Teaching Philosophy
How do we train students to become interdisciplinary thinkers who are comfortable with complexity?
Students become interdisciplinary thinkers who can solve complex problems when they are able to skillfully integrate multi-disciplinary data, tools, and concepts, and can synthesize how individual parts of a system interact in non-linear ways. More simply stated, interdisciplinary thinking is an advanced cognitive skill comprised of numerous subskills that enables one to “think about something familiar in an unfamiliar way.”
Based on my personal experience of moving from disciplinary to interdisciplinary science, and ten years of designing interdisciplinary curricula for both undergraduate and graduate levels, I believe the most effective approach for facilitating acquisition of the subskills needed for integrated thinking are to: 1) provide students with a foundational primer on the epistemologies, methods, and language of complementary disciplines, 2) engage them in active cooperative-learning exercises where they can practice interdisciplinary communication, collaboration, and positive interdependence, and 3) introduce them to systems thinking through experiential place-based case studies.
I teach a general education geoscience course called Bays and Beaches around the World at East Carolina University's Outer Banks campus, as part of our Semester Experience at the Coast. This undergraduate course provides students with a basic understanding of the geologic and human processes shaping Earth's coasts and introduces them to systems thinking through active learning exercises, global case studies, and field experiences. Students have said this class hones their environmental observation skills and enables them to connect the coastal characteristics that they see on a beach to multiple processes. They also say it's fun!
I also offer a course for PhD students in ECU's Integrated Coastal Programs called, Integrated Problem Solving in Coastal Sciences. In this course, students learn how to approach an interdisciplinary research project by examining perspectives, often unconscious, that condition approaches to the integrated research process - in effect, world views that frame disciplinary research. Students learn how to grapple with tradeoffs, assumptions, problems of scale, and practice becoming more comfortable with ambiguity. This course also prepares them to more effectively communicate complex ideas in a simple way when discussing messy problems with other researchers, policy makers, practitioners, and other stakeholders.
Examples of other courses and curricula that I have co-designed, co-taught, or both:
University of Colorado Boulder
Global Intensive: Sustainable Development in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam (upper-division undergraduate;
in-class and study abroad component)
Doomed to Drown? Infrastructure Governance and Environmental Justice in Bangladesh (upper-division undergraduate/graduate curriculum; in-class and study abroad component)
Vanderbilt University Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Water, Culture, and Social Justice in Bangladesh (transdisciplinary graduate capstone course;
in-class and study abroad component)
Oceanography (undergraduate lab)
Stony Brook University Marine Sciences Research Center
Coastal Geology (Research Experience for Undergraduates [REU] experiential field projects)
Coastal Oceanography (undergraduate)
Introduction to Oceanography (undergraduate)
How do we train students to become interdisciplinary thinkers who are comfortable with complexity?
Students become interdisciplinary thinkers who can solve complex problems when they are able to skillfully integrate multi-disciplinary data, tools, and concepts, and can synthesize how individual parts of a system interact in non-linear ways. More simply stated, interdisciplinary thinking is an advanced cognitive skill comprised of numerous subskills that enables one to “think about something familiar in an unfamiliar way.”
Based on my personal experience of moving from disciplinary to interdisciplinary science, and ten years of designing interdisciplinary curricula for both undergraduate and graduate levels, I believe the most effective approach for facilitating acquisition of the subskills needed for integrated thinking are to: 1) provide students with a foundational primer on the epistemologies, methods, and language of complementary disciplines, 2) engage them in active cooperative-learning exercises where they can practice interdisciplinary communication, collaboration, and positive interdependence, and 3) introduce them to systems thinking through experiential place-based case studies.
I teach a general education geoscience course called Bays and Beaches around the World at East Carolina University's Outer Banks campus, as part of our Semester Experience at the Coast. This undergraduate course provides students with a basic understanding of the geologic and human processes shaping Earth's coasts and introduces them to systems thinking through active learning exercises, global case studies, and field experiences. Students have said this class hones their environmental observation skills and enables them to connect the coastal characteristics that they see on a beach to multiple processes. They also say it's fun!
I also offer a course for PhD students in ECU's Integrated Coastal Programs called, Integrated Problem Solving in Coastal Sciences. In this course, students learn how to approach an interdisciplinary research project by examining perspectives, often unconscious, that condition approaches to the integrated research process - in effect, world views that frame disciplinary research. Students learn how to grapple with tradeoffs, assumptions, problems of scale, and practice becoming more comfortable with ambiguity. This course also prepares them to more effectively communicate complex ideas in a simple way when discussing messy problems with other researchers, policy makers, practitioners, and other stakeholders.
Examples of other courses and curricula that I have co-designed, co-taught, or both:
University of Colorado Boulder
Global Intensive: Sustainable Development in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam (upper-division undergraduate;
in-class and study abroad component)
Doomed to Drown? Infrastructure Governance and Environmental Justice in Bangladesh (upper-division undergraduate/graduate curriculum; in-class and study abroad component)
Vanderbilt University Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Water, Culture, and Social Justice in Bangladesh (transdisciplinary graduate capstone course;
in-class and study abroad component)
Oceanography (undergraduate lab)
Stony Brook University Marine Sciences Research Center
Coastal Geology (Research Experience for Undergraduates [REU] experiential field projects)
Coastal Oceanography (undergraduate)
Introduction to Oceanography (undergraduate)
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