1.1 Introduction to Interdisciplinary

Welcome to Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies

The term interdisciplinary studies may be new to you, but your major (Integrated Studies or Professional Studies) is interdisciplinary. Students in these majors take classes from several disciplines (more about those later) and from several colleges (Liberal Arts, Business, Basic and Applied Sciences, etc.). For example, the Professional Studies core  includes classes in Management, Communications, Psychology, Sociology, English, and Political Science. In traditional majors, the core classes are within one department.

Integrated Studies majors have even more flexibility, designing their own areas of emphasis, selecting any minor offered on campus and selecting their own electives.

There is no predetermined curriculum waiting for them when they start their first day of college: interdisciplinary students create a plan that combines all their interests into a single, personalized major. Students who follow this format learn more about themselves and what they want from their educational experience than students who passively accept a predetermined curriculum based on a single field of study. Interdisciplinary students are actively engaged with their education, involved with every decision that’s made. It’s all on them. Due to the responsibility associated with interdisciplinarity, students must learn how to make concrete decisions, how to effectively combine multiple disciplines into a cohesive major, and how to know what they want.

(Misiewicz, 2016)

Defining Disciplines

Think of middle school and the subjects you studied. This is when your educational journey was more clearly divided into disciplines (English, Math, History, etc.) although you may not have heard that term. You began walking to a new classroom for English, and that teacher only taught English. That type of structure is also used in High School and in College. We will discuss this more in future chapters.

An academic discipline is a field of study in higher education. It is field that is taught, studied, and researched in a college or university setting. Some disciplines have been around as long as the academy, while some have just blossomed within the last few years. There are some main disciplines and under the main disciplines are the sub-disciplines. The sub-disciplines are considered branches off of the disciplines.

(McElreavy et al., 2016)

Defining Interdisciplinary

At MTSU, we offer interdisciplinary programs such as Integrated Studies but also several interdisciplinary minors such as Women’s Studies. The Women’s Studies minor requires 9 hours of WMST courses and 9 hours of electives, however, students may take no more than 3 hours per major field/department. Or the Writing minor which includes English, Journalism, Video and Film Production, Recording Industry and Political Science. This minor requires students to take no more than 6 hours of courses from a single department. The major in Environmental Science and Technology is an interdisciplinary major including coursework in natural sciences, life sciences, mathematics, agriculture, technology, and the arts.

Interdisciplinarity: Incorporates several fields of study (disciplines) to allow collaboration among diverse disciplines to either specify or broaden students’ education, to gain understanding, and/or to problem solve.

(DeRosa, 2016)

In the PRST 3995 and PRST 4995 courses interdisciplinary studies is “a process of answering a question, solving a problem, or addressing a topic that is too broad or complex to be dealt with adequately by a single discipline or profession,” and it “draws on disciplinary perspectives and integrates their insights through construction of a more comprehensive perspective” (Klein & Newell, 1998, p. 3).

The next few sections will discuss the benefits of Interdisciplinary Studies.

References

DeRosa, R. (2016). The big terms. Interdisciplinary studies: A connected learning approach. Retrieved February 7, 2024, from https://press.rebus.community/idsconnect/chapter/basic-terms/. CC BY 4.0.

Klein, J. T., & Newell, W. H. (1998).  Advancing interdisciplinary studies. In W. H. Newell (Ed.), Interdisciplinarity:  Essays from the literature.  New York: College Entrance Examination Board.

McElreavy, C., Tobin, V., Martin, T., Damon, M. B., Crate, N., Godinez, A., & Bennett, K. (2016). The history of the academy and the disciplines. Interdisciplinary studies: A connected learning approach. Retrieved February 7, 2024, 2024, from https://press.rebus.community/idsconnect/chapter/the-history-of-the-academy-and-the-disciplines/. CC BY 4.0.

Misiewicz, J. (2016). How do we do interdisciplinarity? Interdisciplinary studies: A connected learning approach. Retrieved February 7, 2024, 2024, from https://press.rebus.community/idsconnect/chapter/how-do-we-do-interdisciplinarity/. CC BY 4.0.

What is interdisciplinary teaching? (n.d.). https://serc.carleton.edu/sp/library/interdisciplinary/what.html