Multi-Disciplinary Task Force Minutes
December 7, 2000

jvettel@andrew.cmu.edu Posted January 29, 2001
Administrative Details
  Attendance
  • Present: Indira Nair, Jean Vettel, Scott Sandage, Kenya Dworkin, Erika Linke, Denise Wittkofski, Laura Lee, Susan Ambrose, Janet Stocks, Mark Egerman, and Ashley Deal
  • Absent: Kristina Straub, Anne Ray, Jeff Walch


  • Fall 2000 Meeting Times
  • Thursday, October 13 Minutes
  • Thursday, November 9 Minutes
  • Thursday, December 7 Minutes

    Spring 2001 Meeting Times
  • Wednesday, February 14 Minutes
  • Tuesday, March 13 Minutes



  • Potential Meeting Times for February: please email Jean your conflicts
  • Monday, February 12, 11am-2pm

  • Wednesday, February 14, 2pm-5pm

  • Thursday, February 15, 2pm-5pm

  • Friday, February 16, 1pm-5pm

  • Review of Indira's Presentation to the President's Board
      Slide 2: University Education - for what?
  • currently our intentional design is for "teaching for preparation (job)", not on "teaching for education (social responsibilities of humans)

    Slide 8: Teaching for Education -- "Culture is not always a problem!!"
  • need clarify the problem identification/definition phase: is this a problem?? does it need a solution??
  • teach students to deal with problems that cannot be solved in our current paradigm

    Slide 16: NSF Categories -- "He is an engineer, but he has grown!"
  • Joseph Bordogna, Deputy Director NSF, agrees with Kline's idea of multi-disc as a necessary additive to disciplinary approaches
  • Goal: FOCUS article based on Indira's talk :: "It's not a revolution -- it's an evolution"
      Some Writing Notes and Warnings
  • warning to self: watch out for the claim that carnegie mellon education doesn't current address "teaching for education," as this may alienate the readership
  • note to self: bill this as an enhancement, not a shift
  • note to self, a clarification: bill it as enhancing our ability to produce leaders (sandage discussed the president's talk about the need to produce great leaders for 21st century, ambrose suggests touching upon the research from 20th century about the nature of leaders, and someone suggested taking language from the Middle States Evaluation)
  • reminder to self: all disciplines must be mapped to each of the categories

    What to call this education model?!?...
  • the reader should have a discomfort with the idea so that they think, BUT not so much that no one owns it
  • the word cannot have a 'shadow' of meaning to the interpreter...maybe Plato, maybe Aristotle (the pedigree of Greek terms)... maybe a Native American term...
  • Allocated Tasks and Agenda for Next Meeting
      Allocated Tasks
  • All committee members write up an initial description for as many of the new categories as possible:
    1. Environments and Sustainability
    2. Mind, Body, and Society ... or ... Mind and Society
    3. Economy and Technology
    4. Creation, Expression, and Communication
    5. Knowledge, Culture, and Language ... or ... Knowledge and Language

    Hopefully, you can still email them to me a few days before the next meeting and I can compile them.

    Next Time

  • fine tune the category descriptions to present them to the UEC meeting in March

  • discuss susan's notes from curric conversation on value of inter/multi courses

  • and, of course, the most fun: scheduling meetings

  • Last Updated: March 14, 2001 12:36