Education Commons^™

The Role Of The Honors College Dean In The Future Of Honors Education, Peter Parolin, Timothy J. Nichols, Donal C. Skinner, Rebecca C. Bott-Knutson

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

In this chapter, four honors deans reflect on the unique aspects of the honors dean's role. The authors argue that by being responsive to the challenges, opportunities, and responsibilities they face daily, honors deans can enable honors to deliver on its promises to students and to serve the whole university community. Attentive to changing dynamics in honors education nationwide, the authors address how deans must confront myths about honors that bear the legacy of past realities while actively tending to justice in the admissions process, to recruiting and serving diverse populations, and to supporting an honors environment that addresses the …

Black Feminist Citational Praxis And Disciplinary Belonging, Bianca C. Williams

Publications and Research

What does a Black feminist citational practice look and feel like? This contribution to the #CiteBlackWomen colloquy focuses on two arguments: First, that Black feminist citational praxis is one of the major interventions Black women scholars contribute to the academy; and second, that anthropology’s neglect and erasure of Black feminist anthropologists relates to disciplinary (un)belonging. I explore how citation and “disciplinary belonging” influence hiring practices, doctoral training, intellectual genealogies, and what is valued as anthropological knowledge.

Contracts For Honors Credit: Balancing Access, Equity, And Opportunities For Authentic Learning, Patrick Bahls

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Research indicates that a majority of honors students across the country are able to earn honors credit through the fulfillment of honors contracts. These learning contracts grant honors credit to students who perform additional work in non-honors-designated sections of other courses. Despite their popularity, little has been written on the design and delivery of honors contracts. An inaugural annual honors contract system is presented, involving student reflections on contract fulfillment and programmatic assessment of learning outcomes. Students (n = 38) demonstrate an understanding of interdisciplinarity, alternative ways of knowing and being, and intellectual humility while faculty (n = 28) indicate …

Epistemology Shock: English Professors Confront Science, Ian Barnard, Jan Osborn

English Faculty Articles and Research

This article raises questions and concerns regarding students from the sciences working with faculty in the humanities in interdisciplinary settings. It explores the experience of two English professors facing the privileging of "facts" and a science-based understanding of the world in their own classrooms. It poses both questions and pedagogical possibilities for addressing conflicts around epistemologies, scholarship, and teaching and learning.

Transforming Discourse: Interdisciplinary Critique, The University, And The Academic Study Of Religion, Brent A. Smith

Funded Articles

In the book Interdisciplinarity, Joe Moran traced the rise of interdisciplinarity as an inherently transformative approach to the gathering and ordering of knowledge in the modern university. Interdisciplinarity challenges the university as an epistemological project by historicizing it as a context for knowledge production. The academic study of religion arose in this setting and has developed within the intellectual forces—the lines of inquiry and allegiances to certain discourses and ways of organizing knowledge—that marked the modern university. Over the past few decades, the concept of “religion” has been historicized and scholars have argued over whether the “sacred” is in …

Reflection On Integrative Project-Based Learning In Business And Information Technology Programs, Andrew Hogue, Jennifer Percival, Khalil El-Khatib, Garrett Hayes

Stream 2: Curriculum

Recently there has been an increase in demand for interdisciplinary programs that enable graduates to demonstrate a blend of technical and ‘soft skills’. As a result, many higher education organizations are developing programs that integrate areas such as management and information technology or entrepreneurship and engineering. The wide range of topics covered in these programs and the need for graduate to be able to integrate and apply of core concepts. Since 2010 we have used integrative project-based learning as a core element of our game development and entrepreneurship program. In this model, students work in project teams to create a …

Diversity In Times Of Austerity: Documenting Resistance In The Academy, David Moscowitz, Terri Jett, Terri Carney, Tamara Leech, Ann M. Savage

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

What happens to feminism in the university is parallel to what happens to feminism in other venues under economic restructuring: while the impoverished nation is forced to cut social services and thereby send women back to the hierarchy of the family, the academy likewise reduces its footprint in interdisciplinary structures and contains academic feminists back to the hierarchy of departments and disciplines. When the family and the department become powerful arbiters of cultural values, women and feminist academics by and large suffer: they either accept a diminished role or are pushed to compete in a system they recognize as antithetical …

Critical Thinking, Critical Theory: Cross-School First Year Module In Critical Analysis, Tim Stott, Mary Ann Bolger, Noel Fitzpatrick, Niamh-Ann Kelly

Teaching Fellowships

The objective of the project was threefold. Firstly, to propose a first year module entitled “Developing Critical Skills”, to be available across Technological University Dublin (DIT), which would promote, through the analysis of cultural artefacts, the analytical and rhetorical skills of first year students across different disciplines. Secondly, to test and evaluate appropriate assessment procedures for such a module. Thirdly, to explore innovative methods of curriculum design process for interdisciplinary learning. The anticipated benefits of such a module were originally imagined to be the development of students who would possess critical competences with broad application, who would be reflective and …

Listening To Students: Building Bridges, Shira Klein, Magalí Armillas-Tiseyra, Alexis Kuerbis

History Faculty Articles and Research

“Cross-disciplinary” has become a buzzword in academia. Here we offer a student-based perspective on the benefits of cross-disciplinary discussion, based on our experience in New York University’s Graduate Forum. Founded ten years ago by Catharine Stimpson, then dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science (GSAS), the forum brings together graduate students across the university to present their research to each other. This cross-disciplinary discussion has taught us to build bridges between fields and people. By describing how this experience has enriched our work, we hope to inspire other institutions to initiate similar programs.

Once a month, ten doctoral …

Breaking The Rule Of Discipline In Interdisciplinarity: Redefining Professors, Students, And Staff As Faculty, Alison Cook-Sather, Elliott Shore

Education Program Faculty Research and Scholarship

In this article we attempt to complicate traditional--and, we argue, limited and exclusionary--definitions of interdisciplinarity as the bringing into dialogue of established disciplines without questioning the parameters and practices of those disciplines. We propose that interdisciplinarity instead might mean teaching and learning among, between, and in the midst of those of innate or learned capacities--not only college faculty but also students and staff. To illustrate this more radical iteration of interdisciplinarity, we draw on a range of definitions of the key terms, “discipline” and “faculty,” and we offer a case study of a workshop we co-facilitated in which we brought …

Interdisiplinarity: A Major Issue, Jessica B. Buckley, David Buckley

Faculty Scholarship

Interdisciplinary majors are a growing feature of the undergraduate university (Robles, 1998). Their widespread popularity should be of interest to both professional academics and student affairs professionals. These programs present unique opportunities to foster engagement across difference and to encourage a critically reflective learning approach, a style that the Association of American Colleges and Universities (2002), the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators and the American College Personnel Association (2004) all advocate. While highlighting the challenges and opportunities of interdisciplinary programs, these authors, who graduated with bachelor’s degrees in interdisciplinary majors, will argue that these programs provide important opportunities for …

Lgbt Studies: Past, Presences And Futures, Richard M. Juang

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

When I rolled out of bed at 4 am on April 20 to make the trip to New York for "Futures of the Field: Building LGBT Studies into the 21st Century University," the idea of discussing institutionalization was less than appealing. In a time of staff cutbacks, increasing courseloads and notoriously poor job markets, going back to sleep seemed a much better idea.

Futures Of The Field, Jill Dolan

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Gay and lesbian studies has been in the mainstream press quite a lot over the last several months, particularly after Yale University's refusal to accept Larry Kramer's generous gift to establish a program on their campus. Venues such as the New York Times have recently filed cover stories on the status of "sexuality" studies on campuses around the United States, and on the number of campuses in which undergraduate students can major in gay and lesbian studies and attendant fields.