By analyzing and understanding different disciplinary perspectives, students can take a multidimensional approach to creating new knowledge, or solutions within their field of study.
Our five-year Quality Improvement Plan (QEP) focuses on interdisciplinary learning to increase student achievement in three common goals: disciplinary grounding, perspective taking and integration. Titled “Seahawks Advancing Interdisciplinary Learning,” or SAIL, our grant-awarded teams led by top-tier faculty aim to improve students’ ability to think critically about diversity and global issues.
Interdisciplinary learning intentionally engages skills from different fields to allow new insights and problem-solving techniques. By engaging in and creating a collaboration between different disciplines, students articulate and analyze different perspectives, acknowledging each discipline’s strengths and limitations and using those cohesively to develop new solutions to complex issues.
Over the next several years, students will have the opportunity to work on a variety of faculty-led projects to engage in SAIL work across colleges and units on UNCW’s campus.
A large group collaboration across three colleges and Randall Library will look at how to create better digital citizens who can critically think about what they see online. This will include courses such as Technical Writing and Applied Behavioral Technology, along with faculty professional development opportunities.
Faculty in the Gerontology, Philosophy, Psychology, and Respiratory Therapy departments will take an interdisciplinary approach to end-of-life care and decision-making on campus and within the Wilmington community. They will study community needs and work on community engagement projects.
Faculty across three colleges will collaborate on examining the impact of artificial intelligence in various disciplines. This will include teaching various courses and hosting an array of events and activities, from AI art exhibits to workshops and presentations.
Through a small-team grant, faculty from the Department of World Languages will take an interdisciplinary approach to French courses looking at aliens in French works of fiction. The courses include ‘Alien Encounters in French Fiction and Cultures’ and ‘Intro to the Francophone World: Cinema of Africa and its Diasporas.’