I share your interest in interdiscplinary courses. I am biased in my belief
that psychology is at the heart of the liberal arts tradition because it
overlaps with practically every department on campus. I can think of
psychology in application in the following subject areas:
- history/political science; psychological profiles of great leaders
throughout history, persuasion or propaganda?, forensic psychology
- sociology; overlaps with criminology, marriage and family, delinquency,
and sociology of gender courses
- religion; psychology of religion, women and religion, and of course, your
topic, psychology of theology
- economics/accounting/business; motivation and leadership for management,
advertising and psychology, decision theory
- biology; animal behavior, neuroscience, developmental neuroscience
- physics; new topic area is psychology and physics, with quantum theory
and the brain, psychology in a vibrational universe (use Candice Pert's
book Molecules of Emotion)
- english; personality psychology through novels (I have a reading list ready)
- communication; psychology and film, principles of individual and group
persuasion
- speech/theatre; small group communication
- education; educational psychology, motivation
- philosophy; Darwin and psychology, psycholinguistics
- chemistry; psychopharmacology
- math; statistics
- computer science; ergonomics
- foreign languages; psychology in culture and language
- geology; environmental psychology
I have written to both Economic Policy and Academic Affair faculty
committees at our college about this issue of teaching load and
compensation. This was their solution: the two teachers who want to create
an interdisciplinary course should each propose a course in their
respective disciplines, and students register for one or the other course.
The two teachers schedule their courses to meet at the same time slot, but
in two rooms. They pool their classes into an auditorium on days that the
two courses share the same curricula, and stay in their individual rooms if
there are discipline-specific aspects to the course.
My department chair had two complaints about interdisciplinary coursework:
1. the staffing issue, and 2. dilution of the content. REgarding the
staffing issue, there are more required courses than electives in our
major. An array of the required courses need to be taught every semester,
leaving room for one elective course per semester per teacher. He did not
think that we could afford time to teach our regular elective courses and
provide these interdisciplinary alternatives. The dilution issue is that,
theoretically, a student could take all of their electives in the
interdiscplinary format, and would have had at least half of their
instruction from professors outside of the psychology department in those
classes. We disagree on these issues. I would like to attract students from
other discplines to these courses so that they could see the relevance of
psychology to their professions. I would like to see a liberal arts degree
option, in addition to departmental degrees, wherein the major courses were
primarily interdisciplinary, and featured a capstone course with a liberal
arts approach to a contemporary topic.
C'mon guys, don'tcha just wanta hire me?
At 11:51 AM 3/2/01 -0500, Nathalie Cote wrote:
>Thoughts about being a teacher at a liberal arts college:
>
>
>Does your institution do anything to encourage interaction or thinking or
>learning across disciplines? For example, is there some mechanism for
>auditing courses in other departments, or a forum for discussion among
>faculty on general issues, or encouragement for co-teaching
>interdisciplinary courses?
>
>I would love to co-teach a course on Psychology and Theology, for instance,
>but I would definitely need a partner from the Theology department. The way
>our college is set up, there's no way to do that. How would one apportion
>the salary and the teaching load credit?
>
>
>I'd love to hear about what goes on at other schools to encourage liberal
>arts scholarly development.
>
>Nathalie
>
>*****
>Nathalie Coté
>Assistant Professor of Psychology
>Belmont Abbey College
>100 Belmont - Mt. Holly Road
>Belmont, NC 28012
>(704) 825-6754
>
>
>
>
***********************************************
Dr. Joyce Johnson
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Developmental/ Experimental
Centenary College of Louisiana
PO Box 41188
2911 Centenary Blvd.
Shreveport, LA 71134-1188
homepage: <http://www.centenary.edu/~jjohnson>
office 318 869 5253
FAX 318 869 5004 Attn: Dr Johnson, Psychology
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