Campus Shot

Strategic Working Group #3

Disciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity Working Group

Overview

Working Group #3 met weekly through May of 2023. Our group shared a commitment to moving beyond a binary, either/or, consideration of Disciplinarity vs. Interdisciplinarity and toward a working premise that there is an interdependence and interrelationship between strong academic disciplines and the capacity to create and sustain interdisciplinary programs, majors, minors, and departments.  As a result of this shift, we developed a new set of key questions that we explored through the lens of the mission/values of 惇蹋圖. At the same time, we recognized the importance of being open to changing definitions of key concepts such as academic rigor or excellence; highlighting the emergence of new ways of knowing that may be increasingly relevant to current undergraduate and graduate students, and to their academic and career trajectories.  As our work continued, we engaged in a dynamic discussion of how both the explicit and implicit curriculum combine to support a vibrant intellectual community and learning environment and, within this context, how both interdisciplinary and disciplinary approaches become manifest from the perspectives of students and faculty. We outlined a stepwise process to facilitate moving beyond an ideological debate around the nature of interdisciplinarity, in order to develop a more nuanced understanding of current curricular and co-curricular initiatives, and relatedly, the dynamics of staffing and resources needed to support strong academic disciplinary structures and interdisciplinary offerings.

Our Process

Working together, we co-constructed a revised set of guiding questions:

  • How do we invest in our departments and disciplinary areas of expertise, while also encouraging interdisciplinary connection and inquiry across campus?
  • How are interdisciplinary programs developed and staffed? What would make these programs more sustainable?
  • Are there ways that 惇蹋圖s relatively small size helps us to foster interdisciplinary inquiry?

Phase 1: Co-construction of working premise/seeding questions, definitions, and work plan:

  • What types of data or input do we need?  Where is the relevant existing information?

Phase 2: Data gathering (quantitative and qualitative) and community engagement:

  • Pre-existing data (Provosts office, IR)
  • Data that would be useful but is not yet developed or accessible.
  • Community Conversations (Town Hall, Faculty Chairs, Undergraduate Deans, IR)Student Perspectives (Focus Groups)
  • Faculty and Staff (Survey)

Phase 3: Gap Assessment

  • From our current understanding, can we provide insight into our capacity to offer what we currently provide?
  • As new majors, minors, departments, or programs emerge, do we have sufficient resources, in the correct roles, to achieve our goals?

Phase 4: Ideas emerging from our data gathering and synthesis/Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats

Overview of Findings

Strengths

  • Strong disciplinary programs exist across the College.
  • Common belief in value of the liberal arts and commitment to both academic rigor and student success
  • Small faculty size may facilitate connection and interdisciplinary work.
  • Recent growth of interdisciplinary programs offers insight into needed resources and challenges.
  • Interdisciplinary programs contribute to intellectual vibrancy of college and to student engagement.
  • Experience with interdisciplinary programs emerging in response to student interest. How can we articulate what we have learned from this experience?  What do enrollment data suggest?  What other indices/benchmarks are important for us to consider?
  • Experience with being nimble and responding to changing student interests; fostering innovation.

Weaknesses (internal)

  • Resource gap identified; growth of interdisciplinary program has occurred outside of sufficient analysis of sustainability.
  • More nuance is needed to understand staffing/faculty impact of expansion of curricular programs.  Work with institutional research to clarify types of data that would be helpful to longer-term planning.
  • Student understanding of pathways is limited.
  • Social capital needed to navigate academic pathways is not evenly distributed and thereby causes second-order negative impact to equity and inclusion.
  • Advising structure doesnt focus specifically on interdisciplinarity or academic pathways.
  • Mission driven: what does student want to learn and why?

Opportunities

  • Strengthen the core disciplines through hiring processes and review of faculty deployment practices and policies which, in turn, may foster capacity building for interdisciplinary approaches.
  • Explore alternative student-centered approaches to learning that may/may not align with current departmental structures but could be feasibility built on top of said structure rather than in parallel.  Consider other examples that challenge the traditional meaning of academic rigor and excellence to focus on the why of student learning.
  • Review current departmental and program mission statements; noticing where/how they identify interdisciplinarity as relevant.
  • Find additional ways for curriculum committee to work in concert with departments, the provosts office, and CAP to engage in longer term planning with regard to downstream consequences of programmatic expansion.
  • Strengthen the core disciplines through hiring processes and review of faculty deployment practices and policies which, in turn, may foster capacity building for interdisciplinary approaches.
  • Explore alternative student-centered approaches to learning that may/may not align with current departmental structures but could be feasibility built on top of said structure rather than in parallel.  Consider other examples that challenge the traditional meaning of academic rigor and excellence to focus on the why of student learning.
  • Review current departmental and program mission statements; noticing where/how they identify interdisciplinarity as relevant.
  • Find additional ways for curriculum committee to work in concert with departments, the provosts office, and CAP to engage in longer term planning with regard to downstream consequences of programmatic expansion.
  • Leverage the competencies (knowledge, value, skills) associated with current interdisciplinary efforts (e.g., neuroscience, data science, international studies, environmental science) to highlight emerging trends in education. 
  • Highlight new methods of inquiry, knowledge synthesis and skill development as applied to student areas of interest.
  • Explore impact of interdisciplinarity on student engagement and student success.  Are the interdisciplinary initiatives also offering opportunities for connection and student engagement?  If so, how?
  • Consider having each department/program complete a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) in relationship to the balance of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity from both student and faculty perspectives.
  • Leverage the unique strength of BMCs pre-disciplinary opportunities (THRIVE, E-Sem) to begin socializing students to the importance of balancing disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives.
  • Strengthen peer-peer mentorship opportunities.

Threats (external)

  • We need to understand more about the external landscape at our peer institutions:
  • Teaching load for faculty: how do you accomplish interdisciplinary sustainably if we acknowledge current staffing approach is unsustainable
  • Student centered approach to applied learning and interdisciplinarity
  • Articulation of the connection between the liberal arts and academic/career trajectories
  • How can we connect to a student-centered, mission driven approach to education?
  • What is the why behind a students decision to come to a liberal arts college?

Throughout our work, we returned several times to a set of core tensions: 1) Balancing an exploration of the needs and constraints of the current departmental structure (inclusive of majors and minors) with an openness to exploration of what more interdisciplinarity could look like, 2) Balancing our long-standing commitment to academic rigor and excellence, with new ideas about what excellence might look like from an interdisciplinary perspective, 3) Recognizing the current pressures on faculty workload and staffing of academic programs and initiatives, while also considering how we might leverage staff knowledge and skills more effectively, and 4) Honoring the wisdom of faculty and departmental policies and practice, while remaining open to changing student perspectives relating to the why of college in general, and of a liberal arts education in particular.

Our early work focused on a discussion of the status quo with an emphasis on staffing pressures faced by departments as faculty endeavor to also contribute to emerging interdisciplinary curricular offerings.  In our early data gathering efforts, we focused on how faculty time, in terms of course equivalencies, is distributed and the pressures that emerging interdisciplinary programs have put on the disciplinary, departmental structure.  A primary concern articulated is that departments are facing challenges in mounting their core requirements with continuing faculty because of faculty commitments to a range of endeavors, including interdisciplinary programs. Our exploration was careful to note that these pressures emanate from various sources: faculty-driven initiatives, administratively driven initiatives, and student-led demand. One emergent theme was therefore a lack of college-wide cohesion, oversight, and long-term planning in resource allocation because of the distributed nature of how and when these initiatives are generated.

As we progressed, we also explored the meaning of academic excellence; beginning to interrogate the traditional definitions of rigor and excellence as defined by research, methods of knowledge development and analytic skills as occurring primarily within a single discipline.  Recognizing disciplinary strength as critically important, we also heard from group members and constituencies about the emerging importance of new ways of knowing including interdisciplinary approaches to knowledge and methods of inquiry.

Our plan for gathering data to inform our dialogue included: 1) Details from the Provosts office of available staffing data with particular attention to dynamics of staffing patterns and how faculty FTEs are distributed across multiple endeavors, 2) Perspectives offered by the undergraduate Deans office in terms of how students think about the choice of academic major and whether/how to pursue double majors or academic minors, and the processes by which student express interest in new, interdisciplinary approaches and 3) Perspectives of faculty and staff on interdisciplinarity and disciplinarity at the College and 4) Student perspectives on available academic pathways at 惇蹋圖, and the types of resources they utilize in thinking through their approach to academic and career trajectories.

Through dialogue, review of existing data, survey of faculty and staff, and focus groups with students, we developed a general understanding of current pressures on the academic disciplines and a growing resource gap between the number of interdisciplinary programs being developed and the availability of faculty and staff resources required for sustainability or growth. We also noted the increased dependence upon non-tenured faculty to deliver the existing curriculum on offer and interrogated the possible rationale, and the pros and cons of this approach to staffing. Additionally, we noted that the explicit curriculum, the classes that are offered within 惇蹋圖, is only part of the resource set associated with interdisciplinarity.  The co-curricular and implicit learning context are also important to consider.  An example would be the nature of academic advising.  Lastly, the student experiences that occur prior to declaring a major are important to consider in terms of student exposure, through activities such as E-Sems, to core methods and skills that support both the liberal arts and interdisciplinary perspectives. This is also important to consider with regard to fulfilling college-wide requirements through mechanisms such as the op-in nature of the Approaches to Inquiry because faculty who indicate that their courses fulfill one of these requirements may be inviting students more interested in exploration across substantive areas.

Our goal was to develop a sense of current strengths and weaknesses relating to our guiding questions, as well as to identify opportunities within our environment that we might better leverage, as well as external factors, or potential threats, we might suggest for consideration as planning moves forward.

  • Increasing reliance on interim faculty
  • Data does not reveal how many courses each interim is teaching.  Important to our understanding of whether/how interims are part of the community or teaching a small number of courses on a one-time basis.  What is the impact of this on the student experience? On 惇蹋圖s ability to consistently deliver the core curricular offering in line with College's expectations? On 惇蹋圖s culture (faculty, administrative, staff, and student sub-cultures)?
  • Viewed more positively: Describe the ways that interims are a resource add and bring new or different types of experience to the learning environment and may be a benefit to the student experience. A benefit to or necessity of our current operating model and the affordability of our faculty hiring model (i.e., it is allowing us to offer more or better than we could otherwise)?   
  • Emergent Questions:
    • Gain more understanding about how/why interims are hired.
    • Do interims tend to be hired as leave replacement or in response to new resources that may come from a gift to the College or to complete core departmental offerings that would otherwise go untaught due to Continuing faculty unavailability?
    • What thought is given to providing cluster opportunities to interims to create more likelihood of integration into the College environment?
    • What is the process of deciding when it may make sense to provide for a CNTT rather than an ongoing utilization of interims in specific instances?
  • Further explore the why behind a growing reliance on interim hires? Ideas for exploration include:
    • A process issue:  What additional framing could be undertaken in the CAP process to ensure that we are accounting for intended interdisciplinary contributions and cross-program or cross-departmental initiatives that will take up faculty time in terms of teaching deployment and research?  This is related to, but different than the general question about how a given candidate might contribute to other initiatives.
    • A financial model issue (i.e., interims are less expensive b/c many are not fully loaded/benefited) that has incentivized one type of labor over another.
    • A student-needs led issue (i.e., is the administration trying to meet needs that are outside traditional faculty positions).
    • A capital allocation discipline issue (i.e., we do not look at this data holistically and in a benchmarked way, as we are attempting to do now, and so capital is not always allocated within a clear or strategic organizing principle and thus is likely to be misallocated in specific instances).

Skip to Findings from...

Conversations with Undergraduate Deans

Perspectives offered by the undergraduate Deans office in terms of how students think about the choice of academic major and whether/how to pursue double majors or academic minors, and the processes by which student express interest in new, interdisciplinary approaches.

Detailed Findings

  • The Deans are more focused on helping students to identify what they are interested in (addressing the why of student education), as opposed to describing or labeling pathways as disciplinary or interdisciplinary.
  • Students need multiple sources of information.  Simply putting pathway information on the website is not enough (some students do not utilize the website).  Students with more developed faculty/advisor relationships tend to have more opportunities for understanding and figuring out various academic pathways (social capital is important to consider especially for students with less educational privilege).
  • Students interested in interdisciplinary or combined pathways need support early on, pre-major, so they can plan their academic pathway.
  • Students perceive connection with interim faculty as a positive, meeting new people and expanding access to substantive content and applied areas of interest.
  • More continuing faculty teaching in structures such as the E-Sem would provide opportunities for student mentorship and for students to get to know more continuing faculty earlier in their 惇蹋圖 careers.
  • Relationships with professors and advisors are key to student decision making.
  • Reaching out to sophomores (pre- major) is especially important.  This is a developmental moment and juncture that can be leveraged.
  • What is the focus of advising at this point?
  • How can sophomore Deans be helpful in identifying possible pathways based on student interest?
  • Visualization of pathways for each major, minor, and program would be helpful (pre-requisites, required courses, connection to other majors/minors/programs).  More visual cues are needed.
  • Students who tend not to thrive in current process:
    • Students who dont meet with advising Dean.
    • Students with less robust relationships with professors
  • Impact of different majors requiring different numbers of core courses and being qualitatively different in terms of cross-listing/cross-counting courses from other departments. Some majors are very proscriptive while others are more flexible.  How much do students understand about this?

The Faculty and Staff Survey

This one-question, open-ended, survey was co-constructed within our working group.  The question was informed by our key guiding questions, as well as by initial feedback we received from a meeting and discussion with the faculty chairs. We framed the survey with reflective prompts for consideration: 1) How is your position or office connected to academic departments and programs? 2) How do changes in academic offerings impact your work? And 3) What are your thoughts on the value of interdisciplinarity?  While the response rate was low (n=30), 16 respondents identified as staff and 14 identified as faculty.

Among the staff who responded to the survey, most expressed strong support for interdisciplinarity, focusing on the importance of communication between staff across departmental/programmatic units, as well as more support for faculty-staff, and staff-student partnerships and communication. Some staff respondents shared their roles at the College, and so we were able to see that some hold administrative leadership roles in specific programmatic units and that others were staff in co-curricular programs.  Some staff respondents did not share their specific role within the College. There was clear recognition of current structures seen as fostering interdisciplinarity, and a desire for building in more structural support so long as staffing (from faculty and staff) is available.  Some staff respondents did have a sense that their ideas and contributions are sometimes not valuesd, or are discounted, even when new programs are being planned that directly relate to their areas of expertise.  Staff respondents expressed a perspective on the importance of interdisciplinarity as a way of knowing that is central to student learning, and capacity to transfer disciplinary knowledge to applied problem solving. 

Among the faculty who responded there is significant support for the strengths of interdisciplinary work, but at the same time, concern about how programs have emerged over time and become disconnected from a full accounting of required resources for programmatic sustainability and integrity.  Several faculty respondents talked about redefining academic rigor to go beyond depth in one disciplinary area, to understand different ways of knowing, and the importance of all disciplines being refracted through the lens of understanding the dynamics and history of power and oppression.  Many raised concerns about resources and the importance of structuring in opportunities for connection; leveraging strength across disciplinary boundaries. 

Detailed Findings - Staff

Staff Survey Responses: Emerging Questions, Themes and Examples

Examples:

  • Connecting STEM to social, political, and economic context
  • The world is not divided into clean buckets..one things informs and influences another
  • Much like diversity in general, it leads to different ways of problem solving and allows new ideas to flourish.
  • Interdisciplinarity is the future of work and discovery.
  • Demonstrating interdisciplinarity to students, either in the form of research or class projects will help them break down barriers and broaden their own way of thinking.&紳莉莽梯;
  • Needed in grant applications.

Example:

  • Feeling my knowledge is discounted and not being sought out for collaboration.&紳莉莽梯;

Examples:

  • Go beyond Praxis to find more outside the classroom opportunities for interdisciplinarity.
  • Examples: Global 惇蹋圖, ICC, 360, STEMLA
  • Health Interest Programming: reflect the interprofessional nature of health education today.

Examples:

  • Allowing departments or disciplines to silo will limit innovation and collaboration.&紳莉莽梯;
  • Being overly siloed leaves too much room for gaps, misinformation, untapped potential ideas, communal involvement, and strategic planning&紳莉莽梯;
  • Not communicating across units/departments focused on similar programming. 
  • Staffing limitations: need time and support to think more holistically. 
  • Defining efficiency as key and over-focusing on quantitative outcomes 

 

Detailed Findings - Faculty

Faculty Survey Responses: Emerging Questions, Themes and Examples

Examples:

  • One of the things I love about teaching at 惇蹋圖; Small environment facilitates connections between faculty members for collaborative work across disciplines. 
  • Crucial for our students as they prepare to live in a world where understanding how to bring together data from many sources and process and synthesize it becomes increasingly important.&紳莉莽梯;
  • An acquaintance with the language of other disciplines is vital for understanding how the information is processed in those disciplines and how the scholarship of one discipline can connect to that of another.&紳莉莽梯;
  • I hope the College is willing to devote resources toward supporting the expansion of interdisciplinary collaborations, for the good of the faculty as well as the students.&紳莉莽梯;
  • Exciting work done across disciplines that the college seems to have neither the inclination nor the strategies (flexibility, connection, debate) to explore. 
  • My research has expanded by being involved with interdisciplinary endeavors. 
  • Learning from different voices is central to supporting DEIA 
  • Vital to academic inquiry 

Examples:

  • The Colleges commitment to disciplines and the disciplines commitment to themselves has eroded considerably.&紳莉莽梯;
  • Not enough discussion about staffing 
  • We lack enough faculty to supervise the wide range of research projects that students propose. 
  • Disciplinary rigor takes on a new meaning in this context and every discipline needs to adapt its pedagogical aims to train our students安ith the tools they will need to access and process the available data.&紳莉莽梯;
  • Our commitment to interdisciplinarity is more about economy than any thoughtful commitment to a mode of inquiry.&紳莉莽梯;
  • Concerns about quality/academic rigor of students experiences in interdisciplinary programs 
  • Using the title (of interdisciplinarity) to wallpaper over gaping holes in the curriculum by asking people to lend the fringes of their expertise to programs without a clear intellectual core, history, method or goals.&紳莉莽梯;
  • Interdisciplinary efforts are starved for resources.&紳莉莽梯;
  • Most of us... Exemplify interdisciplinarity within our disciplines because we are trying to teach-and exemplify-multiple areas of study and approaches to that work.  But this is very different from our students being able to build connections.

Examples:

  • Graduate Group in Archaeology, Classics and the History of Art: institutional structure that supports and guides interdisciplinary collaborations such as research, shared colloquia, learning opportunities for undergraduates as well. 
  • Tagging courses for cross-listing 
  • Tri-Co Mellon grants to foster connections. 
  • Environmental Studies: we have to turn away students, so we need more support. 
  • History of Art/Film Studies 
  • The Center for Visual Culture
  • TLI/Pedagogy across disciplines 
  • Structure programs more like Cities: what is built into the curriculum?  Intro course? Capstone? 

Student Focus Groups

Peer Mentors and Major Departmental Representatives were invited to attend one of three focus groups hosted by a subcommittee of the Working Group.  Ultimately, 11 students attended.  Students represented multiple majors, minors and departments including Archeology, Chemistry, Cities, Classical Culture and Society, Economics, English, Physics, STEM graduate program, and Visual Studies.

The guiding questions for the focus groups were chosen to reflect themes that emerged in our working group discussion about the student perspective and the importance of student-centered approaches.  These questions were particularly shaped by our conversations with representatives from the undergraduate Deans office, especially regarding student awareness of disciplinarity v. interdisciplinarity, factors that influence choice of major and whether to double major/pursue a minor, student awareness of the value of the liberal arts to future plans, the importance of relationships and advising to student decision making., and the role of peer mentorship and support.

Detailed Findings

Theme: Perception of department as a welcoming or unwelcoming community 

  •  I was set on [a particular career] and knew Id have to do [major 1] or [major 2] to set up for success. I chose [major 2] because it was a smaller department--closer knit than [major 1].&紳莉莽梯;
  • I wanted to be a [certain] major and had to take [a required course] at the same time. I picked [the department teaching the required course as my major] because the department is welcoming to students even in general requirement courses.&紳莉莽梯;
  • I met the current cohort of students and liked them.&紳莉莽梯;
  • I thought Id major in [major 1], but I was sort of interested in [major 2]. I chose [major 2] because I didnt like the [other] departments response to the student strike.&紳莉莽梯;

Theme: Discovered passion for subject 

  • I wanted to major in [an interdisciplinary major], and one of the required classes was [in a different department]. I really enjoyed it...the professor taught us about all different kinds of [approaches to the discipline]. Therefore, the student chose to major in the discipline. 
  • Another student picked an interdisciplinary major because he liked the subjects it comprises. 

Theme: Feeling toward Discipline 

  • On the decision not to double-major: Other students had passion for a part of [the other major] that I didnt have. But I had that for [my current major].&紳莉莽梯;
  • [At first] I double-majored because I didnt want to decide between majors. I loved them both. The decision to minor was greatI basically completed the major without senior sem. I wish I had decided on a minor earlier.&紳莉莽梯;

Theme: Diverse Interests / Seeking Balance 

  • I took [a course in my minor] because of college-wide requirements. I found it a good balance with all the STEM classes I was taking. I loved how interactive it was.&紳莉莽梯;
  • Ive always been a creative person and wanted that balance in my education. Im interested in filmmaking, so its nice to have those classes in my schedule.&紳莉莽梯;
  • I wanted to take classes outside of the department.&紳莉莽梯;

Theme: Marketability 

  • I felt like its a little more versatile as a major on applications.&紳莉莽梯;
  • A [certain] minor is marketable on my resume even though I dont remember anything about [the subject.]&紳莉莽梯;
  • A lot of other students are minoring in something.&紳莉莽梯;

Other Responses

  • I couldnt get into other classes I needed to fulfill college-wide requirements, so I took [a class in what became my minor], and then kept taking classes.&紳莉莽梯;
  • Why the student chose a certain combination of major and minor: The overlap between major and minor requirements was appealing.&紳莉莽梯;

Theme: Ways of Navigating 

  • Department website 
  • My major posts a 3-year and 4-year plan on the website, which I appreciated. It was basically plug and chug. I knew what I had to take each semester.&紳莉莽梯;
  • Major advisor 
  • Conversation with peers: The major lounge is a useful networking space; TAs provide connections to peers with advice.&紳莉莽梯;

Theme: What Helps 

  • Whats nice about [my major] is its such a broad major that so many random classes just count. I was abroad last spring, and my major advisor told me, Whatever you take in the study-abroad program will count. It was nice that I had the freedom to choose.&紳莉莽梯;
  • I like the flexibility of the major. I can go to the head of the department and say that a course counts and explain why.&紳莉莽梯;
  • My department sells itself on having an accessible major with three required classes and three 300-levels.&紳莉莽梯;
  • Intro classes for the major are mostly taken by first years. First years get sucked into the department. 

Theme: What Hinders; Choosing a major later 

  • Planning ahead is essential. At first, I wanted to try a bunch of different classesit wasnt the best choice. I got to know what I was interested in but knowing [early on] gives you greater flexibility later. I decided [on my major] late and had to catch up.&紳莉莽梯;
  • Its a good modelIm glad students dont have to declare before get here, but time to explore doesnt always pan outyou have to catch up quickly in STEM or social sciences.&紳莉莽梯;
  • If you decide late, it makes it complicated.&紳莉莽梯;
  • My major has a prescribed set of requirements and an order you have to take them. I had a little trouble fulfilling one of the requirements because my first year I didnt know I wanted to [pursue this major] and I had to take courses up to a certain level.&紳莉莽梯;

Theme: Number of Courses Offered 

  • A student describes general frustration of either not enough or too many upper-level courses each semester. 
  • A different student describes being frustrated when the major advisor sends out the list of courses for the next semester. I wonder, Could I make this class [thats not on the list] count if I wanted to? But I dont want to go through the trouble.&紳莉莽梯;
  • In my major, the requirements are prescribed, and you can only bend them if you can get a professor on your side and make a compelling enough case. Major requirements have recently changed, so this comment might not apply to other students.&紳莉莽梯;
  • Graduate students take two courses per year. The students took courses not relevant to their area of specialization because that was what was being offered and eventually switched focus and advisor. 

Theme: Major advisor and senior professors in the department 

  • The major advisor is very helpful guiding students. Choosing classes and navigating major, figuring out how to get into research, navigating difficult conversations with faculty in the department. 

Theme: Fellow students or TAs 

  • A person who knows all the classes and the department. Its important to have a peer perspective from someone whos taken the class.&紳莉莽梯; 
  • TAs point students toward majors in the department.&紳莉莽梯;
  • TAs hang out in the major lounge and make introductions to other students who can answer questions. 

Theme: Peer Mentors 

  • Before I was a peer mentor, I didnt go to the peer mentors even though I should have. Id go straight to my dean or a professor I had at the time because I didnt know all the resources on campus. Advantages of a peer mentor: a peer mentor responds to email within a day [unlike deans and profs]; peer mentors talk to students when theyre afraid to talk to dean about their uncertainty about their choice of major. 
  • Students note that the pandemic made them more reliant on dean/faculty advice now that they know where to find student mentors, they seek those out more. 

Theme: Experiences

  • Just being a Cities major answers that question.&紳莉莽梯;
  • Visual studies is interdisciplinaryphilosophy, art history.&紳莉莽梯;
  • I think of interdisciplinarity as skill sets. A big part of doing a minor in a non-STEM field is [working on] writing ability, being concise, analytical skillsputting two things together, reading comprehension. I can get through 100-200 pages quickly and take what I need from it.&紳莉莽梯;
  • Graduating this year, I dont feel like Ive missed out on anything. Its interesting seeing how my major and minor overlap at times. E.g., pursuing film, watching documentaries about economic issues, you can see how you can use
  • both sets of knowledge. Thinking about societyhow effective are policies, how well are documentaries getting their message across.&紳莉莽梯;
  • My major and minor combination are a clear example of that. [I was] driven by college-wide requirements rather than my own drive. I feel very well rounded as a senior. [Student defines interdisciplinarity as exposure to different disciplines.] 

Theme: Obstacles to Interdisciplinarity 

  • "Because the major is so structured, its hard to make room for interdisciplinarity without double-majoring. If you want a minor, you have to plan very carefully.&紳莉莽梯; 
  • People [who arent majors] take classes out of interest, but theres less enduring community with them after class is over.&紳莉莽梯;

Theme: Broad skillset 

  • I chose a liberal arts education because I was seeking to improve on skills that [a professional graduate] school wasnt going to develop, and the value is that in the places Im going, I feel prepared to do a lot of different things.&紳莉莽梯;
  • Gaining different skills from my major and minor. I was [recently] talking with my family about how if I went to school just for science, I wouldnt have the same perspectives I have today about my areas of interest. I see things more broadly.&紳莉莽梯;

Theme: Exploration 

  • I was able to take classes outside my majore.g., [foreign language] profs really care about students.&紳莉莽梯;
  • Because it took me 1.5 years to decide on a major, a liberal arts college gave me time to explore.&紳莉莽梯;
  • It gives you the OK to try thingsespecially with the course distribution. I took an anthropology class thinking, oh maybe Ill be an anthro major and got to hold skulls and be in a lab course.&紳莉莽梯;

Theme: Making Connections Between Ideas 

  • A liberal arts education primes you to look for connections in things.&紳莉莽梯;
  • Taking classes in other departments helped me think about what to value in the [STEM] fieldgrad school or industry. It helped me think about the impact scientists are having on the world and was useful in making a better decision.&紳莉莽梯;

Theme: Community/Small Size 

  • I came from a small high school and was nervous about going to a massive school. Its been nice to go to a small school with a strong sense of community. I decided my major during COVID. It was nice to know all of the other majors and be friends with them.&紳莉莽梯;
  • I chose a small school because I wanted profs to know me and opportunities to do research that I might not have sought out at a bigger school.&紳莉莽梯;
  • "I only applied to liberal arts colleges because I knew I wanted to major in STEM and to do research and I thought a liberal arts school would be smaller and [give me] more contact with faculty.&紳莉莽梯;
  • 惇蹋圖 is the only [STEM] graduate program that says we value teaching and graduate students care deeply about their students.&紳莉莽梯;
  • At the root of a small school is relationships. Student-student, student-professor, and student-staff, and those relationships continue beyond graduation.&紳莉莽梯;
  • Im looking for a job now and making connections with alums. The alums Ive talked with had positive experiences. Its nice to hear from people who appreciated their major and school and offer to help.&紳莉莽梯;

Theme: Sense of Community 

  • Even though it can be challenging academic-wise, you have a tight sense of community. It doesnt feel competitive like in high school. I felt supported by people around methe availability of professors and knowing I have resources and people listening to your voice.&紳莉莽梯;

Theme: Self-Confidence 

  • My major developed my self-confidence. [Lengthy response about how professors believed in student and student now believes in herself.
  • Confidence. I knew I didnt want to do math or science, and [my major] made me think about things differently. I feel confident that Ill end up somewhere that Ill like. I go to a good institution, I have a good educational background, Im confident Ill end up somewhere good.&紳莉莽梯;

Other Responses

  • Im majoring in critical thinking. Im not going to be a professor reading books and writing down my thoughts about them every day. I know how to read a text and think about what its really saying, think about connections between things. Ive learned you can treat anything as a text that you read and give value to, nothing is unimportant.&紳莉莽梯;

Responses

  • Administrative transparency.
  • The administration leaves the student body wondering whats happening. 
  • The open-ended model of exploring for two years and then declaring. Making sure were catching students at the end of the first year who arent taking classes directed toward a major. Preventing students from getting to sophomore spring without a direction. 
  • More spaces for students to speak about what they like and dont like within departments. 
  • Planning and publicizing info sessions, answering questions
  • Clarity about what resources are available to Haverford students majoring at 惇蹋圖, and vice versa.