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Interdisciplinary
Scholarship & Teaching
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Interdisciplinary Seminar at NEIU
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Related Links
Bridging
the Disciplines: Interdisciplinary Discourse and Faculty Scholarship
by Susan Frost
& Paul Jean, 2003
Association for Integrative
Studies
Homepage of the
AIS, a non-profit educational association founded in 1979 at Miami University,
Oxford, OH
Integrative
Learning: Opportunities to Connect
A collaborative
project of the Association of American Colleges and Universities and The
Carnegie Foundation of the Advancement of Teaching
Interdisciplinary
Courses and Curricula
A resources
page by the Reinvention
Center at Stony
Brook
Rethinking
Interdisciplinarity
A project aimed
at enhancing interdisciplinary research and exchanges in the humanities;
sponsored by the C.N.R.S., France.
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Dear Friends and
Colleagues,
A group of colleagues is
planning to design an interdisciplinary seminar to be run next semester
(Spring, 2006) here at NEIU. If you are interested, here's a quick
overview:
- The seminar is low-stress and would take place once
a month.
- Participants are invited to help choose an
overarching theme for the semester. Some ideas are: "social
responsibility", "curiosity", "nature" or
"creativity". Presenters are encouraged to give talks from
the perspective of their discipline, but with a focus on interdisciplinarity and issues that may be
useful and interesting to their colleagues from other disciplines.
- The point of the seminar is to encourage cross-disciplinary
communication. Such seminars at other institutions had a positive
impact on the participants' research and teaching.
- It’ll be fun and a great excuse to get
together during the semester!
Interested? Read on for
more details:
The idea for this seminar
came from an article on university interdisciplinary initiatives called
“Bridging the Disciplines: Interdisciplinary Discourse and Faculty
Scholarship” by Susan Frost (see Related Links!). The article
documents just such a seminar that ran at Emory
University in Atlanta every spring semester from 1989
to 1996. The seminar was motivated by a concern about growing
“intellectual distance” among the disciplines. Approximately
10 faculty members attended the once-a-month seminar, which took on a
different theme every year. Some of the topics mentioned in the article
are: “on being human”, “responsibility”, and
“nature”.
We feel that NEIU could
both support such a seminar and benefit from it. We are a small
university, and many of us do not have colleagues with whom we can work
directly on our primary, discipline-specific research interests. An
interdisciplinary seminar is a low-overhead, low stress way to bring
together a busy but involved university community that is diverse and
dedicated to both teaching and research.
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Meeting Times & Topics:
The
second meeting is coming up on MONDAY, April 3, 3-5 p.m. at the Center
for Teaching and Learning, Lib. 310.
David
Rutschman (Mathematics) will facilitate the
discussion. David says:
“Continuing
our conversation about our responsibilities as scholars, I would like us
to ask ourselves if we have social responsibilities as scholars that are
distinct from those we have as good citizens.
Do
you have any role models to share?
I’ll
bring a short handout from Ernest Boyer.”
The
first meeting of the NEIU Interdisciplinary Scholarship and Teaching
Seminar will take place on Wednesday, March 1st from 3:00-5:00pm at the
Center for Teaching and Learning, LIB-310. The theme for this semester is
“responsibility.” Please come and join the discussion.
Agenda
for the first meeting:
- We
will discuss the purpose and format of the seminar, as well as the
“responsibility” theme.
- Tanya Cofer (Mathematics), John Parker (Psychology),
and Katy Smith (Teacher Education) will begin the interdisciplinary
dialogue by discussing their cooperative research agenda on the
sources of interdisciplinary tension between mathematics and
mathematics education, the two communities that are jointly responsible
for the mathematical preparation of this nation’s mathematics
teachers. In particular, they would like to both discuss and pose
the following questions:
- What
are the personal and professional rewards of and barriers to doing
this type of work?
- How
does this work relate to the “responsibility” theme?
Interdisciplinary questions and problems exist at the intersection
of two or more distinct disciplines. Whose responsibility is it to
deal with these issues? Do our departments and administration have
a responsibility to support interdisciplinary research?
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For further questions, contact:
Dr. Tanya Cofer, ex. 5758, e-mail:
T-Cofer@neiu.edu
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