Real World Learning: Wear the (Intern) Hat!

What's the hardest thing to do when part of a sophomore class is an internship? Getting started! One third of the credit hours of the Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies class (35 hours of internship service) is earned by actually working in whatever field most closely or conveniently matches a student's interests - preferably not on Coker's campus. If you stay on campus, you are missing some of the funnest "real-world" aspects, and unless you want some very specific skills in Marketing and Communications or IT work, the convenience and safety of on-campus work are probably not worth it.
The internship is set up through our Office of Career Development, which has contact info for a long list of local businesses and organizations, such as the Chamber of Commerce and City Hall, Parks and Recreation, and many downtown stores, offices, and services.

Then: get ready! You need a resume and a general idea of what you want to learn about or what kind of work environment you want to experience. Think about what you can contribute to the organization, as well: tech skills? knowledge? ideas? Research the place you are interested in.
The Office of Career Development can help you set up an interview with the business or organization, or help you with contact info so you can get in touch with them yourself. Sometimes you have to be persistent!
Once you get started, be ready to be engaged. Last year, my students had all sorts of reports to share. A student whose interdisciplinary fields were writing and history put in his hours at the Hartsville Museum and walked all over downtown Hartsville to make an inventory of businesses and buildings one day - another day he helped curate an exhibit and organized artifacts. In a small business, you may be able to put your IT knowledge to work to tweak a router setup and spend hours chatting about entrepreneur challenges with the owner. And, if you are working for the City of Hartsville, one evening you may be left in charge of a busy downtown music event, directing traffic and vendors. "I'll be back in an hour - meanwhile, you wear the hat," says the City Manager, and then that's what you do: wear the hat!
The student who was left in charge that fall evening at the downtown Hartsville Block Party, wearing the hat, was terrified for one hot minute, but then he rose to the occasion - traffic was directed to parking, vendors were shown how to connect their power cables, and the music could start up. It was a lovely evening, and to this intern, the college campus, and how he thought about learning, appeared suddenly much larger. Well, perhaps not that much larger - it's still Hartsville.

Sending second-year students out in the community takes some faith, patience, and persistence - there are moments of panic, moments of boredom, transport crises, personal crises; it's sort of like sending pretty young people out to actually work. But there are also some real insights about how much creativity, flexibility, skills, and - yes: interdisciplinary thinking! - are required for a job well done. We can (and do) spend many hours reading a text book and talking about the implications of ideas, policies, and cross-disciplinary efforts, but at the end of the semester, the internship is probably the one most memorable part of the course. Totally worth the hassle.

Post-Hurricane Considerations

Last week, I did not put up a post - the weekend was consumed with not buying milk and bread, and with moving wind-vulnerable objects (lawn chairs, tools, bikes) into the wind-protected shelter of my ancient shed. The real risk to my home is the pecan tree that is leaning precariously and will probably sooner or later take down the corner of the house and the piano.

We all prepare, in some way, for weather. And then, afterwards, there is clean-up - FEMA and rescue services were rightly praised for better organization and communication than what we saw when Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. So, we are getting better at responding to extreme weather, which is probably a positive, as we are likely to see a good bit more of that in the future.

But, other than buying bread and milk, what else could we do? Acknowledging and responding to patterns in global warming, for example, comes to mind - scientists agree that man-made changes are affecting the earth's weather pattern. We must respond, and yet many of us prefer not to - we are set in our comforts, in our beliefs, and in our routines. An interdisciplinarian might be interested in asking questions about this: what would it take for an ordinary household to consider giving up fossil fuels? how could solar energy be marketed? what belief systems prevent a nation as educated and wealthy as the US from fully responding to the need to change our energy consumption and use of the environment (wetlands, forests, space in general)? These are complex issues, to be sure.

Interdisciplinarians are also aware of global issues. Hurricane Irma was tough enough on Florida and Georgia, but what about the islands in the Caribbean?

Clearly, any person interested in public health, a large field which relates several disciplines, such as medicine and epidemiology, social behavior, geography, politics, and history, would gain from having a look at the effects of Hurricane Irma.

In the aftermath of the hurricane, President Trump was asked whether the White House was reconsidering its stance of denying global warming, and his response was that this was not the time to do so; that this was the time to clean up and help victims.
I think he might be wrong.
This is indeed the time to ask and address some tough questions about how we live our lives and what effect our choices have on our global environment, and it is also the time to equip students with some skills to articulate questions about our future. Interdisciplinary Studies, with its emphasis on relationships between attitudes, science, humans, and, yes, even weather!, is an excellent starting point to provide and practice those skills.

Combining Skills and Credit Hours: The Pragmatic Approach to IS

This past week, two students came into my office, both of them in an educational pickle. (Two very different pickles.) Each had started on a track towards a major that turned out to be not sustainable. Now what?

Thirty years ago, if you went to a state college, had a work study job during the semesters and held down a full-time job in the summers, added on some reasonable support from your family, and abstained from dinners out, you could graduate in four years with a BA degree and hardly any debt.

Those days are over. The pressure is on: you have four years to get through, you take out massive loans, and at the end you better have something in your hand that counts - both in terms of actual career preparation (knowledge and skills) and signaling this preparation (the diploma).

You are pressured to choose a major and stick with it - by your parents, by your professors, and by society (all those times your parents' friends or your Aunt Ida asks you "what's your major?" - get your story straight!).

But what if you decide to change your mind? what if you started down the road of Biology and realize, two years in, that anatomy is not your thing? what if you dreamed of being a teacher since kindergarten, and then meet your first kindergarten class from the other side and say "Oh no! Ankle biters!"? what if you love dance, but injuries keep you off the stage? You have spent half your budget for your college education, and you feel stuck.

Enter Interdisciplinary Studies. We sit down together, look at your credit hour distribution in the fields you have already studied, and talk about your interests. Maybe you would be happy to combine your biology expertise with writing or drawing to work on informational material and text books? maybe you are excited to work with students one-on-one in a school setting? maybe you want to promote dance from behind the scenes? We find the courses that correspond to what you need to learn, and we work with professors who can help guide you.

This is what that can look like:

There are many careers that require organizational skills, business acumen, communication experience, and a deep understanding of how different fields come together in the real world. Often a combination of skills and knowledge from two or three different fields prepare a graduate better for a specific career than a single major might - and, since the courses in which you enroll actually often correspond very explicitly to your goals, much of what you continue to learn is directly applicable to your interests and ambitions.

Three students graduated from Coker this past spring with majors in Interdisciplinary Studies. They all had individual goals and ambitions, and we were able to create degree tracks that, although no less stringent than a single major, tapped into their potential to set them up for success.