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Editor’s note: For the next several weeks in “Notes from a great conversation,” members of the Academic Futures subcommittees will be updating the campus on their early work to identify key themes and transformative ideas submitted by the campus community during the fall semester.

This week, E. Scott Adler, professor of political science at CU Boulder, writes on behalf of the Academic Futures interdisciplinary teaching and research subcommittee.

Professor of Political Science E. Scott Adler

While there is no doubt that many outstanding scholars at CU pursue path-breaking teaching and research within their disciplines, many current and emerging areas of inquiry and discovery live at the margins of existing disciplines or require a combination of wide-ranging skills and training to effectively address them. It takes a visionary faculty, determined students, engaged leadership and nimble staff to help the campus explore these new frontiers of discovery and creation.   

It is not surprising, therefore, that there is a desire among faculty, staff and students to enhance interdisciplinary teaching and research at CU Boulder. It is a common theme among the Academic Futures white papers and in comments at fall forums and town halls. It also emerges in parallel projects such as Foundations of Excellence and the Arts and Sciences strategic planning process.

CU already has strengths on the forefront of interdisciplinary research and education, from astrobiology to the Center for the Study of Origins. Across the campus, these programs successfully bridge existing disciplines and departments. Our research institutes, by design, offer additional pathways to enhance interdisciplinary work. At the same time, the challenges for interdisciplinary education, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, seem particularly acute. Academic Futures is working to address those challenges.

Additionally, Academic Futures is seeking ways to integrate teaching with research. Both faculty and students desire educational opportunities that integrate students at all levels—from freshmen to postdocs—and actively involve them in interdisciplinary research from conceptualization through publication and implementation of new discoveries.

The watch word across all of these conversations is flexibility—flexibility in administrative support and fluid structures that allow for working relationships in both instruction and research that cross departments and colleges and then reach beyond the university. Our entire community needs university policies and procedures that focus on facilitating and not hindering these rich possibilities.

What do we achieve if we accomplish this transition? A university where faculty, staff and students can define research and educational engagement that is tailored to their needs and ambitions. In the process, we create new opportunities for education, training, discovery, and we assist with pressing challenges that touch the world around us.

Please note: This column will go on a two-week hiatus to accommodate spring break and will resume on Wednesday, April 11.