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Leslie Rescorla's picture

transdiciplinary senior seminar

Your presentation started me thinking about some kind of transdisciplinary senior experience that would be fun for faculty, valuable for students, and practical to mount. I also
started pondering topics that I thought might lend themselves to such an undertaking. My current musings on the topic follow below:

1) My idea would be to have a senior seminar experience that would involve students taking two 1/2 semester modules, each one focused on a theme.
2) Each seminar would be staffed by about 5 faculty members, each from a different department and representing various divisions/disciplines. About 10 students would be enrolled.
3) The emphasis of the experience would be on discussion of the topic, with faculty members taking turns each week presenting something from the perspective of his/her discipline to start the discussion going.
4) Readings would be very limited, as would writing requirements, so that preparation would be minimal for both faculty and students. Perhaps each student would be asked to produce some sort of presentation/product at the end, with the format of that being unspecified (as you did in your class).
5) The seminar would be ungraded and not count for course credit and would meet for one hour per week for 7 weeks. Perhaps the final two meetings could be devoted to the student presentations.
6) My thought is that, if the program worked well, students would be required to participate in two such modules during the senior year. However, to try it out, it would be voluntary at first. Because the preparation and time commitment would be minimal for faculty and the interaction should be stimulating and fun, "teaching" it would not count toward one’s teaching FTE.
7) The topics I thought would lend themselves to this kind of thing are broad. I have listed some possible topics and sample disciplines that I think would be relevant for each.

pollution: biology, film studies, anthropology, economics, English, political science, geology,
evil: philosophy, history, psychology, Russian, biology
race/racism: sociology, biology, Africana Studies, German, psychology, film, history of art
time: history, economics, physics, math, philosophy, French, archeology, geology
symmetry: history of art, math, chemistry, psychology, political science, classics
randomness: physics, math, philosophy, economics, psychology, English
health: economics, biology, psychology, sociology, history, anthropology, chemistry
war: classics, political science, history, physics, film studies, history of art, psychology, English
equilibrium: physics, philosophy, math, history of art, economics, political science, psychology
gender: biology, economics, anthropology, Spanish, psychology, political science, arts
the family: anthropology, Russian, psychology, film, sociology, biology, economics, arts
death: archeology, biology, film, anthropology, Italian, arts, history of art
competition: math, economics, psychology, biology, philosophy, film, anthropology

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