The Interdisciplinary Studies Project at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville (SIUE) has developed a unique addition to the University's existing interdiciplinary studies program through the addition of four new courses. Each course links one of the natural sciences to disciplines in the social sciences and/or humanities and each course contains a laboratory component designed to actively engage students in the learning process. This paper provides a brief description of the development, administration, and implementation of the interdisciplinary studies project.

Courses in interdisciplinary studies (IS) are becoming an increasingly important component of the undergraduate curricula at many of the nations colleges and universities. Our home institution, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville (SIUE), has long recognized the importance of interdisciplinary studies courses and a junior-level IS course is a requirement in the Universitys general education program. The real beauty of an IS course is that it provides an opportunity to show students the complexities and interconnections of many social issues. The disciplinary approach to building a curriculum on the foundation of courses within a discipline often leads to a segmented approach in processing information on the part of the student and rarely addresses how knowledge within a discipline is applied in the broader context of society. In theory, students should obtain a broader perspective of our understanding of the world through a well-crafted general education program which complements the focus on a student's major curriculum. Unfortunately, the path-of-least-resistance approach to general education taken by many students seldom provides a sufficiently broad intellectual foundation. To partially counter this, a successful IS course should impress upon students the need to explore areas that sometimes fall outside one's area of expertise. Interdisciplinary studies courses must also confront the "segmentation of knowledge" approach to learning.

The definition of what constitutes an interdisciplinary course is rather vague and not uniformly applied, even within a particular institution. Often times, interdisciplinary courses explore commonalties between disciplines which are, at some level, relatively similar. Courses in biochemistry, educational psychology, cultural history, and others fall within this category. An extension of this interdisciplinary approach is becoming increasingly common in the sciences where interdisciplinary courses are constructed to familiarize students with fundamental concepts in science. In these courses, students typically explore great ideas in science ranging from Darwin's theory of natural selection to big-bang cosmology. Historically, the definition of an interdisciplinary studies course at SIUE has been somewhat broader. When the IS component of the general education program was initiated, there were two requirements placed on an IS course: 1) the course must be team taught and 2) the faculty teaching the course had to come from at least two different schools. At that time, there were a total of seven schools within the University: Business, Engineering, Fine Arts and Communications, Humanities, Nursing, Sciences, and Social Sciences and the "Two Schools" requirement was intended to assure that IS courses were relatively broad-ranging. Even under these stipulations, the IS curriculum at SIUE is dominated by what one might term "right-brain" courses. Browsing through the IS course list one finds courses linking history and anthropology, philosophy and anthropology, English and history, etc. Notably in short supply were interdisciplinary courses with components in the natural sciences.

In the Fall of 1994, a group of faculty met with our Associate Provost to consider ways of bringing more balance to our IS curriculum. A motivating factor was a request for proposals from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education for the Leadership Opportunities in the Sciences and Humanities Education program. The objective of the program was to fund novel curriculum projects which link the sciences and humanities. As a result of these discussions, the University submitted a proposal to develop five new interdisciplinary science courses linking the natural sciences with the humanities and social sciences. One of the unique aspects of this program was the incorporation of a science laboratory component in each of the five courses. Our goal was to develop and offer each of the five courses during the two year period of the grant. At that point, the courses would become an integral part of the University's IS curriculum. In December 1994 we were notified that our project was one of the 14 selected for funding. In the following sections, we describe the trials and tribulations associated with the development, administration, and implementation of the interdisciplinary studies project at SIUE.

The development of an interdisciplinary studies course that effectively bridges the sciences, social sciences, and humanities is rather difficult. Relatively few subject areas lend themselves to the seamless integration required for an effective IS course. The Interdisciplinary Studies Project at SIUE has developed a set of four courses, each successfully bridging the natural sciences to the social sciences and humanities and each containing a science laboratory component. These courses have now become a part of the University's IS curriculum. The development process began with a Interdisciplinary Studies Workshop organized on campus in February 1995. Dr. George Horton, Rutgers University, and Dr. Ezra Shawn, Hunter College of the City University of New York attended the workshop and served as project consultants. Faculty members participating in the project were given a strong background in the philosophy of interdisciplinary studies. During the workshop faculty members had the opportunity to present their ideas to the workshop participants and feedback from the faculty was used to further refine their ideas. The bulk of the course development work occurred during the summer of 95. Project members were provided summer support through the NEH/NSF/FIPSE grant, which was matched by a grant from the University's Excellence in Undergraduate Education Program. The ability to provide summer support was a key factor in the program's success in that it provided faculty an extended period of time to work on their courses in the absence of competing pressures normally encountered during the academic year.

As an example of the types of courses developed under this project, we briefly describe one particular course which is centered on the development of the atomic bomb. In its broader context, this topic is particularly well suited for an interdisciplinary studies course relating the natural sciences to the social sciences and the humanities. On one level, the course presents an introduction to modern physics, the structure of the atom, the nature of radioactivity and the excitement of discovery. But what makes this topic a truly outstanding one for an IS course is that the scientific discoveries were taking place with the backdrop of rising totalitarianism in Europe. Social policies imposed by the rise of Nazism and fascism forced many of the principle scientists in Europe to emigrate to the United States. The assembly of scientific intellect that occurred as a result of the Manhattan Project transformed American science. Students are also exposed to the moral and personal dilemmas faced by scientists as they faced issues ranging from the decision to leave Europe to the sense of responsibility for the eventual use of the atomic bomb. The topic provides a rich framework for exploring a broad range of issues related to science and public policy. The course is taught by a team of three faculty members: a German studies scholar from the Department of Foreign Languages, a sociologist, and a physicist. The text for the course is The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes, and is supplemented by other selected readings. A major component of the course is a series of experiments in modern physics. Students meet in the laboratory on alternate weeks to perform a series of experiments which explore fundamental properties of atoms and radioactivity. The course is designed to be self-contained so that there are no course prerequisites.

Perhaps the greatest strength of the project was its size and scope. The project included a core of highly dedicated and influential faculty members. The three year time period for the development and implementation of this program provided by the funding agencies was also crucial. During this period, our IS project was somewhat of a quasi-department within the University. The prestige of the project by virtue of the external grant was very influential in obtaining the assistance and support of department chairs and deans at an early stage. Faculty engaged in the IS project could call upon the project directors who were able to aid them in working out scheduling conflicts, help with the course approval process, and provide resources such as reference materials, software and other curricular materials.

In our experience, we have encountered several difficulties in the administration of this IS project. The three areas of major concern were problems associated with personnel, problems in the course approval process and course scheduling, and problems in obtaining and maintaining adequate laboratory facilities. The most serious problems in the administration of the IS project were related to personnel. Almost immediately, we were faced with the loss of a project director when the Associate Provost left the University for another position. The absence of a director at the level of a dean or above was a serious setback for the project. The administration of an IS curriculum is generally difficult due to the fact that few IS programs have the status of a department; the IS curriculum exists only as a set of courses which rely on the efforts of individual faculty members to schedule and teach courses. Often times, departmental units consider the teaching of IS courses as a low priority and are not enthusiastic when some of their most talented instructors dedicate large portions of their time to the IS curriculum. One of the original strengths of our project was the presence of a University administrator above the rank of chair who could influence departments in offering IS courses, either by providing additional resources or through other means. There were two factors that allowed us to partially mitigate the loss of the Associate Provost as a project director. The first was our efforts to work with the affected departmental chairs at an early stage in the process. The ability to offer summer support to faculty during the first year of the grant was important and , in essence, served as a contract between the project and the departments. In return for faculty support, departments were very cooperative in assuring that the IS courses developed under the project were included as part of their normal course scheduling patterns. The second factor was the establishment of the College of Arts and Sciences, which essentially merged the Schools of Humanities, Fine Arts and Communications, Sciences, and Social Sciences, and the strong support of the IS project by the Dean of the College.

Other personnel problems were related to the faculty developing and teaching the course. Three of the four courses developed to date were delayed to some extent by the sabbatical leaves of faculty participants. Maintaining faculty commitments to some of the courses has also been a concern. One of the faculty participants in the development of the proposal was unable to overcome conflicting commitments when the IS project was funded, but one of his colleagues was able to take his place. The second faculty member of that team has become chair of the computer science department and is no longer able to continue on the project. We are currently trying to recruit a faculty member from the physics department to take his place. One of the five courses has yet to make it to the course approval stage due to changes in assignments of personnel and other related factors. While we are confident that the fifth course will eventually be established, it is probably a year or two away from becoming a part of the IS curriculum. The project may also soon be faced with retirements of two project participants who are co-teachers of one course. One of the greatest challenges in the future may be keeping a successful program from coming unraveled.

Aside from personnel, we encountered numerous problems as our courses wound their way through the University's course approval process. One course was delayed by almost a year because we were unable to overcome objections from the English Department. The course was designed to view advances in medicine and the life sciences that occurred in the 1800's in parallel with the way they were portrayed in Victorian literature. Texts for the course were the novels Middlemarch and Bleak House and Darwin's Origin of the Species. The laboratory includes experiments in cell biology and immunology. The course encountered objections when members of the English faculty questioned the rigor of the course's literature component. After a sequence of meetings and revisions of the syllabus, the course was finally approved. One of the unexpected ironies is that students enrolled in the course seem to have a more difficult time with understanding the literary works than they have with the science component. The instructors are currently considering course revisions.

A related problem has been in course scheduling. We have been pleasantly surprised by the cooperation we have received from departmental chairs in including our IS courses as departmental course offerings. Our primary difficulty has been in the long lead times required by the administrative offices which produce the printed course schedules which are issued to students prior to enrollment. Courses offered in the spring semester must be scheduled more than a year in advance in order to be included in the printed schedules and they must have gone through the entire course approval process before they can be scheduled by departments. It is not uncommon for the approval process to take more than six months to complete. This means that it takes 1¹/₂ - 2 years, depending on the timing, from when a course is first submitted for approval to the time when it actually occurs in a printed catalog. As our goal has been to integrate these courses into the curriculum as soon as possible, we have offered some of the IS courses which had not been listed in the printed schedule. We have tried to make students aware of these courses by posting notices on campus and we also have relied on the cooperation of staff in the advising office. Nevertheless, enrollments in courses not listed in the schedule have been lower than anticipated. The impact of the scheduling lead times will be less of a factor in the future since the IS courses, once established, are being routinely included in scheduling materials provided to students. However, it has been a sense of frustration for many of us because of our obligation to the funding agencies to get these courses into the curriculum as soon as possible.

The third major problem area has been in obtaining and maintaining adequate laboratory facilities. It is perhaps not surprising that one of the novel features of this project, i.e. the inclusion of laboratory components for these courses, has also been a source of difficulty. The Science Laboratory Building houses four departments in the sciences and mathematics, two engineering departments, the environmental studies program, and the Office of Science and Math Education. Laboratory space in the building is at a premium and we have been unable to obtain dedicated laboratory space for the IS courses. We anticipate a change in the situation due to the construction of a new engineering building which is scheduled to be occupied in the year 2000. One of the courses has been able to obtain laboratory space in the Biology department. The remaining courses have relied upon the use of computer exercises and simple experiments where the equipment can be brought into a classroom. At present, the laboratory components are pedagogically not as sound as what we had originally envisioned and we anticipate the laboratory components to undergo a continuing process of evolution as adequate space becomes available.

Problems associated with the laboratories have been exacerbated as the project has evolved. In some ways, we have been the victim of our own success. Our original intention was to design the course for maximum enrollments of about 40 students with each course split into two or more laboratory sections. The first course offered under this project was entitled Living Ecologically and was developed by a biologist, a historian, and a sociologist. The course had an initial enrollment of 43 students in the Fall semester of 1995, but the course enrollment increased to 73 in the Fall of 1997. The course Music: Art and Science had six students enrolled in the Summer of 1996 and 61 in the following spring. The initial offering of the Victorian literature course and the Atomic Era course have had enrollments of 15 to 20 students. If the past enrollment trends continue, we expect enrollments in these courses to double or triple the next time they are scheduled. The lack of a dedicated laboratory coupled with the increasing number of students has placed limitations on the types of laboratory experiences we are able to provide at the present time. Our ability to resolve these issues will be a significant factor in determining the ultimate success of the IS program.

The Interdisciplinary Studies Project at SIUE, now in its third year, formally began with the funding of the project by the NEH and NSF. Because of the variability in faculty schedules, courses developed under this project were brought on line individually starting with Living Ecologically in the Fall of 1995. The starting dates of other courses under this project were Music: Art and Science, Summer 1996, Science and Victoria Literature, Fall 1997, and The Atomic Era, Spring 1998. By some standard, the project is already a success in that it introduced four new "left-brain/right-brain" courses which have partially filled an existing void in the Interdisciplinary Studies curriculum at SIUE.

The project now faces a critical period as we try to maintain and build upon our success to date. Now that the grant which established the project has ended, it may be increasingly difficult to maintain the cohesiveness of the program which will be required to face challenges in the years ahead. Foremost among these will be assuring that the courses developed under this project continue to be taught as a regular part of the IS curriculum. This means maintaining the involvement of project participants and recruiting faculty when replacements are needed due to faculty retirements or changes in assignments. We also believe that the success of these courses may induce other faculty to develop additional IS courses linking sciences, humanities, and social sciences according to the framework established by this project. Finally, it will be important to maintain and improve the integrity of the laboratory components. At the present time, the scarcity of suitable laboratory classrooms along with the larger than anticipated course enrollments make it difficult to fully implement the lab components. From a political standpoint, high enrollment in these courses generates credit hours for the individual departments. As a result, chairs are more likely to continue scheduling IS courses as long as they maintain high enrollments. But the large class sizes run counter to our original intent of providing more individualized attention to students, particularly through the laboratory exercises. The long term solution will be to acquired dedicated laboratory classrooms so that several laboratory sections may be offered with a single course.

During the past three years, the Interdisciplinary Studies project at SIUE has implemented a series of four courses which successfully integrate the humanities and the natural and social sciences. Each of these course contains a laboratory component which allows students to actively participate in their learning experiences. Preliminary evaluations from students indicate that these courses are meaningful and meet the objectives of interdisciplinary studies. Beyond the impact of these courses on the students, the project has been enthusiastically embraced by the faculty participants. Faculty engaged in the project have achieved a tremendous sense of satisfaction in working together on a novel project and have developed a feeling of camaraderie and mutual respect for other faculty and their disciplines. We hope to build on our success to establish other similar IS courses on our campus and hope that our experiences can be used by others who are interested in broadening the interdisciplinary studies curricula on their respective campuses.

The authors would like to acknowledge the efforts and support of the faculty who have participated in this project: Elaine AbuSharbain, Biology, Annette Baich, Biology, Robert Blain, Sociology, Belinda Carstens-Wickham, Foreign Languages, Ellen Nore, History, Bernard Waxman, Computer Science, and Prince Wells III, Music. This project was supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Education Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (Grant Numebr EW-20275-94). Additional support was provided by a grant from the Excellence in Undergraduate Education program at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.