Multidisciplinary Sustainability Education

Multidisciplinary Sustainability Modules: Integrating STEM Courses.

This work is funded by NSF grant DUE-0837721.

College education has always had the responsibility to produce individuals who are well on their way to become experts in their field of interest. However, as society faces ever more complex problems that require systems thinking, we also see the growing importance of producing professionals who have the skills to work with people from a diverse set of disciplines. In broad terms, this new educational challenge can be addressed in one of two ways:

Through an interdisciplinary approach, ideas and concepts from different disciplines can be integrated to generate new ways of thinking. Participants must become fluent in the participating disciplines to create new concepts and theories.

Through a multidisciplinary approach, the distinct perspectives and concepts of each discipline can be used to tackle particular portions of a complex problem; fluency in all the participating disciplines, however, is no longer emphasized. The important thing is for each participant to understand the multi-faceted nature of the problem and to have the necessary skills to communicate with others to produce a collaborative solution through a common scientific perspective.

Although numerous significant scientific challenges may require an interdisciplinary arrangement, we believe that a multidisciplinary approach to scientific education has tremendous value. First, a strictly interdisciplinary approach needs to restructure the boundaries between disciplines and can thus require serious financial and administrative support. A multidisciplinary approach, on the other hand, works well with the existing systems we see in today's institutes of higher education. Second, we believe that a multidisciplinary emphasis is a prerequisite to producing individuals who may later become expert interdisciplinary problem solvers.

Thomas Pfaf, mathematics: tpfaff@ithaca.edu

Ali Erkan, computer science: aerkan@ithaca.edu

Jason Hamilton, environmental studies and sciences: jhamilton@ithaca.edu

Michael Rogers, physics: mrogers@ithaca.edu

Tom Pfaff's sustainability page.