Interdisciplinarity and Discipline in Education
Coordinators: Philip Nelson, Robert Phillips, Boris Shraiman
The past few years have seen a surge of interest in biological problems among
physics, mathematics and engineering students both at the graduate and undergraduate
level. This is complemented by the push to provide students in life-sciences with a more
solid physics and mathematics foundation which would endow them with the quantitative
skills increasingly demanded by modern biology. A great many new courses in
biophysics, systems biology and modeling, computational biology and informatics at both
the graduate and undergraduate levels are being introduced and interdisciplinary
curriculum is under construction at many departments and inter-departmental entities.
Yet the strategy for raising interdisciplinary students with knowledge and ability in
particular sub-disciplines comparable to their pure disciplinary peers is far from clear.
The purpose of this one-day workshop will be to share the experiences of inter- and cross- disciplinary teaching and education and have a ?no-holds-barred? discussion of the realities and challenges of this undertaking. Can we create an interdisciplinary curriculum without sacrificing the ?discipline? ? i.e. the rigor of traditional training? What are the demands of the life-science and physics communities? What do students want? How do we measure the effectiveness of our efforts?
Please be prepared to provoke and to be provoked.
The purpose of this one-day workshop will be to share the experiences of inter- and cross- disciplinary teaching and education and have a ?no-holds-barred? discussion of the realities and challenges of this undertaking. Can we create an interdisciplinary curriculum without sacrificing the ?discipline? ? i.e. the rigor of traditional training? What are the demands of the life-science and physics communities? What do students want? How do we measure the effectiveness of our efforts?
Please be prepared to provoke and to be provoked.