Globalization, climate change, public health, bioethics, biomimetics, genetically modified organisms, neuroengineering… we are witnessing an increasing number of professional fields that cross disciplinary boundaries in order to solve complex problems. However, the challenges of developing a strategy that encompasses the priorities of multiple stakeholders who might see priorities differently (in the case of a natural ecosystem, for example: economic development versus environmental protection versus protection of indigenous cultures that depend on that natural ecosystem) are often intractable. The overarching challenge that we face as a species is this: if we cannot find a way to integrate key perspectives on complex and controversial problems, then we shall surely witness the disintegration of the civilization (and ecosystem) upon which we depend.
So first we need to understand the nature of key perspectives, which we call "disciplines" in the university. Students in our core writing intensive course, INDS 330 Ways of Knowing, spend part of the semester understanding disciplines as tools for understanding phenomena in the social and natural worlds.
INDS 330 Ways of Knowing is a writing intensive core course in Interdisciplinary Studies at UMBC.
