Interdisciplinary and New Academic Programs

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With this goal, we will reinforce the fundamental value of a liberal arts core by providing an opportunity, through interdisciplinary education, to experience how it relates to core skills and career readiness. Co-taught courses and integrated interdisciplinary majors will be the hallmarks of new courses and majors, which will combine faculty expertise in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences with the more specialized focus of the other Hofstra schools. In this highly integrated curriculum, students will learn how to integrate the foundational skills of critical thinking, persuasive communication, and good writing with their chosen field.

This is a particularly opportune moment to consider how the liberal arts can be integrated with disciplines that are more focused on the acquisition of knowledge and skills for a particular career. As artificial intelligence applications are introduced into all walks of life, we believe that this will spur a renewal of employer interest in the hallmark skills of critical thinking, communication, and good writing. These fundamentally human skills are unlikely to be replaced by machines. As AI replaces the repetitive, data-driven aspects of certain jobs and even careers, these human skills will be at a premium, but they will be sought in combination with more specific career skills in business, engineering, communication, and health care, such as subject matter expertise and good judgment. Career preparation now involves a strong liberal arts education, and a clear-eyed understanding of how traditional careers will be affected by the soon-to-be ubiquity of artificial intelligence in the workplace.

There are two distinct aspects to Goal #1: The first is for faculty to have the freedom to create interdisciplinary courses and programs easily within the guidelines and practices around courseload requirements, and progress to tenure and promotion. Similarly, students will have the freedom to take advantage of interdisciplinary offerings while satisfying their general education requirements, the requirements of their chosen major or minor, and their progress to graduation. The second aspect of this goal is that with these new guidelines and processes in place, faculty will be incentivized to create new curricula and programs that combine disciplines in ways that engage and appeal to students, and are of value to the curriculum overall, both in terms of creating new knowledge and expanding students’ future opportunities. A curriculum that includes diverse offerings of interdisciplinary courses will also enhance Hofstra’s ability to attract and retain innovative, research-active faculty.

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Implementation Steps
1.A      We will create a mechanism to strengthen and facilitate interdisciplinary teaching, program building, and scholarly/creative activities:

• Changes to faculty workload that incentivize participation in interdisciplinary teaching, program building, and scholarly/creative activities.
• Introduce new interdisciplinary majors and programs that students can count toward requirements in their major/minor.

1.B       We will create a pathway to generate new interdisciplinary academic and research programs, thereby establishing a culture of valuing interdisciplinarity across the 
            University, by:

• Creating, funding, and promoting fora where faculty can meet across disciplines and schools to stimulate interdisciplinary innovation.
• Instituting a proposal/grant-based system with review by a faculty committee for new proposals and an established timeline, budget, and goals to support interdisciplinary programs.
• Creating incentives and opportunities for team teaching.
• Align promotion and tenure standards to reflect how faculty perform their work.

1.C       We will create pathways for learner access to interdisciplinary academic offerings by:

• Reviewing requirements to identify and eliminate barriers and improve time to degree completion.
• Reducing course load complexities that hinder students taking courses and programs outside their primary course of study.

1.D      We will create a Center for Public Humanities that will:

• Drive interdisciplinary engagement with the humanities, arts, and social sciences for and with diverse public audiences.
• Cultivate a dynamic and welcoming environment where diverse audiences experience and engage with the work of humanities scholars and artists.
• Stimulate interdisciplinary research that involves partnerships with other academic units, community organizations, and cultural institutions.