Interdisciplinary Connections
Click on the organization's name to access its web site
Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U)
The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) will have its Network for Academic Renewal Conference October 22-24, 2009, in Atlanta, Georgia. This year's theme will be "Integrative Learning: Addressing the Complexities." The Association for Integrative Studies is an Academic Partner for the AAC&U conference.
American Association for the Advancement
of Science
AAAS (pronounced "Triple-A-S") is a nonprofit professional society dedicated to the advancement of scientific and technological excellence across all disciplines, and to the public's understanding of science and technology. AAAS is among the oldest societies in America, having been founded in Philadelphia in 1848. This website provides links to the full text of the journal Science, as well as a hypertext list of affiliated organizations.
American Studies Crossroads Project in the Humanities
The American Studies Crossroads Project is an international networking and curriculum innovation project. It serves as a center of information on the web for individuals researching issues in American Studies. The Crossroads Project is host to pedagogical, scholarly, and institutional information for the international American Studies, along with full information about the American Studies Association. In addition, the Crossroads Project also contains workbooks, videos, and tapes intended to assist teachers and students in making use of technology and in promoting international collaboration in the study of American History and Culture.
ASIANetwork is a consortium of some 150 North American colleges striving to strengthen the role of Asian Studies within the framework of liberal arts and interdisciplinary education to help prepare a new generation of undergraduates for a world in which Asian societies are playing more and more prominent roles.
Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs
The Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs (AGLSP) is an international organization of over 125 institutional members that share a common interest in graduate-level liberal education primarily serving adult, part-time students. The AGLSP, founded in 1975, represents a broad selection of American higher education -- from small liberal arts colleges to large, research-oriented universities in the public and private sectors. The member list is extensive and links you directly to a long list of institutions (and their websites) with master's in liberal studies programs. AGLSP will have its 2009 Conference October 22-24, 2009, in Orlando, Florida. The theme will be "Imagination in an Age of Instant Information."
Association of General Liberal
Studies (AGLS)
AGLS is the only national organization dedicated solely to the advancement of that portion of curriculum known as general education, including its relationship to liberal studies. Composed of faculty and administrators from a wide variety of disciplines and institutions in higher education, AGLS is a group of friendly people who believe in the positive impact that an effective general education/liberal studies program can have on our students' personal and professional lives.
Consortium for Innovative Environments in Learning
The Consortium for Innovative Environments in Learning is a growing network of distinguished, progressive higher education institutions. CIEL shares a common goal: to advance innovations in student learning. Faculty members share ideas among faculty in the network, broadening their resources for teaching, curriculum development, assessment, and research. Students present their academic work in the online student journal and at annual symposia. Students also participate in exchanges at CIEL member campuses or in study abroad programs offered through the network. CIEL also engages in outreach to the higher education community to share best practices in place among the CIEL institutions.
The Council of Environmental Deans and Directors
The Council of Environmental Deans and Directors (CEDD) of the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) has announced a new online resource: Interdisciplinary Hiring, Tenure and Promotion: Guidance for Individuals and Institutions. “Guidance” presents the first comprehensive approach that deals with the entire pre- and post-tenure experience. It addresses issues faced by both faculty and research scientists, raising points for consideration and providing recommendations with examples. The resource is designed to help guide individuals, as well as institutions, in fostering and promoting interdisciplinary scholars throughout their career.
Explorations in Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning :A Collection of Course Portfolios
Deborah Vess of Georgia College & State University has developed online course portfolios as part of a research project undertaken as a Carnegie Scholar. The portfolios examine the impact on student learning of various ways of structuring interdisciplinary courses, of collaborative and active learning, and of global and cross-cultural approaches. The author also examines student understanding of interdisciplinarity in the context of course structure and discusses the aspects of interdisciplinary courses that seem to most affect and/or promote integrative learning.
General and Interdisciplinary Scholarly Societies
The University of Waterloo Electronic Library Scholarly Societies Project has been created to facilitate access to information about scholarly societies across the world. Societies are listed alphabetically and by subject area. A set of essays shows how societies began as meeting sponsors and publishers, then took on bibliographic work, interacted with commercial publishers, and now have begun to tackle the current crisis in scholarly publishing. Suggestions are provided for creating an effective society website.
HASTAC: Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory
HASTAC is a consortium of humanists, artists, scientists, and engineers, of leading researchers and nonprofit research institutions, committed to new forms of collaboration across communities and disciplines fostered by creative uses of technology. Its mission is two-fold: to ensure that humanistic and humane considerations are never far removed from technological advances; and to push education and learning to the forefront of digital innovation. The HASTAC network consists of more than 80 institutions principally located in the U.S. and reaches over 30,000 people worldwide.
The Hastings Center is an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit interdisciplinary bioethics research institute founded in 1969 to explore fundamental and emerging questions in health care, biotechnology, and the environment.
The Hodges' Health Career Model
The Hodges' Health Career Model is based on a descriptive model of the structure of nursing curriculum. The website aims to use the model to bring together health and social care, informatics, practitioners, patients, their families, and their care-givers. The developers envision the model being used by multidisciplinary health care teams, faculty, patients, advocates and policy makers. The website shows the relations of subject domains, and provides multiple related links.
Holistic Education Network of Tasmania, Australia
While its definition of "transdisciplinary" may strike many AIS members as close to what they mean by "interdisciplinary," this site sponsored by the Holistic Education Network of Tasmania, Australia, has useful links to European as well as Australian, Canadian, and U.S. websites. Take a look in particular at the "Charter of Transdisciplinarity" from the First World Congress of Transdisciplinarity for its vision of a "transdisciplinary" world.
Humanities Education and Research Association
The Humanities Education and Research Association is a professional organization for humanities teachers, scholars, and museum directors. It publishes a newsletter three times per year and a refereed scholarly journal, Interdisciplinary Humanities, two times per year.
Institute for Advanced Technology
IATH is at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Its goal is to explore and expand the potential of information technology as a tool for humanities research. To that end, it provides consulting, technical support, applications programming, and networked publishing facilities. It also cultivates partnerships and participates in humanities computing initiatives with libraries, publishers, information technology companies, scholarly organizations, and others interested in the intersection of computers and cultural heritage. This vigorous website provides some state-of -the-art thinking about hypertext, as well as advanced imaging software programs and excellent links within UV and beyond.
Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship
The National Science Foundation's Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) Program educates U.S. PhD scientists, engineers, and educators with the interdisciplinary backgrounds, deep knowledge in chosen disciplines, and technical, professional, and personal skills to become in their own careers the leaders and creative agents for change. It works to create innovative new models for graduate education and foster collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. It is also intended to facilitate greater diversity in student participation and preparation, and to contribute to the development of a diverse, globally-engaged science and engineering workforce.
Interdisciplinary Research Centers
This site links to a Hybrid Vigor final report to the National Science Foundation on interdisciplinary research centers: "A Multi-Method Analysis of the Social and Technical Conditions for Interdisciplinary Collaborations" by Diana Rhoten, principal investigator, September 2003.
Interdisciplinary Teaching and Research Group
This group was set up in 2005 to explore all facets of interdisciplinary teaching and learning. This includes investigating the student experience, examining the ways in which institutions encourage or discourage cross-disciplinary collaboration (in teaching), exploring how subject centers can support staff teaching on interdisciplinary programmes and supporting staff who do not have an obvious subject center home. The page is part of the Higher Education Academy website and includes links to publications and projects.
ISEA Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts
Founded in the Netherlands in 1990, the Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA) is an international nonprofit organization fostering interdisciplinary academic discourse and exchange among culturally diverse organizations and individuals working with art, science and emerging technologies. ISEA publishes a newsletter; hosts an online archive and exchange environment and oversees the International Symposium on Electronic Art, a regular gathering of the international art, science and technology community.
Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies
An International Journal of Interdisciplinary and Interfaith Dialogue. This journal highlights interdisciplinary, faith-informed reading, research, writing, book reviews, theme-oriented courses and seminars.
JRP is an international refereed journal with a transdisciplinary focus, available in the open access mode, i.e., available free of charge to the readers. The journal is supported by a consortium of institutions drawn from different parts of the world. It is produced electronically and hosted on the Web by Athabasca University Press (AU Press). In 2007 (Vol. 3, Issue 2) the journal published a special issue: "On Beyond Interdisciplinarity."
New Directions: Science, Humanities, Policy
New Directions: Science, Humanities, Policy is committed to developing interdisciplinary approaches to societal problems in research and education. The connecting link for all activities is integrating the perspectives and insights of humanities with those of science, technology, and policy making. The website includes information on meetings, funded case studies, publications and other interdisciplinary resources, and product outcomes from workshops on the theme of "Cities and Rivers." The sponsoring institutions are the Department of Philosophy at the University of North Texas and the Rock Institute of Ethics at Pennsylvania State University.
Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) is an informal national alliance of individuals, institutions, and organizations committed to strengthening undergraduate science, mathematics, engineering, and technology education. PKAL's site maintains information about faculty, facilities, curriculum, and both national and institutional issues in the math, science, engineering, and technology education disciplines.
The University of Minnesota Press in partnership with the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota has been awarded a grant of $672,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to launch Quadrant, a program to promote interdisciplinary publication and research. Quadrant marks the beginning of a new model for Press-University partnerships designed to bring scholars in the humanities and social sciences into dialogue with those in the sciences and professional schools. Quadrant provides research residencies or other opportunities for collaborative interaction to scholars at the Institute for Advanced Study and supports publication of their resulting work by the University of Minnesota Press. Focusing on emerging areas of groundbreaking interdisciplinary scholarship, Quadrant has created four groups: Design, Architecture and Culture; Environment, Culture, and Sustainability; Global Cultures; and Health and Society. The program also includes opportunities for external scholars to spend a semester in residence at the Institute for Advanced Study to work with a collaborative group.
Society for Literature, Science and the Arts
The Society for Literature, Science and the Arts fosters the multi-disciplinary study of the relations among literature and language, the arts, science, medicine, and technology. The 23rd Annual SLSA Conference will be November 5-8, 2009, in Atlanta, Georgia. The theme is: "Decodings."
The University Studies Program,. University of Tennessee, Knoxville, seeks to foster faculty development by facilitating the exploration of disciplinary boundaries and by providing for the expression of faculty excellence through a wide range of interdisciplinary activities. The program offers faculty development workshops, a listing of interdisciplinary courses, colloquia and lectures on interdisciplinary issues, and awards for faculty who engage in interdisciplinarity. The website contains sections on publications on interdisciplinarity, as well as resources related to interdisciplinary teaching and scholarship initiatives.
Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education
Established in 1985, the Washington Center (Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington) emphasizes collaborative, low-cost, highly effective approaches to educational reform. The center works with faculty, staff, and administrators at regional and national levels to support student engagement and academic achievement, particularly for students underrepresented in higher education. The website has links to publications and projects that promote interdisciplinary learning, curricular integration, and educational equity. (Click on About the Center link.)
The WLH links to pages created by faculty worldwide who are using the Web to deliver class materials. For example, you will find course syllabi, assignments, lecture notes, exams, class calendars, multimedia textbooks, and so on. The site is inclusive: expect to roam for a while. This site is managed by "Teamweb" at the University of Texas, Austin. WLH is organized by subject and includes areas such as liberal studies, cultural studies and women's studies.
YouTube video with William E. Rees, PhD, University of British Columbia
Professor William E. Rees of the University of British Columbia's new College for Interdisciplinary Studies can be seen in this YouTube video, arguing that an interdisciplinary education is necessary to address today's complex issues like climate change, and our education system needs to adapt to this reality.