Final Reflection

The class is winding down, so I thought I'd make a final remark. We have discussed many different issues in class from the perspective of many different colleges/departments. What is disappointing, though, is that in many of the discussions we were still speaking very disciplinary specific. For example, someone might bring up an issue and then there would be a follow-up response about how that doesn't work for engineering or literature. I think we need to do more to break that binary thinking (i.e., what works for fine arts will not work for STEM). In fact, I think many ideas are cross-disciplinary but we need to do a better job of expanding our thinking about our given field.

When I have looked at RFPs and successful grant proposals, one thing constantly sticks out: INTERDISCIPLINARY work seems to win the day! No longer is academia a place to work in our individual silos and be successful. It seems the successful academic of the future will learn how to cross pollinate with their colleagues and I'm not just talking an engineer working with a biologist.

Take environmental engineering as an example (yes, this is my field). What we do impacts people (behavioral scientists, social scientists, etc.), government/international policy (political science, social justice, law, history, policy, public planners, etc. etc. etc.), the environment (advocacy groups, industry, mining, science, geography, geology, etc. etc. etc.), public health (biology, medicine, etc.), the economy (business, economists, ethics, etc.), and the list could continue. Why not pull a team of various perspectives and inputs to put together a stellar project like the VT Solar House team did?

I think, looking back on the class, we could have broken through these academic silos. We had so many different disciplines represented I would have liked to see that thinking a little more disrupted. Maybe smaller discussion groups with different disciplines could have been a way to do this. I noticed as I looked around, we were even seated in individual clusters of different silos. Maybe I am idealistic and naive, but I see the breakthroughs of the 21st century being accomplished only when we break down our barriers and start working outside of our comfort zone.