Welcome Back to Where We Are Now: Update on Students and Studies

Coker College's fall semester is revving up, and the Interdisciplinary Studies Center is picking up momentum. This is the third year that we are offering the major in Interdisciplinary Studies, and with five graduates out the door and five more expected for December 18 graduation, I think it's working!

The Center has moved from its somewhat obscure corner on the second floor of Davidson Hall to a location so exposed to traffic that it takes a true extrovert to staff: walk into the main doors and step through the open door to your left! I am not serving coffee all day long, but I will chat with you about Interdisciplinary Studies, help you put an individualized course and major plan together, and advise you about options to move toward graduation, career, and graduate school preparation. (I will also, and this comes with the territory, direct anyone who asks where the restrooms are located.)

With whom am I working this semester? Well, I have nine students enrolled in the introductory course (IS200 now also counts for credits in a General Education Pillars area, which is of interest especially to transfer students), and they represent Business, Music, Psychology, Biology, Dance, Communication, Theater, Computer Science, History and English - or rather: those are all disciplines these students are working with, but their focus is on the intersections between them. We are just getting started on the text book and internships, and I am looking forward to a challenging and fun semester with this group. Let's see where they will take their academic studies!

Five students are currently working on their Senior capstone projects, assembling their discipline advisors and writing up the framework of their plans. They are considering internships, research, and projects to show off the skills and knowledge they have acquired in their years of college studies. I will keep you posted on their progress.

So, what are our graduates up to? I talked to two of them in the last couple of weeks.
I followed up with Emily'rose Shepherd, Coker College BA in Interdisciplinary Studies Spring 18, who combined Computer Science with Business and Communication. She is working as a technician in a computer shop in Columbia, "diagnosing symptoms, replacing parts, clearing viruses, installing Windows and such." The company owner will support further training (A+, Network+, Security+ certifications), and after Emily'rose has been working in the store for a while, she will go out and help clients on-site. According to her, "It'll be a pretty great place to work!"

I also talked to Cameron Flotow, Coker College BA in Interdisciplinary Studies, Spring 17, who worked on the intersections of Computer Science, Math, and Communication/Marketing. He is currently teaching at Trinity-Byrnes Collegiate School, and he is excited to be in the classroom to share his passions for computer science, math, and communication with his young charges. "This is our second week, and everyone seems to be enjoying my class, for the most part," he reports - no surprise, with a teacher as energetic and creative as Mr. Flotow in charge! Of course he is also doing the yearbook.

What else is new? My colleague Alyssa Reiser Prince (ART) and I are headed to the annual conference of the Association of Interdisciplinary Studies in October - that will be in Detroit, and we will talk about our student travel adventure on Bear Island last April. And a couple of weeks later, I will head to Austin to present an overview of Coker's Interdisciplinary Studies program at the Yes We Must Coalition conference. I think those meetings will serve to inspire and inform the next years of our Coker program.

End of Semester: Learning, Products, Student Reflections

It is May; graduation is almost upon us - and at the end of the semester, when we delve into the final exams handed in by students of each course, we do occasionally begin to doubt if anyone learned anything. (A lack of faith that is, hopefully, stress-induced and bears little truth.)
The three Interdisciplinary Studies courses I taught this Spring leave me with somewhat more hope, however - each resulted in project work and student-driven assignments rather than standard exams, and students tend to shine more when they have control over their subject. The eleven students enjoying the Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies wrote individualized plans of study: "what do I know? how does this relate to my career interest? what do I still want to learn about?" - As it turns out, those who are Sophomores are somewhat less clear on each of these points than my five Seniors - and that's ok. It takes a while for studies and classes to make sense, but hopefully, after a few years, they do. (That's my assessment plan, right there.) The two graduating Seniors in the program, after semester-long internships, have created documents for IT and our DeLoach Center, respectively - these projects will stay with Coker to facilitate our operations and decisions; they are also show pieces for the graduates' job searches.

And then there's Bear Island - "Seeing What's There." How do you measure the quality of work produced on the beach? For a single credit hour of 100-level expectations? And: what remains, in the files, in the students' minds and hearts? As it turns out, that varies, too - although not due to Sophomore or Senior standing.

In their own words:

I feel like I gained a vast amount of knowledge from this trip. From the state park, I learned about the local ecosystem, species endangerment, and the importance of reducing our footprint. I thought it was great that the island is a trash-free zone. This adds to emphasizing the importance of becoming more sustainable.

(from a student who used the course to plan a Spanish-language elementary school lesson on sea turtles)

This morning I finally got the chance to attempt some meditating activities. I never thought that there was so much to be learned and interpreted about finding myself, and redefining the way my life is looked at. I found myself at times questioning my existence and asking open questions about what my purpose here is.

(from a photo student who is incorporating yoga in his art work)

There were some insights into how we manage when confronted with Nature:

It also showed me that there’s certain things in life you can’t rush nor change, and instead of doing those things one must be willing to accept, withstand, and most importantly, learn.

As far as my research went, I was proud of myself for being able to change my proposal [in response to the weather] and still manage to incorporate fitness. 

There were some lessons about the community we wish to see:

What impacted me the most was the ability for ten students, two professors, and one Finn to come together as mostly complete strangers and have ten projects come out of that. We really did rely on each other when adversity such as the weather struck and it was pretty amazing to me that people who I had never spoke to before this trip were offering help and food and clothes it really did give me a little hope for the world. 

And about solitude in a natural environment:

I heard that the Atlantic is much uglier than the Pacific. I do not know if that is true, but I kept finding myself captivated by the ocean changing colors and the unevenness of the waves. I always have this image of the ocean being perfect--every single drop. I always picture the tide being even when it flows in, and for me to see the ocean as imperfect, but still lovely, was an experience I had for the first time at Bear Island. I have only ever been to the beach once, and it was filled with people, birds trying to steal food, and trash--not the best first impression, though maybe the realest.
The experience I had on Bear Island is one I wish to have again with nature. I wish to stare at the oceans for hours; not caring if I was unable to write much because the wind was too strong. I enjoyed the silence, the peaceful feeling that came with observing an untouched nature, and I hope to return again--hopefully once the sea turtles are nesting.

The first comment I read, just by chance, was submitted by a student who has been breaking records in track for Coker College, performing amazing feats at every meet.
Bear Island gave me a lot of first time experiences, such as running on a beach. 

If this had been the only experience the course provided, for a track star to run on the beach for the first time, it would have been worth the trouble.


The Bear Island trip, in its experiential beauty, is all about the individualized opportunity, about lessons that are not necessarily tangible but still formative. Sometimes it's a bit like reading Chaucer in the original: a beautiful gift that mystifies at first sight, only to unexpectedly reveal its usefulness a few years down the road. Sometimes it provides just the right kind of break, or nudge, or moment of pleasure.

Let's do more of that.

Bear Island: Planned Chaos Pedagogy and Survival

It's been a few weeks, the tents are (mostly) clean and dry, the sand stakes have been (mostly) collected, students and faculty presentations have been delivered - enough time has passed to evaluate the experience not from the perspective of elated survival but the calm collected distance of pedagogical intent and assessment.




What were we going for in our mad dash to the sea, the "Seeing What's There"-mini revival of 1980s Evergreen experiential education?


We wanted to create a space - a space for students to think up and create something they were truly interested in, to develop and test it (albeit with tiny sample sizes), to try out and apply something they felt they had learned. That happened. Students presented on journal writing, on fitness, on observations about improv theatre and interactions and preparedness and an ESOL lesson plan; there was photography, writing, and drawing. Each member of the party had something to report on the time spent on Bear Island. So, outside the classroom and in some ways unsupervised (it's a pretty wide beach out there), productivity was achieved. (The stakes were intentionally low: a single 199 credit hour in either Interdisciplinary Studies or Art.)


And community: setting up and moving a tent, perhaps for only the second time (we practiced!). Food, erratically planned and shared as needed. Tying up trash bags and setting up a little stove and carrying silty water from a faucet half a mile down the beach - the everyday realities of camp life, so infinitely far removed from dorm and campus life.

The surprising absence of screens, phones, ear buds - and, for a while, even chatter, as students spread out across the beach to do work. (Not all work has to be defined or productive.)

Then, there was the aspect of experience - an opportunity to have an emotional connection to other individuals, a community, a place of nature and inherent beauty. This also happened. The elation of the prospect of crossing to the island, the excitement of the brief ferry trip, the struggle of trudging across the width of Bear Island and up the beach to the camp sites gave way to a sense of relief and connection: toes in sand and water, a first exploration of a wide open place full of wind and sun.

We could have ambled along in this manner, all at ease - but then we had weather. A feature in all outdoor adventures, ours came with promises of gale-force winds, an inch or so of rain spread over the afternoon hours of the second day, and (this was the kicker), temperatures to drop into the mid-30s. Which, honestly, is too cold to be sleeping in a wet sleeping bag in a leaky tent and not court hypothermia. So, we de-camped into the wind-buffeted shelter under the wide overhang of the closed concession stand down the beach, and we were cold but dry. The mood shifted - the community, originally split into tent sites and small groups, drew together; there was snacking, journaling, reading, and (contentious) card playing.

There was slack time. So rare for students whose days are often a jumble of class times, study times, athletic practice times, social times, meal times - for a few hours, we just kind of sat there, watching the rain, feeling the wind, wondering about the impending cold. Some of us walked down the beach (miles in each direction) and picked up some shells. Took some more photos. Watched the clouds draw in and disperse.


The night was cold. Very cold. Windchill factor 27-cold. And the morning, as bright and sunny and clear as anything, was still windy and barely above freezing. So, after cups and bowls of hot coffee and tea we packed up and marched down to the ferry landing, done with our adventure.



Nobody complained. (We made them sign waivers that said: "I will not complain" - but I think the weather might have rendered those legally moot.)

I think we got what we came for.

Equal Access to Empowerment, as explained by Donnatella Moss

It's a been while. There's been some struggle, or maybe: there's been some gelling.  The trouble is not the teaching - in fact, the Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies course, IS200, is going well. Ten out of eleven students, not all of them majors, either are on board with the basic ideas of interdisciplinarity, or they are in the process of getting on board. The first six chapters of the text book have been plowed through; internships have commenced, book reports have been delivered. Ten students are taking a new look at their past course work and experience, and they are building bridges toward a future that is beginning to make sense to them. (The lone hold-out, a baseball player in season, could not care less, and we’ll just have to let him do his thing for now.)

I have been doing some more research into the interdisciplinary programs colleges and universities offer in our three-state area (NC, SC, GA) – I am supposed to head out there and learn from others how to make our program better, and of course I am curious. What I see is this: institutions tend to fall into one of two camps. 

They either cater to the top students, those who are on an individualized path to graduation, who have a pretty clear vision of what they will do with their combined fields, and who are poised to pursue this vision. 

Or they cater to the stragglers. Those are students who, for whatever reason (for several of mine it’s anatomy class), aren’t succeeding in their original major and are making a last-minute turn toward something more attainable. Or they are students who have been bouncing between fields, looking for something that made sense to them – and are now tallying up their coursework to satisfy their institution’s graduation requirements.

No college or university interdisciplinary studies program that I can see does both. It’s either “top potential” or “delivering hope.” One or the other. When you talk to marketing or administration, you hear that it's difficult to convey such a directional split. It can't be both.

The West Wing’s hero Donnatella Moss (herself a non-graduate of multiple majors, including French literature and biology), asks a good question: “Why can’t it be both?” (In her case, a presidential campaign and a place for a college drop-out to find herself – and boy, does she pull them off!)

 From the get-go, I set out to design a program at Coker that was different from others, a program that could, through careful design of courses and fairly flexible but still rigorous requirements, engage both types of students. I think Donna is right: we can – and should – be both. 

Any educational effort should deliver unlimited opportunity and excellence to all those who show interest, regardless of past experience (and GPA) and future ambition. Education needs to empower, and it needs to empower all its participants. An interdisciplinary program that unites students from both ends of the academic spectrum, embracing diversity not only of subjects, passions, and fields of study, but also of educational history and ambitions, is enriched by everyone’s presence, insights, and contributions. 

I want to hear from the student who is passionate about the math of baseball statistics, and I want to hear from the student who has just read the first chapter of a book about sports and psychology and reports “It is really hard, but I want to read more – I am interested.” I want them, actually, to listen to each other - it's a feature. And I want to work with the student who is confident about organizing children’s programs for the YMCA and the one who is still struggling to explain the ways graphic design visually communicates ideas. 

In the space of mutual interest and respect, the artificial judgment of the GPA tends to fall away, and the class is united in a moment of interest in learning. Let’s value that, and let’s make it an explicit tenet of interdisciplinarity at Coker. Because we are humble (and ambitious!) enough to do both.

It worked for Donna.

Thinking about Thinking: The Importance of Metacognition in Interdisciplinary Approaches

It's cold out (20 degrees Fahrenheit, which sounds less impressive than -4 degrees Celsius), or at least it's cold for South Carolina - neither I not my house nor my water pipes are constructed for this sort of weather, and we are all in a bit of a shambles. But we are coping - and I am preparing this semester's IS200: Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies course, with 12 students enrolled (up from last spring's 6), all but two declared IS majors. It's a nice mix of seniors, juniors, and a couple of sophomores, with much diversity of source majors (PE, PSY/BIO, BA, COM) - and lots of random transfer credits and experiences. I think I have a good crew!

I noticed last year (and in the two smaller groups who took the class with me) that the text book, Allen Repko and Rick Shostak's Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies, poses the most challenges to students: many terms and concepts are so foreign to sophomores, juniors, even seniors, that it takes them about five or six chapters just to get their initial confusion sorted out. Six chapters is a long time to be confused!

The problem is not the writing or the information Repko and Shostak present, but the shift in thinking: rather than learning and memorizing material firmly within a single discipline and vocabulary, students are asked to move across boundaries, moving between examples from business, the health fields, communication studies, education, and literature as they try to follow arguments and illustrations about learning and thinking. I think they get whiplash.

Repko and Shostak practice what they preach - in order to be effective interdisciplinarians, students have to develop intellectual dexterity; they need to be able to swiftly move across those boundaries and have at least some familiarity with issues and concepts from many fields. How can I help them gain that dexterity?

The answer, for me, lies in explicitly fostering the metacognition the text book promotes: through a series of introductory slides, I can make the structure of the text book, and the approach of its authors, visible - and allow students to track their own progress through the learning process. Each single slide combines terms and images (hello google image search!) that lay out what we don't know yet - and what we may already know but need to integrate into this new context of interdisciplinarity.

When we talk about the ways academia organizes knowledge into disciplines and thereby creates both social and knowledge-producing communities, codified in departments and housed in different buildings, it is probably helpful to look at a campus map of Coker College: where do the math geeks live, and where do the athletes hang out? what does chemistry research look like, and how does an English student write a research paper? Chances are, my students all recognize this information - but they need to import it into the conversations of the IS200 course and bring it to the forefront of their minds as they plow through the abstract chapter ahead.

Interdisciplinary thinking is about making those connections, but they don't come easy - and traditionally, academia does not do a terrific job fostering that skill. It helps to talk about it, and to discuss the efforts metacognition, thinking about thinking, requires - to talk about what we know, what we don't know yet, and how we create and organize knowledge. And, as usual, making it visual helps with the recognition!