams College education? Note that there are a number of roles that interdisciplinary work might play at a liberal arts college, including research. In this proposal we focus on the curricular impact of interdisciplinarity, which affects students most strongly via the course offerings.

Two broad answers to these questions emerged from our discussion. They are different in their focus but, clearly, not mutually exclusive.

First, interdisciplinary teaching provides an intellectually interesting and productive way to help students learn how to think in new ways. It exposes both the explanatory power of disciplines and the limits to that power. It provides an opportunity to show how two different modes of thinking operate, and to ask meta-level questions about disciplines themselves that are not often addressed. In this mode of teaching one or more of the same texts could be approached from different intellectual perspectives. For example, Dostoyevksy's "Notes from Underground" could be investigated through the dual lenses of Russian literature and philosophy, or the artifacts of Mayan culture could be investigated through the lenses of anthropology and art history. Some faculty find this very exciting and believe interdisciplinary courses of this nature will teach students what differentiates disciplines and what they have in common.

Second, interdisciplinary teaching provides a way to approach certain practical issues and problems. Indeed some of those issues and problems can only be understood and solved by interdisciplinary thinking and methods. (A compelling example was provided in the Williams Convocation address [September 2000] by Rita Colwell, Director of the National Science Foundation, who described how successful efforts to understand and eradicate cholera outbreaks required integrative work across the disciplines of geosciences, microbiology, and public health.) In this mode of teaching, students use diverse texts and methods that converge on one topical issue. For example, environmental science, economics, geology, anthropology, and political science are brought to bear on the issue of global warming; sociology, economics, psychology, neuroscience and philosophy are brought to bear on the issue of violence in the US. Some faculty find this very exciting and believe that we should prepare students to ask questions and seek answers from multidisciplinary perspectives.

That said, we wish to acknowledge, and the CEP student members have reminded us, that they -- even more so than most of their professors -- are continually operating in an interdisciplinary academic world, by virtue of taking courses across the liberal arts disciplines. They have also articulated the intellectual excitement of realizing the connections between seemingly disparate courses, and of late-night discussions with fellow students who bring other disciplinary perspectives to bear on the topic at hand. The goal of an interdisciplinary initiative would be to make it easier for students who wished to pursue interdisciplinary learning to find that in the curriculum.

The question for curricular innovation is, assuming that we as a faculty think that interdisciplinary work is a worthwhile endeavor, can and should we find ways to model it for students in our teaching, to encourage them to do it, or by some other means to increase the likelihood that students will learn these habits of thinking? Simply, should we look for ways to do more of it, or to do it better?

Because interdisciplinarity often crosses the standard boundaries of the curriculum (e.g. majors, departments), this discussion quickly runs into structural issues of where courses and faculty at Williams "live" (and where they should live): within departments, disciplines, programs, or the college as a whole? What makes a course "belong" to a program, but not a department, while other courses belong to both? How are the limited intellectual resources (read: FTEs, and faculty time) to be divided up, and who gets to decide that? These are questions the chairs of programs and departments know all too well. They are bureaucratic issues that threaten to overtake the curricular issues involved because they are necessarily entangled. Therefore, as we debate each of the models below, we would urge the community to keep in focus the most basic question: what will the proposed innovation do for students, that is, how will this plan enhance the overall value of a Williams College education?

Below please find a general description of each of the three models as well as the CEP's thinking about some of the advantages and disadvantages that each carries. At the end we raise important considerations that are common across these models.

1. THE INSTITUTE MODEL
   
   General outline of the model
   
   This model envisages the creation of a high profile center to encourage sustained interdisciplinary initiatives. This model would enable faculty teams to create thematically organized nodes of inquiry that would result in a sufficient number of courses for students to focus on in addition to the work in a major. Curricularly, it follows the model of programs here at Williams. This model would include the establishment of an administrative and physical space that would provide the home for these initiatives. This can best be envisaged as a significant expansion of the Interdepartmental Program for Experimental and Cross-Disciplinary Studies, but with three significant changes:
   
   
   1. A commitment of FTE to the institute; proposals have ranged somewhere between 6 and 12.
      
      
   2. The development of a curriculum of six courses to be developed by faculty teams. The themes would have an interdisciplinary character. The range of possible courses already suggested is vast, but they have tended to coalesce around three forms, all three of which would be appropriate. These are: conceptual and cross- disciplinary (e.g., the nature of evidence, cognition and complex systems, mind and brain); topical and thematic (e.g., art and commerce, violence, media and culture, the city, social justice); and policy and problem areas (e.g., biology and ethics, healthcare, poverty, and north/south). At least one or two courses would be team taught, presumably the introduction and capstone, but the remaining courses would be taught individually, with those courses likely cross-listed in the home department of the faculty member.
      
      
   3. The establishment of a physical space where the work of the institute would be pursued that would provide a gathering place for both students and faculty involved in the work, including student summer research internships and other opportunities for student involvement and the development of a shared community.
   
   
   In general the model proposes the establishment of four to five teams working on different projects. A team would usually include somewhere between five and eight faculty members. While the institute would be the home for these teams, we expect it also to become the umbrella for a wider range of interdisciplinary initiatives. This site would also be able to support smaller scale interdisciplinary projects as resources allow, such as single team-taught courses and other appropriate initiatives. It might be a place for existing clusters and programs to go for periods of review and rejuvenation. That is, existing or potential new programs could propose a theme, and if the theme was approved, thereby add some additional faculty and resources, at least for a few years. In the long run we expect that some of the projects might result in new programs or even departments. Finally, this site might be a place to centralize and expand our existing visiting professorships and post-doctoral fellow programs and to provide extra resources for short-term intensive work on individual projects. Governance of the institute would be by a director and board, but in all matters it would report to the CAP and CEP for review of and authorization for its projects.
   
   Advantages
   
   
   • This new structure would provide a high profile location for cross-departmental and cross-divisional cooperation and serve as an incubator for sustained inquiry into issues and topics that cross the existing boundaries of our curriculum. It would model for students the character and consequences of doing interdisciplinary work in a way that would receive the greatest attention. That is something they now are by definition doing; this would increase the consciousness of that for students throughout their undergraduate careers and allow many students to participate in a sustained way in the process.
     
     
   • The sustained multi-course program structure would provide continuity of the inquiry over a student's career, establishing communities of inquiry including those doing the whole program and those who do one or more of the designated courses. In addition, the physical centralization would also go toward building a community of students and faculty involved in the individual projects. Since the projects would generate significant extra-curricular events such as lectures, field-trips and conferences, the circle of impact for these projects would be wide. Thus the concentrated energy focused on the topics would have an impact on the intellectual life of the entire campus community through these larger events.
     
     
   • Compensating departments for the time of faculty members involved in one project would make it somewhat easier to free faculty to participate. Because it is unlikely that the compensation would be more than .2 to .5 FTE, this would not be an equal exchange, but departmental chairs could creatively use the compensated portions of an FTE. The centralization and deployment of visiting professors and post-doctoral fellows would also help compensate departments, including providing for the staffing for major required courses. This might mean the appearance of an increase in visiting appointments, but since most of these visitors would likely teach no more than one course, the impact of their temporary status would be minimized.
     
     
   • The built in sunsetting aspect of these projects, presumably no more than eight years, would mean that the college is not making any long term commitment to new areas of inquiry or teaching. The projects would be in existence long enough though to establish new areas that might metamorphize into other structures on campus.
   
   
   Disadvantages
   
   
   • The impact of the institute will be primarily on those students who take the whole sequence of courses, and will only have minimal impact on the majority of students. It creates the appearance of an elitist and exclusive institution set off from the rest of the college.
     
     
   • The institute may be too large and bureaucratic an entity to achieve the goals it has set for itself.
     
     
   • It does little to meet the legitimate problems of existing programs and establishes a two-tiered structure with existing programs on the lower tier.
     
     
   • The proposal for a program structure of six courses constrains student's freedom to choose his/her courses.
     
     
   • Having visiting professor and postdoctoral fellows primarily related to the institute exacerbates the problems connected with visiting faculty and overall impinges on the prerogatives and rights of departments.
   
   
   
2. INTERDISCIPLINARY TEAM TEACHING MODEL
   
   General outline of the model
   
   This initiative would invite and encourage faculty members to think creatively about interdisciplinary courses in a wide range of subjects, to learn enough about the other's discipline to be able to integrate their work and truly teach together, rather than in a tag-team, split-the-course-in-half type fashion. Faculty members with mutual interests would thus get together and propose an interdisciplinary team-taught course to a selection committee composed of the CEP and the CAP. This would be a competitive process; new courses, continuing courses, courses that would serve programs, and those that would serve departments would be evaluated by the committee on their intellectual/ educational merit, their ability to attract at least a seminar-size enrollment, and the current curricular needs across the college. Faculty whose courses were selected would receive a one-time course release to work together to prepare the course. The committee would have a set number of FTEs available for this purpose. If each such course "costs" .4 (.2 for each faculty member involved) there might be a total of 4-5 FTEs allocated for this purpose, allowing for 10-15 such courses. The faculty members' departments would be compensated .2 FTE for each course in the major that would otherwise not be taught. Departments which allowed their faculty to teach these courses frequently would be in a strong position to request a permanent increase in FTE.
   
   Advantages
   
   
   • Allows for a wide range of topics; does not limit the subject areas of interdisciplinary teaching; in any given year any idea might be selected; no ideas are turned away because they don't fit the current theme or node
     
     
   • Includes programs in the mix. Gives equal opportunity to bodies that "own" FTEs (departments) and those that don't (programs, clusters, individuals) to make a case for a new course on its intellectual/educational merits
     
     
   • Is flexible enough to accommodate changing interests of students and faculty members from year to year
     
     
   • Allows a maximum number of students to be involved in interdisciplinary work, because it promotes individual courses rather than a set of courses that a smaller number of students would take over several years
     
     
   • Puts the power to allot curricular resources in the hands of elected committees, who have an overview of the entire faculty resources and curricular situation
     
     
   • Less bureaucracy involved with the administration of the initiative than with the Institute model
   
   
   Disadvantages
   
   
   • Lacks the high profile identity that a "center" or an "institute" would have
     
     
   • Provides less depth or focus in interdisciplinary work than a multi-year interdisciplinary initiative
     
     
   • Given a limited set of FTEs and the difficulty of hiring part-time instructors, might weaken the sustained ability of departments to mount their major or core offerings
     
     
   • Could concievably lead to an increased number of visiting faculty
   
   
   
3. FACULTY AS ONE-COURSE INTELLECTUAL FREE-AGENTS MODEL
   
   General outline of the model
   
   Interdisciplinary teaching and learning currently take many different forms at the college. Programs and clusters are interdisciplinary by definition. Separate from programs and clusters, faculty from different departments will occasionally team up to teach a course, bringing their own disciplines to bear on a single topic. Still others individually teach courses that are interdisciplinary in nature, even within their own departments.
   
   There are many impediments to the development of interdisciplinary courses and programs. Among these is the reluctance (or inability) of departments to release faculty from departmental teaching obligations. This tension between the needs of departments and majors and the desire for interdisciplinary initiatives varies significantly between departments and between divisions. This model proposes a mechanism that allows faculty to develop and to teach interdisciplinary courses, without requiring the consent of their departments or majors.
   
   In this model, faculty would be granted one course from their annual teaching load to act as "intellectual free agents." (With the current teaching load of five courses per year, for example, faculty would be required to give 4/5 of their time to their department.) Some might choose to give this time to a program or to a cluster. Others might choose to teach an interdisciplinary course with a colleague from another department. Still others could choose to devote this time to teaching within their own departments, though they would be under no obligation to do so.
   
   This model gives all faculty equal opportunity to participate in interdisciplinary programs. Because all faculty would be given this option, faculty teams could develop easily. Furthermore, since the time would be available to faculty annually, courses and clusters developed under this model could be continued from one year to the next.
   
   We wish to make it clear that the one-course equivalent given to faculty would not be released time. Faculty would still be obligated to teach -- their primary responsibility during this time, however, would be to the college, rather than to their departments or majors. Courses proposed outside of the departmental structure would need to be submitted to the CEP for approval. All courses would be subject to the usual course evaluations.
   
   It is very important to note that this model has implications for the curriculum that go beyond interdisciplinary initiatives. In particular, it provides a natural safety net for non-majors courses in the context of a college-wide course load reduction. Some argue that a course load reduction would likely result in the reduction or loss of non-majors courses. If this were the case, the one-course equivalent granted to faculty annually might be used to introduce such courses back into the curriculum.
   
   Advantages
   
   
   • A wide range of styles of interdisciplinary teaching can be accommodated by this model. It allows a single faculty member to develop a course that is interdisciplinary. It allows teams of faculty to come together to teach a single course. It also allows groups of faculty to propose and teach groups of related courses.
     
     
   • This model allows for one-time interdisciplinary course offerings as well as for repeated offerings of courses. If a course has been successful, those involved could choose to use their one-course equivalent to teach it again in subsequent years.
     
     
   • It provides a natural mechanism for new programs and clusters to develop.
     
     
   • This model does not exclude existing programs and clusters from participation. Faculty could choose to contribute their time to an existing program or cluster. This model does not privilege new programs over old ones.
     
     
   • The model does not privilege a handful of faculty or topics.
     
     
   • This reallocation of faculty time can result in exciting new courses both within and across disciplines. This clearly benefits our students, as well as faculty.
     
     
   • Some have suggested that the current departmental structure is a dinosaur -- a relic of an earlier time -- and that the college needs to move beyond this structure. Others argue that this structure is in place because it works. This model allows the current structure to continue, but it also allows disciplinary walls to lower quite significantly.
     
     
   • The model is relatively easy to abandon, if necessary. There are a number of possible problems with this model, as itemized below. Because this model does not involve the creation of new structures (administrative, physical plant, etc.), it could be easily discontinued, if necessary. We imagine that any new model would be subject to review after a period of a number of years.
     
     
   • While this model lacks the high profile of an "institute," it positions the college as an institution that views faculty as intellectuals who operate within the community of the college, rather than within the confines of individual disciplines.
   
   
   Disadvantages
   
   
   • Some faculty might feel pressure to give their one-course equivalent to their departments. This pressure might be felt most strongly by junior faculty.
     
     
   • This model does not guarantee an increase in interdisciplinary teaching and learning. It simply provides a mechanism by which they could potentially grow.
     
     
   • This model lacks the profile that a "center" or an "institute" would have.
     
     
   • This model potentially complicates the hiring process. Some departments or majors might feel the need to choose new hires on the basis of their allegiance to the department or major, rather than to the free-agency model. Some programs might feel the need to lobby faculty during the hiring process or afterward to teach in the program.
   
   
   
4. CONSIDERATIONS COMMON TO ALL THE MODELS
   
   At what point in the curriculum is interdisciplinary teaching/learning best placed?
   
   The CEP discussed this question at length and concluded that there was no one time during a student's career that was best or worst for interdisciplinary teaching/learning. Rather, it depends on the nature and goals of the course; thus the level (first year, sophomore, advanced) should be at the discretion of the instructors. For instance, we imagined some courses that would be taught at an advanced level, requiring that students have a firm grasp on their own disciplines first in order to take an active role in the learning, rather than passively observe how professors from different disciplines engage the topic. But we also imagined other courses in which beginning students could be successfully taught the modes of thinking in two disciplines by a close examination of one important text, with the professors as their guides. We believe that any of the models above would be compatible with a mix of lower- and upper-level interdisciplinary courses.
   
   What would be the impact of Interdisciplinary initiatives on existing programs?
   
   Programs are by nature and definition interdisciplinary. Therefore it seems clear that any proposals for new interdisciplinary initiatives needs to take into account the current and future status of programs.
   
   The current status of programs is sometimes shaky, because staffing programs is shaky. Department needs for major courses and enrollment pressures for those sometimes make it difficult to allow faculty to teach in program courses that would not satisfy major requirements. We realize that this is less of an issue in some departments (where major courses and program courses are always or often cross-listed) than in other departments (where they typically are not). Moreover, requests for new programs (e.g., Latino Studies and a host of others that were suggested in Phase I of the curricular review; see Archive I) are dependent upon department hiring choices and the promises made, when permission to hire is granted, about staffing for programs. Models 1 and 2, because they involve FTEs for interdisciplinary teaching that would be allotted by committee, have the potential to strengthen programs because they allow the programs to appeal directly to a central body for courses and staffing for those courses. Model 3 also has the potential to strengthen programs, but it is less predictable because it depends on the choices that individual faculty members make. In one of the two most extreme scenarios, all faculty might be committed to interdisciplinary program teaching, and use their 1 course "free choice" in that way, in essence "voting with their feet" to teach (at least for part of their load) at the boundaries of disciplines. In the other extreme scenario, all faculty might elect to teach major courses within their own major disciplines, obviously weakening the strength of programs.

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