The Integration of the Humanities and Arts with Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Higher Education Branches from the Same Tree (2018) / Chapter Skim
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1 Challenges and Opportunities for Integrating Established Disciplines in Higher Education
1 Challenges and Opportunities for Integrating Established Disciplines in Higher Education
Pages 9-24
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From page 9... ...
This change in higher education has been driven, in part, by increasing specialization in the academic disciplines and the associated cultural and administrative structure of modern colleges and universities. 1 Einstein's statement about the branches of the tree was made in a letter to the YMCA in October 1937 against a backdrop of growing fascist power in central Europe.
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From page 10... ...
Yet many leaders, faculty, scholars, and students have been asking in recent years whether higher education has moved too far from its integrative tradition toward an approach heavily rooted in disciplinary "silos." These silos represent what many see as an artificial separation of academic disciplines.2 More than 50 years ago, University of California President Clark Kerr sounded an alarm about the disciplinary segregation of the university. The university had become a "multiversity," he said, held together more by a unitary administrative structure and budget than by a collective commitment to truth or to a notion that knowledge is essentially integrated.
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From page 11... ...
Though we offer a discussion of the multiple rationales offered by proponents for the value of an integrative approach, and ultimately conclude that integration is one model that shows promise for meeting the broad educational goals shared by institutions of higher education and employers, we do not argue in this report that the disciplines are not of value or that integrative models should necessarily supplant disciplinebased courses and programs. Indeed, the committee was not charged with examining other educational approaches in detail.
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From page 12... ...
. The argument that an integrative approach to education equips students with the knowledge, skills, and competencies to deal with the complex, multidimensional challenges of the world outside of campus also applies to
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Interdisciplinary teams designed pro tective suits for health care workers that were easier to use. Los Angeles-based professor and artist Mary Beth Heffernan flew to Liberia with cameras and printers and began attaching photographs of health care workers to the fronts of their pro tective suits so that people would be less alarmed by the impersonal, white-clad medics (see the video at http://www.letitripple.org/films/adaptable-mind/)
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From page 14... ...
Models and measures of climatic effects capture only one dimension of this com plex human challenge. Addressing climate change will require contending with the meanings of cultural habits and histories and seeking new ways for national and global communities to understand, reimagine, and give expression to visions of responsibility for the future.
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From page 15... ...
As described in Chapter 2 of this report, employers have noted a mismatch between the skills they want in their employees and the skills many graduates leave higher education with today. Employers insist that the acquisition of highly specialized, discipline-specific skills should not replace equally important and more lasting sets of skills, such as writing and communication, critical thinking, the ability to work on teams, ethical and cultural awareness, and lifelong learning attitudes.
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From page 16... ...
The committee explores this argument and the evidence to support it throughout the report. Inspired by the multiple arguments in favor of a more integrative model of higher education, many educators and administrators have responded by offering students courses and programs that intentionally integrate knowledge from the arts and humanities with the natural sciences, social sciences, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medical disciplines (see "Compendium of Programs and Courses That Integrate the Humanities, Arts, and STEMM" available at https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24988 under the Resources tab for a list of 218 examples that the committee found illustrative)
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From page 17... ...
After an intensive examination of the available evidence, and after deep discussions about the nature of evidence and the limits of measurement, we concluded that the existing evidence on integrative courses and programs points to very encouraging student learning outcomes that align with the twenty first–century professional skills that employers are seeking and the shared learning goals of many higher education institutions for their graduates. Further, we found abundant evidence of tremendous enthusiasm and activity among many in the higher education community to support and experiment with more integrative educational models.
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From page 18... ...
prepare STEMM graduates to be more creative and effective scientists, engineers, technologists, and health care provid ers, particularly with respect to understanding the broad social and cultural impacts of applying knowledge to address challenges and opportunities in the workplace and in their communities; and (3) develop skills of critical thinking, innovation, and creativity that may complement and enrich the skills developed by STEMM fields.
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From page 19... ...
can prepare STEMM students and workers to be more effective communicators, critical thinkers, problemsolvers, and leaders; (2) can prepare STEMM graduates to be more creative and effective scientists, engineers, technologists, and health care providers, particularly with respect to understanding the broad social and cultural impacts of applying knowledge to address challenges and opportunities in the workplace and in their communities; and (3)
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From page 20... ...
It should be noted that this is an integrative model, now funded at more than $10 million per year by the Utah state legislature, for integrative elementary arts education run by the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts Learning Program, administered through the Utah state board of education. The result of a dearth of arts instruction in primary education for four decades is that multiple generations of citizens have grown up without exposure to, or active participation in, the arts through public education.
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From page 21... ...
The contention is that an agile intellectual curiosity fed and fueled by an education that positions students to be able to understand their world and participate well in public life must include a significant encounter with STEMM knowledge, including a sense of the place of science and technology in modern life. By this reasoning, humanities and arts students need exposure to the ideas and methods associated with STEMM fields to do their jobs and live their lives more fully.
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From page 22... ...
26) As a specific example, students who apply their scientific understanding of light to create artistic products could also use their visual aids as a way to communicate scientific ideas and findings, creating an artistic–scientific loop that contributes to creative thinking and the ability to deal with complex problems innovatively (Shen et al., 2015)
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From page 23... ...
has the potential to distract from the question of what educational aims should inform curricula. Rather than taking the separation of disciplines as a given and beginning with the question of which disciplines belong at the table, our committee focused instead on forms of curricular integration that seek to transcend the limitations of disciplinary boundaries by bridging among and integrating scientific, social scientific, engineering, technological, mathematical, medical, humanistic, and artistic approaches.
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From page 24... ...
Chapter 4 discusses the meaning and nature of "evidence," the value of considering multiple forms of evidence, and the challenges of collecting evidence in real-world contexts and of generalizing the "evidence of improved educational and career outcomes" that is articulated in our Statement of Task when different stakeholders have different interpretations of positive educational outcomes, measure outcomes in different ways, approach integrative teaching and learning using different pedagogical structures, and integrate different disciplines in a multitude of ways. Chapter 5 offers an overview of the many cultural and administrative barriers to integration in higher education and discusses strategies for overcoming such barriers.
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