CROSSING DISCIPLINES FOR GLOBAL VISION

M. Jo Hayes, McPherson College
Patricia K. Perry, St. Edward's University

Initially, linking business and political science courses seemed radical, yet cross-discipline teaching is increasingly essential. If we want students to think globally, they must be able to understand how disciplines interact and what implications each discipline has on the other. Historically, education has separated subjects spatially, psychologically, and by discipline. Today's campus infrastructure still reflects this separation with designate art, music and sciences buildings, the "new" Center of business off in a corner continuing to prohibit interaction. Graduates went into the corporate world after graduation, entering similar systems of separate departments but modeled well by our institutions to "fit in".

The world progressed well under this Tayloresque separation-for-efficiency system until the United States woke up to the little known teachings of W. Edwards Deming who brought us Total Quality Management and its system of teams. For this new "team" system to work at its best, employees must have integrated knowledge and the ability to work with others. Educational institutions, however, have not often provided the opportunity to learn these skills because they continue to operate, for the most part, in the original separatist mode.

For successful living one must have an awareness of interrelatedness in order to understand how life's many systems function. While it may have suited deans at one time to evaluate professors on how well they interested students in "their" field of study, it has become more important to think less in terms of specialization but in generalized applications that can be drawn from a holistic or global education.

Currently, it is still practice in many institutions to offer a three-hour global awareness course or six to nine hours of "a" language. Does this help our graduates connect with the global world of business. No! Will a graduate of Spanish I, II and III be prepared to be sent to the Mid-East by a future employer? Perhaps they will remember something about a left-handed society and stay out of trouble during the initial days of residency, but will this help them successfully negotiate "a deal." No! Will it even help a classically trained musician to be successful in China, Malaysia, Japan or India if they have only a language course to give them culture awareness? No!

What's a college to do? We have centuries of specialization, specialized textbooks, years of sitting in separated classrooms, taking separate exams to fulfill a degree in liberal arts. We offer a global course, we expand their awareness by requiring a language, now you tell us that's not enough. Think of the expense. Think of our tenured professors.

What about thinking of the world's future. A rapidly changing world that Michael Dell, of Dell Computer, says has an emerging business cycle of six months from concept to sale. Technologies that have birthed the World Wide Web have forced us to increase an awareness that we are not separate entities on this planet. That a simple departmental task such as creating a web site for a business department requires some expertise from

Computer Science professors, the Art and Graphics department, and editing from the English department. Just as we used to excite students about "our" field, we can and must turn this into excitement about the interrelatedness of education.

In order to achieve an integrated awareness for our students, we designed a course linking seemingly disparate topics into one section. We wanted students to gain a new perspective on a major case from which they could draw conclusions based on broader knowledge. The course granted six credits, three for World Politics and three for Organizational Behavior and drew students from all majors. One faculty member was from the History/Political Science discipline and the other from the department of Business and Economics.

Initially, content reading for each course was assigned and group discussion followed with both faculty members facilitating. The course project required students to view a major political incident, researching background information on all participants of the incident so that a behavioral and political understanding was gained. Students were to analyze various components of the incident such as: 1) why the incident happened; 2) why or what decisions were made along the way; and 3) how such an incident can be avoided in the future.

One class chose the Achille Lauro incident. This incident involved the Italian cruise ship, Achille Lauro, which was seized by Arab terrorists in 1985 in the Eastern Mediterranean. The terrorists killed an elderly Jewish, wheelchair bound passenger and threw his body into the sea. They finally surrendered on the condition that they be given safe passage to Libya on an Egyptian airliner. They chose Libya because the United States was on unfriendly terms with Khaddafi at that time. The situation ended with President Ronald Reagan ordering Navy F14 jets to intercept the airline carrying the terrorists to Libya, forcing it to land in Italy where the terrorists were taken into custody.

Students were required to examine the background of the shipboard passengers, countries involved, position of world leaders and the negotiators who worked with the terrorists. The ideologies and religious background of the terrorists, Libyans, Egyptians, Israelis and Americans would become a major factor in the research. One of the students noted in her research paper that a prior incident, the Iranian hostage crisis which occurred from 1979 to 1981, was one of the first incidents in which American citizenry was not considered a "vital interest." Vital Interest being one factor countries use when considering a hostile attack on another nation.

A couple of other factors brought out in various research and through dialogue were: 1) How the politics of the terrorists interacted with mainstream diplomacy. For instance, the Achille Lauro incident provided further support to the changing American diplomatic behavior that would eventually see people as less important and trade becoming this nation's primary interest. 2)What possible outcomes were to be considered in reconciling that situation. In order for the United States to protect its citizens on the ship it could do nothing, use diplomatic and/or economic pressure, use covert action, or use overt military action.

"Better decision-making involves drawing on history to frame sharper questions and doing so systematically, routinely" (Neustadt and May, 1986, p. 32). With this in mind, we kept the class focused on decision-making, creating new-paradigm thinking and question, question, question but do so with a purpose. We knew the students must first draw a bigger picture of what happened than the reports we had from news accounts and relate that picture to present events. Therefore, we proceeded to suggest how students should create a log of events.

Profiles of the characters in this historical incident were drawn and compared with the world political environment and current personalities in place at the time of the course. Each student created a notebook that was assessed on the basis of organization of were made and discussed as to the predictability of future incidents. Students were required to look at current political personalities when making judgments about future incidents. One purpose of this particular paring of courses was to help students see business and politics as more than their parts. Both political and business negotiations can win or fail around something as simple as a nod of the head. "Understandings may be implied by the selective focus on issues, or by gestures or intonation in discussing certain points; such understandings may serve to carry the bargaining forward along integrative lines without formally relinguishing any of one's own positions" (Schellenberg, 1982, p. 209). Schellenberg refers to "attitudinal structuring or the influence negotiators exert on the thinking of each other. In war or in business, communications and behavior continue to play a major role in decision-making.

Some reactions from students include two students who went to job interviews during their senior year and were offered positions. They both reported that what made them different from other candidates was their ability to discuss issues from a global perspective. One student said the interviewer made a remark about China, upon which the student was able to expound and the discussion led to an astonished manager impressed with the breadth of knowledge this student had. The other student remarked that his success in interviewing was directly related to his liberal arts education that gave him a broad perspective -- in particular a cross-discipline course he had taken. One student from this class went on to law school, passing the LSAT at the 96th percentile. We would like to believe that courses like this would help students with their analytical skills and increase their scores on tests that rely heavily on analogy.

The course we taught became extremely interactive and we found that students claimed greater understanding of both subjects because they analyzed real events, not hypothetical theories. Our department chairs were reluctant to mix the two courses initially, but were convinced later in the year this was to become a natural pairing. We believe this type of course offering can be beneficial for everyone concerned -- both faculty and student and for many types of pairings. It is imperative, however, that faculty be chosen as a team not just two people putting together two or more courses. The team must work together and be prepared to be flexible and Socratic in their methods so that students can draw conclusions not have pat answers provided. Some form of team teaching will become the norm in the future and, in our opinion, essential for the global understanding necessary for graduates to be successful in the future.

Yes, cross-discipline teaching requires faculty members' stretch beyond their fields of study. Yes, it requires more work. But, once you have done it the interaction that takes place in the class makes it much more rewarding and more fun. But is it necessary to change. The Seelyes' (1995) wrote a book called Culture clash and in the introduction said:

As we charge into the twenty-first century, the concept of a global economy rings sharper than ever, in alphabet code--EEC, NAFTA, GATT. The letters keep spilling out of our newspapers. Technological advanced in travel and telecommunications have provided the means for accelerated integration of the world market (p. xv).

The purpose for promoting course integration can be best be summed up by the following quote:

Events, routinely reviewed in context of the details of an individual's life, with sensitivity, as needed, to sex, race, nationality, and indeed to ideology, can offer decision-makers aid in thinking about what to do as well as how to do it. Treating those two subjects--what to do and how to do it--as separable seems to us an almost certain route to going wrong. Analysis and implementation, 'policy' and 'management,' are inextricably interlaced (Neustadt and May, 1986, p.196).

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