College funds new team-taught courses

Six new interdisciplinary, team-taught courses will be offered across the College beginning in fall 2017 in disciplines ranging from physics and astronomy to public policy to art.

Dean Kevin Guskiewicz issued a call for proposals for faculty last fall, and a selection committee chose the following courses:

• “Climate and Energy Transitions,” taught by Gerald Cecil (physics and astronomy) and John M. Bane (marine sciences).
• “Art and Fashion from Rome to Timbuktu,” taught by Victoria Rovine (art) and Herica Valladares (classics).
• “Geography for Future Leaders: People, the Planet and You,” taught by Elizabeth Havice and Diego Riveros-Iregui (geography).
• “The Lived Experience of Inequality and Public Policy,” taught by Candis Watts Smith (public policy) and GerShun Avilez (English and comparative literature).
• “Ordinary Differential Equations within the Modern Scientific Method,” taught by Roberto Camassa and Richard M. McLaughlin (mathematics).
• “Healing in Literature and Ethnography,” taught by Michelle Rivkin-Fish (anthropology) and Jane Thrailkill (English and comparative literature).

These new team-taught courses provide an opportunity to offer fresh, multifaceted approaches to complex issues in a way no single instructor could, Guskiewicz said.

“We hope these grants will help eliminate some of the barriers that can discourage interdisciplinary teaching,” he said. “This was a pilot project, and we expect to provide more opportunities for innovative courses in the future.”