Interdisciplinary Island
By Kara Kaufman, History Department
The Academy seems to be structured like an archipelago—a string of solitary islands that together make up a whole. The distinct islands are the various academic departments, like History, for example. The islands, or departments, each have their own culture, language, and revered body of knowledge. Rarely do the islands connect with other islands. Instead, the islands at times act like competitors and close their boundaries to outside influence.
Is the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Interdisciplinary?
By Daniel Mulcare, Department of Political Science
Last year, I participated in a Faculty Learning Community, a diverse group of Salem State College faculty that was set up to facilitate conversation and community. In our sessions, we explored the multifaceted nature of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL), a cross-disciplinary research methodology that seeks to enable professors 1) to analyze critically their own pedagogy, 2) to utilize their own disciplinary methods to explore teaching practices, and 3) to share their methodologies and findings with faculty members across disciplines in both informal and formal academic settings. As part of this Faculty Learning Community, we were required to set up our own SOTL project.
Teaching Facility and Program Development Through An Authentic Interdisciplinary Student Project
By Stuart G. McMahon, Peter Smolianov, and Steven P. Dion, Sport and Movement Science Department
Amis & Silk (2005) indicated the need to more closely connect our classrooms with the challenges faced on the streets and to intervene in local communities in order to promote social improvement. The concept of interdisciplinary teaching is an educational model that can accomplish this objective. The purpose of this paper is to share our experience in developing such a project and discuss its implications to motivating students as learners. The initiative began with three faculty members from the Sport and Movement Science Department at Salem State College (the authors) and involved students designing and programming an outdoor fitness facility.
Strange Bedfellows: Research in Teaching and Learning as a Path to Extreme Interdisciplinarity
By Dan Albert, Department of History
Interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching has a fairly sound footing on many college and university campuses where this or that institute, “studies” department, or entire school is dedicated not to the tools and techniques of a traditional discipline but to answering a particular question of immediate and practical interest. The humanities contribute usefully to these endeavors, as when historians of science inform policy decisions on bioethics or scholars of literature contribute to a deeper understanding of the effects of immigration policy on the lived experience of immigrants themselves and thereby empower immigrant communities to shape that policy.
The Sci-Fi Microbe Discovered at General Hospital: Creative Writing in Microbiology
By Adrienne Dolberry, Biology Department
I have recognized how valuable laboratory exercises, case studies and class discussions are for reinforcing concepts in Biology. However, I believe that these activities are not enough to effectively teach course material and spark student interest. One issue for me that has been a challenge in teaching Biology to college students: Finding new projects to make sure students are truly learning course topics and that they are not merely providing a written or oral memory dump. Through my teaching experiences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Salem State College, I have been inspired by students to develop assignments in Microbiology that use creative writing,
If You Want a Better Life, Don’t Stress Over Your Choices
By Jim Gubbins, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies
So how do we live? How is it that we’re not faced with lots of biggish questions throughout the day, but easily move about the majority of the time without articulated questions, and the few questions that do arise tend to be the tiny sort, such as “Do I wear the blue or the white shirt today?”
On Interdisciplinarity: An Interview with Kristin Esterberg, Provost and Academic Vice President, Salem State College
By Rebecca Hains, Communications Department
“Although there are places where faculty do interdisciplinary work, it seems mostly they do it because they’re passionate about it and want to do it—not because institutionally we’ve created lots of spaces for that to happen. There are certainly spaces where faculty can do interdisciplinary work, such as the Faculty Learning Communities, the programs put on by the Council of Teaching and Learning, and our own Interdisciplinary Studies Department. But it doesn’t seem to me there are any other strong pushes for faculty to pursue, say, interdisciplinary teaching.”
Profiles of new full-time faculty in the School of Arts and Sciences
Dean’s View: A First Look
By Jude Nixon, Dean, School of Arts and Sciences
Students must be queuing to take our courses not because they are required but because they are creative, thoughtful, and relevant. Part of our challenge, of course, is that the Ph.D. programs from which our faculty come are still primarily discipline-specific, but current economic realities and societal forces require more candidates with multiple specialties and sub-specialties. Our scholarly identity, while seemingly stable, is far more fluid and shifting than we think, and our specialties far more porous than we are often willing to admit. But while we can and should hold on to a particular identity, lest we become schizophrenic, we must at the same time recognize our multiple selves, for in truth we are never just one thing. While we have different specialties, what brings us together is the “Ph.” in the Ph. D., the φιλοσοφία, love of knowledge, the sophist in us, and our ability, as such, to be sophisticated, adulterated (mixed), nuanced. We have to begin removing the academic barriers to successful teaching and learning in our efforts to prepare our students for the 21st century.
