Building Into the ‘And’: Liberal Arts, Engineering, and Interdisciplinarity

The integration of engineering as part of the liberal arts is rooted deeply in Lafayette’s common core, and we remain dedicated to realizing the range of opportunities this combination affords across the full curriculum and beyond.

 

Through this plan, we will build upon the strength of existing collaborative initiatives and interdisciplinary programs while generating new resources, spaces, and faculty lines for an educational experience that guarantees opportunities to discover, design, inquire, and create across domains of knowledge.

Specific goals include:

  • Improve structures and increase potential for faculty and students to work across existing departments and programs, at the intersections of the liberal arts, engineering, and beyond
  • Expand opportunities for social innovation, creative scholarship and activity, entrepreneurial mindsets, and inclusive collaboration and integration across centers, the libraries, and academic departments and programs
  • Refine and resource academic advising to ensure close advising and mentorship structures informed by the range of possibilities implicit in the “And” across the four-year experience
  • Increase resources and endowed funding in the Office of the Provost to encourage the scholarship, research, mentorship, and travel crucial to recruiting and retaining a world-class faculty
  • Create an Interdisciplinary Challenge Lab that invites faculty and students from across the institution to collaborate on projects and identify solutions to societal problems

Associated Action Teams

Interdisciplinarity across the Liberal Arts and Engineering

Focus: Explore the intersections among the Arts & Humanities, Interdisciplinary Programs, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, and Engineering, identifying and cultivating new areas of scholarly and curricular synergy that foster cross-disciplinary thinking and problem-solving.
Co-chairs:
Jenn Rossmann (co-chair), William Jeffers Dean of Engineering

Interdisciplinary Infrastructure

Focus: Focusing on both interdisciplinary programs and cross-disciplinary connections, consider ways to enhance a curriculum that encourages creative and boundary-crossing learning and building on the Common Course of Study (CCS) to encourage this work, team-teaching, and leveraging Lafayette’s unique academic structure to model a more integrated undergraduate education.
Co-chairs:
Caleb Gallemore (co-chair), Associate Professor and Program Chair of International Affairs

The First-Year Experience and Beyond: Pre-major Advising

Focus: Reimagining the student academic journey from matriculation through the sophomore year, including developing integrated pre-major advising models and academic support in ways that prepare all students to thrive across their full Lafayette experience.
Co-chairs:
Tim Cox (co-chair), Dean of Advising & Co-curricular Programs

Tim Laquintano (co-chair), Associate Provost of Advising and Student Success

Sustainability

Focus: 

Explore how sustainability can serve as an educational framework and an area of programmatic innovation across disciplines, considering current and new curricular pathways, research synergies beyond campus, interim student initiatives, and continued collaborations with campus operations and external partners to position sustainability as a defining element of the Lafayette experience both on the Easton campus and at Metzgar.

Co-chairs

Delicia Nahman (co-chair), Sustainability Director

Megan Rothenberger (co-chair), Professor of Environmental Science & Studies