Multi-Disciplinary Task Force
Minutes: October 13, 2000
jvettel@andrew.cmu.edu Posted October 30, 2000
Administrative Details
  Attendance
  • Present: Indira Nair, Jean Vettel, Kenya Dworkin, Scott Sandage, Erika Linke, Kristina Straub, Janet Stocks
  • Absent: Jeff Walch, Denise Wittkofski, Laura Lee, Anne Ray


  • Fall 2000 Meeting Times
  • Thursday, October 13 Minutes
  • Thursday, November 9 Minutes
  • Thursday, December 7, 9:30AM-10:30AM, Class of '87 Room (University Center)
  • Three Big Tasks
      Seed Funding
  • evolution of the next round of multi-disciplinary funding
  • how they can eventually work into the general education requirements


  • Recast General Education
  • frame each of the categories as an aspect of the human condition
  • general education requirements should be real knowledge about the student and his place in the world
  • accomplish in baby steps: think up categories and map current courses under these new headings


  • Evaluating Courses
  • talked about "Lessons Learned" Handout (Denise's paper); faculty interviews; idea of a concept map: link to an intro to concept mapping site
  • how to measure the success of a student: articulate what they learn from multi-d course that they didn't understand before...
  • this type of evaluation will also be needed to report the success/failures of the exploratory seed funding
  • Category Brainstorming
      Revisit the Hour Glass Model in Strategic Plan
  • a discipline is a pathology: enables the divide and conquer approach
  • the cylinder part of the hourglass (2nd and 3rd years) is disciplinary; we hope to make the first and four years multi-d by reshaping the GenEds for the 1st year and have broadening courses for 4th year; addressed Indira's "New Minds for a New World" seminar class for the spring
  • an interdisciplinary class: count as science req for humanities students and humanities req for science students


  • GenEd Category Discussion
  • thinking that 4-6 categories is good amount
  • courses for any given category should not all be from the same discipline
  • ensure that a discipline can map into all of the GenEd categories
  • class could approach one text from multiple disciplines (Copernicus as literary work and science text)


  • Initial Category Ideas
  • Environment
  • Population & Hunger
  • Industry, Technology, and Economy
  • Want to capture the idea of "Language Based Humanities" not "Computational Linguistics" :: Society & Arts, Cultural Production, Language & Culture, Language & Communication, Language & Ethics, Culture & Aesthetics, Language & Community
  • Next Round of RFPs
      Team Teaching among Junior Faculty
  • encourage multi-d classes among junior faculty; captured in an email from Scott to Dean Stearns several semesters ago
  • remove the "sustainability within in department" aspect from last year's RFP
  • expect that faculty would plan Fall 2000 and spring 2001; implement courses Fall 2001
  • Allocated Tasks and Agenda for Next Meeting
      Allocated Tasks
  • Scott will look for his old email about junior faculty/team teaching/multi-d courses
  • Indira will recast the RFP from last year to reflect the team teaching for next round
  • All committee members will ponder GenEd categories which reflect the Human Condition as the meta-category
  • Scott and Kenya will start to draft some description for the "Language & Community" Category


  • Next Time
  • establish a list of categories (to begin the process of mapping current courses) and identify a description for each
  • further discussion about multi-d course evaluation methods
  • Last Updated: October 30, 2000