Engineering Commons^™

Breaking Down The Silos: Innovations For Multidisciplinary Programs, Jillana Finnegan, Donna C. Llewellyn

University Author Recognition Bibliography: 2020

Universities, colleges and academic departments acknowledge the need for more collaborative, multidisciplinary, entrepreneurial, and global education. Unfortunately, this is no trivial task. Centuries of tradition have produced institutional silos, reinforced by layers of policy and cultural differences between academic departments, between colleges, and between academic and non-academic units. Successful multidisciplinary programs require programmatic and administrative innovation that meet faculty, student and institutional needs and leverage available resources. The Vertically Integrated Project (VIP) model, in place at thirty-seven institutions, has achieved notable success in these areas. This paper profiles innovations from ten VIP Programs in three areas: institutional organization, program organization, …