Undergraduate students in Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences (IAS) focus on four core learning objectives: critical thinking; collaboration and shared leadership; interdisciplinary research; and writing and presentation. These learning objectives are developed and documented through the IAS degree portfolio process, a process that begins with the program core course and concludes with the senior seminar or capstone.
You will find below more detailed descriptions of how we define these four learning objectives. These definitions are shaped by our annual review of IAS student degree portfolios, faculty classroom assignments, and transcripts of focus groups with graduating seniors. The full description of our writing and presentation learning objective is pending the completion of our 2007-08 assessment process.
The IAS program offers students multiple opportunities to understand and practice research across traditional areas of knowledge and modes of inquiry. We help students think critically and creatively about how to generate and contextualize complex research questions, conduct research by identifying and utilizing appropriate sources and methods, and present research in a form that best suits the intended audience(s). We also foster critical and creative reflection on ethical questions raised by problem- and inquiry-based interdisciplinary research that connects diverse academic and/or non-academic sectors.
The IAS program offers students multiple opportunities to acquire and hone the cognitive processes and attitudinal qualities characteristic of advanced critical thinking. We help students to develop the creative and self-reflexive habits of mind associated with inquiry- and research-based critical thinking by focusing on diverse (written, performative, visual, and material) practices of interpretation, analysis, argumentation, application, synthesis, and evaluation. We foster attitudinal qualities that generate in students a willingness to consider and assess multiple perspectives, draw informed conclusions, and value intellectual exploration and risk taking.
The IAS program offers students multiple opportunities to develop effective collaboration and shared leadership skills. We help students hone the capacities needed to accomplish tasks in diverse group contexts. This includes the ability to work with others to identify dimensions of a project; to generate and refine ideas related to a project; to appreciate and draw on group members' multiple histories, strengths, and potential contributions; to follow through on the consequences of collective decisions; and to work on specific tasks without losing a sense of the whole. We also foster competencies associated with shared leadership, including the ability to listen emphatically; to mediate conflict and act for the common good of the group; to encourage and participate in multiple forms of individual and group communication; to tolerate ambiguity within emerging processes; to share roles flexibly; and to reflect critically and creatively on collaboration processes.
Writing and Presentation: Definition pending the completion of the 2007-08 assessment process.
