Four new integrated first-year seminars team-taught by faculty members from different disciplines will be offered beginning in fall 2017 as part of the new Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP): “Creating Scientists: Learning by Connecting, Doing and Making.”
The QEP’s Integrated Curricula Program is an interdisciplinary effort to integrate the arts and humanities with science courses to provide critical thinking skills and an understanding of the myriad ways in which science and culture are intertwined. It is one of four experiential learning programs that are components of the QEP.
A request for proposals for team-taught courses that cross disciplinary boundaries was sent out earlier this spring, and the following courses were selected:
- “Researching Religion in Women’s Lives” (Lauren Leve, religious studies; Lisa Pearce, sociology), fall 2017.
- “Visualizing Women’s Lives and Experiences” (Anna Bardone-Cone, psychology; Sabine Gruffat, art), spring 2018.
- “Narrating Climate Change: Making the Global Personal” (Heidi Kim, English and comparative literature; Erika Wise, geography), spring 2018.
- “Time and the Medieval Cosmos” (Christopher Clemens, physics; Brett Whalen, history), fall 2018.
In the proposal for their climate change course, Kim and Wise write: “In this first-year seminar, we aim to ‘make the global personal’ by using personal narratives found in literature to introduce students to the science of climate change. Through an interdisciplinary examination of climate change, students will work both independently and collaboratively as they pose their own questions and make decisions to critically evaluate climate change information.”
The program will be expanded over the next five years from first-year seminars to other course offerings.
The next call-for-proposals (for courses in the 2018-2019 academic year) will be expanded to include all faculty — in the College and the professional schools. Read the RFP; proposals due by Sept. 15.
Read more: Cary Levine, integrated curricula coordinator and associate professor of art, discusses the intersection of art and science.
