January 2024<\/p>\n
Alicia Johnson (Macalester College)<\/p>\n
When first invited to contribute to the American Mathematical Society\u2019s Column on Teaching and Learning, I was excited and readily agreed. A small wave of worry followed almost immediately. I knew this feeling well \u2013 it\u2019s the same one I experienced 15 years ago upon accepting a job in the Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science at Macalester College. For context, I am a statistician who, shocker, was trained in Statistics departments. At best, I worried that I wouldn\u2019t have much in common with my Math and Computer Science colleagues. At worst, I experienced some anticipatory panic about being asked to teach Calculus. I mean, teaching Calculus is an intriguing idea at this stage of my career, but it wasn\u2019t something I was ready for back then. I was wrong on both accounts. Luckily for me, working in a blended department has enriched my teaching, scholarship, and professional life. Luckily for our students, I wasn\u2019t thrown right into Calculus. And luckily for the readers of this column, I will not be offering any hot tips for teaching Calculus here. Rather, I am here with a simple request informed by my experience in a blended department. Let\u2019s talk! Let\u2019s peek beyond our artificial disciplinary silos and learn from one another. Though this conversation could easily veer into the general virtues of a liberal arts education, I\u2019ll focus here on the relatively smaller worlds of Math and Statistics.<\/p>\n
I come at this topic as a now enthusiastic member of an interdisciplinary department. It took some time to realize that I was even hanging out inside a Statistics silo, and it takes continued effort to not go back in. It\u2019s so comfortable in there! I\u2019m fluent in the language and everything is where I expect it to be. Not only that, our academic institutions and systems often foster<\/em> siloing. Amidst these siloed traditions, interdisciplinarity informs both how and what we teach in my blended department. I am not proposing ours as \u201cthe\u201d model, and I understand that it wouldn\u2019t make sense at every teaching institution. It’s simply what I know, thus it frames my perspective on why<\/em> it\u2019s so important to reach beyond disciplinary silos and how<\/em> we might do so.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with the \u201cwhy.\u201d As many similarly blended departments around the country have splintered (for various understandable reasons), ours remains intact. I sometimes get a figurative, solemn pat on the shoulder about this fact. People often assume that we\u2019d only remain together if we were struggling in some way \u2013 too little student interest in each individual area, too little outside respect for the distinctiveness among our disciplines. In contrast, there is robust student interest in all areas of our department. Were we to split into separate Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science departments, they\u2019d each be healthy with respect to enrollments, majors, and faculty. All this to say, the reason we have stayed together is not because we have to, but because we believe that it benefits our students. They thrive because<\/em> of, not despite<\/em>, our interdisciplinary foundation.<\/p>\n First, an emphasis on interdisciplinarity thinking reflects the world our students enter outside the classroom, in which disciplinary lines are typically blurred. Second, meaningful interdisciplinary experiences deepen student learning in any given field. Statistics majors build a deeper understanding of Statistics through strong foundations in mathematical and computational thinking. Ditto if we replace any discipline in this sentence with another, including those not already in this list (e.g. history, theater, geography)! Third, students\u2019 abilities to think and communicate across disciplinary lines are attractive skills to outside employers and programs. Finally, in ways that eventually impact students through coursework and research opportunities, interdisciplinary engagement enriches faculty scholarship and pedagogy. Engaging with colleagues from different disciplinary backgrounds challenges me to reflect upon, hence informs, what<\/em> I work on as well as how<\/em> and for whom<\/em> I do that work.<\/p>\n There are also many \u201cwhy nots.\u201d Reaching beyond our own disciplinary silos can be extremely challenging and does not always happen organically! From physical spaces to resource allocation to tenure and promotion requirements, the structures of our academic institutions often perpetuate siloing. Since we teachers are trained in such institutions, this also means that many (most?!) of us do not have rigorous training in interdisciplinary work. Which also means that any efforts here will take time and energy. As somebody that is protective of both, I am personally trying to consider two factors when confronting new challenges or \u201copportunities.\u201d First, will the work deepen connections with and between students or other members of my campus, professional, geographical, or personal communities? (A big across-the-board \u201cyes\u201d here for interdisciplinary efforts.) Second, what do I realistically have the capacity to do and maintain<\/em>? Here, we can start small. Nobody needs to upend their curriculum or merge departments. I offer a range of ideas for enhancing interdisciplinary efforts below, ranging from lower to bigger commitment. These ideas reflect my own aspirations<\/em> and observations<\/em> of successful efforts, not necessarily my own achievements. They also reflect a rich history of interdisciplinary efforts within the blended department that I was lucky enough to step into. With that, here\u2019s my list.<\/p>\n Enter with an open mind.<\/strong> First things first. We have to value<\/em>, and recognize that we have a lot to learn from, disciplines outside our own. (If you\u2019re not here yet, then LOL I\u2019m sorry but you are probably not enjoying this column.) Relatedly, interdisciplinary efforts require radical vulnerability and compromise. This means being generous with the stuff you do<\/em> know and being humble and self-forgiving when, eek, there\u2019s stuff you don\u2019t<\/em> know. It means understanding that no single discipline \u201cowns\u201d any topic. It means being curious about and open to different lenses through which to approach an analysis. The list goes on. In short, be open and kind to both yourself and others.<\/p>\n Reach out. <\/strong>Simply strike up conversations with people outside your area of expertise.<\/strong> Invite somebody with different interests in math for tea. Invite a statistician. Invite a biologist. Invite a linguist. You don\u2019t even have to talk about work! Just be curious to learn what others are thinking about.<\/p>\n Participate in, or maybe even create,<\/em> informal spaces for people with different disciplinary backgrounds to share what they\u2019re thinking about.<\/strong> This could be a book club, writing group, or speaker series related to pedagogy, curriculum, or scholarship. For inspiration, several years ago, some of my department colleagues hosted a WOW (What\u2019s Our Work?) speaker series. Each month or so, they invited 3 faculty members from 3 different disciplines to provide a 10-15 minute overview of their scholarship. The brevity of the presentations lowered the barrier to participation for faculty. And while each WOW session exposed our students to ideas within and between different disciplines, it also fostered scholarly connections among the faculty themselves (which, again, makes its way back to students!).<\/p>\n Add one new interdisciplinary assignment in one class. <\/strong>Though it\u2019s a great start, I don\u2019t mean a problem set with applied story problems here. I mean an assignment which requires nuanced, deep thinking across multiple disciplines. Such an assignment might even be a collaboration with teachers in other departments, with staff in other units (eg: in Admissions, Sustainability, etc), or with off-campus community partners. For inspiration, my colleagues Andrew Beveridge (Math) and Penelope Geng (English) facilitated a cross-course conversation between students in their two respective courses, Network Science <\/em>and Shakespeare & Justice<\/em>. Their shared exploration of communities within Shakespearean plays drew upon the methodologies being taught in both courses, and produced a deeper study than could have been achieved within either course alone. I\u2019ve had similar experiences facilitating collaborations between my Statistics students and community partners with expertise in public transit, arts organization, and more.<\/p>\n If your institution allows, pursue interdisciplinary co-teaching opportunities<\/strong>. In this setting, interdisciplinary thinking becomes a foundation for an entire course, not just a one-off topic or assignment. Along these lines, my colleagues Bret Jackson (Computer Science) and James Dawes (English) co-teach a course titled \u201cVideo Games: Coding and Narrative.\u201d Back in 2017, my Computer Science colleague Shilad Sen and I co-taught Macalester\u2019s first 4-credit course in Data Science, a course which we had co-developed with an even bigger interdisciplinary team. This course was fundamentally different and deeper than if any one of us had taught it alone from our own disciplinary perspectives.<\/p>\n Realign <\/b>how<\/em> you teach within a broader spirit of interdisciplinary.<\/b> In my blended department, some common pedagogical frameworks provide important cohesion within and between our various programs. For example, we have woven a shared emphasis on accessibility, collaboration, communication, and ethics throughout our curriculum (each topic worthy of its own column). There\u2019s an important feedback loop here \u2013 these pedagogical foundations are both informed by and critical to our interdisciplinary collaborations. The cohesion from class to class, and program to program, also helps cement these interdisciplinary foundations among our students. Whether or not you\u2019re in a blended department, you can similarly talk with people outside your discipline to learn about their pedagogical goals. What goals do you share, hence are important to both of your disciplines? How do you each approach these goals? How might you align your approaches so that students are consistently experiencing, hence recognizing and absorbing the importance of these interdisciplinary foundations?<\/p>\n Realign what<\/em> you teach within a broader spirit of interdisciplinarity.<\/strong> I mean your broader curriculum here, not just one assignment within one class, or even one class. To this end, I personally stepped into a rich tradition in my department. This is not to say that we don\u2019t have a \u201cmathy\u201d Math major, or don\u2019t teach \u201cmathy\u201d Math courses. We do! Ditto our Statistics and Computer Science programs. However, these distinct programs also play together in deep ways. I\u2019ll provide a few salient examples here. These are not necessarily recommendations, but food for thought. First, each of our programs requires coursework in the others. These requirements communicate the value<\/em> of, and provide foundations in, other disciplinary perspectives. But, alone, they don\u2019t necessarily elevate inter<\/em>disciplinary thinking. Thus, in addition to the shared pedagogical frameworks discussed above, we help students connect the interdisciplinary dots through shared curricular frameworks. For example, our innovative introductory Math and Statistics courses all center multivariable<\/em> thinking, modeling, and visualization. The details could be the subject of their own column, but my simple point here is that such cohesion in our curriculum helps students identify and follow interdisciplinary threads. (Nothing makes me happier than when a student remarks that they\u2019re doing the same thing in all of their Math, Statistics, and Computer Science courses, just through different lenses!) Finally, these same threads shine in our Data Science program which was developed, and continues to evolve, through interdisciplinary collaboration. It is informed by and requires the connection of mathematical, statistical, and computational thinking. It is informed by and requires engagement, collaboration, and communication with colleagues and community members outside our department. That is, it reflects the world our students enter outside the classroom. That\u2019s the point.<\/p>\n In closing, there are a lot of ideas here, but just start small. I hope you reach out and talk to someone new. Better yet, someone whose disciplinary training differs from your own. In the meantime, I\u2019ll be working on my next column in which I\u2019ll share my deeper thoughts on teaching Calculus. Just joking. I don\u2019t have any (at least not yet).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" January 2024 Alicia Johnson (Macalester College) When first invited to contribute to the American Mathematical Society\u2019s Column on Teaching and Learning, I was excited and readily agreed. A small wave of worry followed almost immediately. I knew this feeling well \u2013 it\u2019s the same one I experienced 15 years agoRead More →<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-tkloefkorn","post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathvoices.ams.org\/teachingandlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathvoices.ams.org\/teachingandlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathvoices.ams.org\/teachingandlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathvoices.ams.org\/teachingandlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathvoices.ams.org\/teachingandlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mathvoices.ams.org\/teachingandlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":229,"href":"https:\/\/mathvoices.ams.org\/teachingandlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions\/229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathvoices.ams.org\/teachingandlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathvoices.ams.org\/teachingandlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathvoices.ams.org\/teachingandlearning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}