Recommendations Concerning Interdisciplinary Teaching

Academic Affairs Committee

The Benefits of Interdisciplinary Teaching:

The Faculty Senate believes that interdisciplinary teaching can be intellectually enriching for faculty and students alike. At its best, interdisciplinary and team-teaching involves close collaborative teaching among faculty members so that students have the chance to become involved in the dynamic exchange of ideas across academic disciplines. Students learn how to think about a given subject from different disciplinary perspectives and how that subject is shaped by different approaches. They participate in a debate that is larger than the boundaries of a single discipline and thus can become a part of a larger intellectual community. Faculty members from different disciplines can also be rejuvenated by the experience of teaching together in the same course. Through such teaching, they advance their research interests by means of close contact with colleagues from other disciplines working on related questions. They have first-hand contact with a world of ideas distinct from their own disciplinary training. They are spurred to reflect on the assumptions and ideas that constitute their own disciplines. Through the rare opportunity to teach collaboratively, they also have a chance to improve their own teaching by observing and interacting with a colleague in the classroom. Outside the classroom, they also have the opportunity to exchange ideas about how to refine their teaching. For students and faculty alike, there are few devices more effective in strengthening intellectual community than interdisciplinary teaching. At the same time, the Faculty Senate recognizes that interdisciplinary teaching is not to be urged upon everyone and endorses the virtues of the traditional class taught by a single instructor. It aims only to help remove obstacles for those who wish to pursue interdisciplinary instruction.

Charge to the Academic Affairs Committee:

Collect and assemble information about interdisciplinary teaching across the University, both within and between departments.
Identify barriers that might be removed and incentives provided in schools and departments.
Recommend measures that will facilitate interdisciplinary teaching.

Results of University-Wide Survey:

Current Practices: Team-teaching and cross-listing of undergraduate and graduate courses is widespread across the University, although less integrated within departments in the School of Arts and Sciences.
Barriers: Respondents in several Arts and Sciences departments identified two major impediments: (1) fear of losing enrollments and resources based on enrollments (through FTEs) with team-taught or cross-listed courses; (2) lack of faculty resources, due to the need to teach core courses required for the major.

Recommendations:

The Reality of Limited Resources: Given the growth in undergraduate enrollments and the limited size of the faculty, opportunities for interdisciplinary teaching need to be implemented in a way that requires no additional resources available to departments, schools, and the University. Below we describe specific strategies for implementing the three principal vehicles of interdisciplinary teaching: cross-listed courses, team-taught courses, and interdisciplinary programs.

Strategies

The Faculty Senate joins with the Dean of Arts and Sciences in encouraging interdisciplinary teaching through cross-listed courses, team-taught courses, and interdisciplinary programs.

Cross-listed courses:

Although cross-listed courses do not require more resources at the University or school level, they may reallocate enrollments across departments and impose hardships on those departments that originate the cross-listed courses.

One solution is to enlarge the size of the cross-listed course in order to accommodate the increased number of students enrolling through a secondary, cross-listed department, while maintaining the course's previous enrollment size in the originating department.
Since enlarging cross-listed courses will not always be desirable, the problem of losing FTEs can be reduced if deans adjust departmental enrollments (FTEs) as conventionally measured to account for cross-listing. If some (or all) of the student enrollments gained by the secondary cross-listed department are allocated to the department of the faculty member teaching the cross-listed course, the disincentive to the originating department is reduced and cross-listing will be encouraged.

Team-taught courses:

Optimally, interdisciplinary and team-teaching involves not a series of disconnected lectures by different faculty members (or guest lecturers) but close collaborative teaching by two or more faculty members throughout a semester. Given the limited size of the faculty, team-taught courses, because they use more faculty resources, can only be accommodated by slightly larger class sizes in other courses or somewhat heavier teaching loads. The faculty Senate believes that the value of team-taught courses to the faculty and students is worth these small extra burdens. Among the ways to offer such courses occasionally are:

Teaching a large course one semester to "balance out" a smaller team-taught or cross-listed course in another semester.
Teaching a team-taught course for the first time as part of a normal teaching load, but subsequent times as a partial overload. For instance, for faculty with a four course yearly teaching load, teaching a team-taught course once a year might require teaching seven courses over a two year period (instead of six) for a total of nine courses taught in two years, instead of the normal eight.
Deciding at the departmental level to "support" an occasional team-taught or cross-listed course if a department's earned FTEs are substantial enough.
Adjusting core course requirements for the major to "make room" for cross-listed courses and free up some teaching time.

Interdisciplinary programs across established departments:

New interdisciplinary programs typically involve new cross-listed and team-taught courses as well as established courses. The Dean of the College welcomes proposals to create innovative interdisciplinary programs across departments which involve team-teaching and cross-listing of courses, and will assess their enrollment impact in the normal manner.

Interdisciplinary teaching across Schools:

While there is a certain amount of interdisciplinary teaching occurring across the Schools of the University, for example, between Darden and Law, Engineering and Commerce, the Academic Affairs Committee did not investigate the arrangements involved and has no recommendations to make at this time.

Recommendation to the Teaching Resource Center: Offer periodic workshops on team-teaching.

Academic Affairs Committee, 1997-98

Benjamin C. Ray, Religious Studies, Chair

J. Milton Adams, Engineering

Marva A. Barnett, Teaching Resource Center

Robert F. McNergney, Curry

George M. Cohen, Law

Richard F. DeMong, Commerce

Doris F. Glick, Nursing

Reuben M. Rainey, Architecture

Mark Haskins, Darden

William R. Johnson, Economics

George B. Craddock, Medicine

George P. Mentore, Anthropology

Recommendations Concerning Interdisciplinary Teaching

Site Info

Address

Faculty Senate