Interdisciplinarity

The majority of chairs saw their departments as engaged with interdisciplinary work. Of the thirty department chairs in our sample, twenty-three described their department as interdisciplinary or involved in interdisciplinarity at the institution in some way. Therefore, interdisciplinarity was common across all disciplines, with gender and ethnic studies chairs being most likely to state that their department was interdisciplinary by definition and from the moment of its conception.

The types of interdisciplinarity described by chairs varied significantly, however. About half of the examples fell into the category of interdisciplinarity internal to the department. Chairs of these departments usually characterized them as “already” or “inherently” interdisciplinary. The most commonly cited examples of internal interdisciplinarity were: 1) courses taught within the department that the chair described as “interdisciplinary”; and 2) the department offering a variety of distinct programs or certificates.

The other half of the examples of interdisciplinarity were interdisciplinarity external to the department; that is, where interdisciplinarity involved engagement with other departments or units. The most common form was the cross-listed course, which eight chairs highlighted as an example of how their department was interdisciplinary. Other strategies mentioned include participating in some kind of interdisciplinary program or center at the institution, having faculty who hold dual appointments, being involved with joint or dual majors across departments, offering courses that count toward interdisciplinary minors, and incorporating community engagement into the curriculum. A few chairs also cited team teaching—with either inter- or intradepartmental teams of instructors—as an impor­tant form of interdisciplinarity for their department.

When asked whether these interdisciplinary initiatives are boosting the number of students enrolled in the courses and the number of majors in their department, chairs in our sample were divided. Nine thought that their interdisciplinary endeavors were improving their student recruiting, while eight were unclear or expressed mixed feelings. Three fell in a third category, expressing exclusively negative opinions about the success of interdisciplinarity for their department. The overall picture suggests that interdisciplinarity may be somewhat effective in helping humanities departments recruit students. However, when addressing this issue, chairs often mixed the distinct matters of recruiting students into their department’s classes and recruiting them into the major. Success for the former goal was higher than for the latter.

Among the strategies for interdisciplinarity that chairs had found to be the most successful were cross-listing courses and participating in joint or dual major programs. This is unsurprising: diversifying course offerings is already an important enrollment-boosting strategy, and creating more interdisciplinary and cross-listed courses goes hand in hand with diversification initiatives. Additionally, joint majors and similar programs make it easier for students to include a humanities major alongside another major—another important strategy for increasing the overall number of humanities majors. These programmatic types of interdisciplinarity are also likely to be the most successful because they are built into student requirements, require a minimal extra time commitment from already overwhelmed faculty, and encounter minimal administrative hurdles.

In some cases, interdisciplinary initiatives are geared toward an institution’s strengths; for example, one chair of a LOTE department at a STEM-focused institution had participated in interdisciplinary efforts linking the humanities with these fields. However, interdisciplinarity efforts did not necessarily need to include STEM to be successful. A few chairs cited joint majors between the humanities and social sciences, such as a history/political science joint major. One chair of a LOTE department noted that, while major numbers were declining for single language majors like French, their institution had supported the creation of multilanguage majors and minors, which had helped to attract students.

About half of the chairs in our sample had mixed opinions or seemed unsure regarding interdisciplinarity. These conversations helped reveal the significant challenges departments are facing in recruiting students through interdisciplinarity, even if they have had limited successes. Administrative and structural barriers at the institution were the primary hurdle for most. One chair of a philosophy department summed up the comments of many when they remarked, “interdisciplinarity has been a buzzword for a long time. There have been many efforts to introduce such programs, then they die on the vine. . . . Typically, they fall prey to the increased costs of doing anything that involves more moving parts. There are so many entrenched institutional disincentives to doing interdisciplinarity right.”

These administrative/structural barriers emerge in a variety of ways. For example, a few chairs in one focus group agreed that their institutions did not sufficiently support team teaching. Administrators assumed that team teaching would increase enrollment in such classes by a factor equal to the number of faculty on the team, as well as that each team member’s teaching load would decrease, neither of which turns out to be the case. A group of chairs also pointed out that general education and other majors’ requirements could be a roadblock to students enrolling in interdisciplinary courses. One of these individuals noted their university had recently decreased the number of general education requirements at the request of science departments, which subsequently increased requirements within their own majors, keeping those students occupied within their departments. At some institutions, silos or rivalries among departments who want to keep students to themselves are a barrier to interdisciplinary cooperation.

Additionally, interdisciplinarity is more appealing to students and administrators when it appears to be relevant for students’ career preparation. Two chairs, both from public regional institutions, highlighted this issue, noting the need for “workforce justification” to convince both the administration and students to engage in interdisciplinary initiatives.

Interdisciplinarity was most successful when institutional/administrative and faculty/department-level motivations were aligned. Chairs often described interdisciplinary initiatives as emerging from their departments thanks to faculty interest and commitment; just as often, chairs expressed frustration that their university’s administrative policies or priorities did not support these initiatives. On the flip side, a few chairs mentioned that institutional imposition of interdisciplinary initiatives misaligned with departmental interests was not appreciated.

Finally, our discussions revealed that, while interdisciplinary courses help keep up departmental enrollment numbers, they have not always had the desired level of success in recruiting majors. For instance, one chair described teaching an interdisciplinary course that appeals to STEM majors. While the course gets high enrollment numbers, only “a handful” of its students go on to take other humanities courses. This chair is therefore “not convinced that these interdisciplinary courses are the gateway courses we hope they will be.” Along similar lines, another chair said that, on a one to ten scale, they would give interdisciplinary courses a five for their success in attracting majors. They highlighted the example of “grouchy seniors” who procrastinate taking a required humanities course until the last minute, at which point it is too late to recruit them.