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The Four I's of Interdisciplinary Studies
Independence
IDS provides students with the freedom to design a program of study that reflects their academic passions and concerns.
However, with freedom comes
responsibility. Consequently, IDS is not for everyone.
Only those who are highly motivated and personally disciplined
should consider this option. Students must complete a detailed
application and go through a careful interview process
before being accepted to the IDS major.
The purpose is to help students
recognize, from the beginning, just how unusual IDS is
and how demanding that it can be. Those students who want
to pursue academic rigor and to accept personal responsibility
will thrive in IDS. To create an IDS program of study is,
in a real sense, to cut your own path to knowledge.
Innovation
The result of independence and
inquiry is often innovation-the act of making something
new.
IDS majors are expected to use
their creative energies to produce good work, both in their
chosen courses and in their final research project. The
project will take one of three predominant forms, depending
upon the chosen academic disciplines: quantitative analysis;
qualitative interpretation; or creative expression.
By using and developing the
four literacy skills-reading, writing, speaking, and listening-the
IDS major discovers effective ways to gain knowledge and
to express understanding.
God is incredibly creative,
as demonstrated by the diversity of His universe. Similarly,
IDS majors are encouraged to push themselves toward creative
ways of thinking and expressing themselves.
Inquiry
Inquiry begins with curiosity-to ponder
the nature of things as they are, and as they might be.
The striking thing about much of higher
education today is the emphasis upon information without
the cultivation of curiosity or inquiry. IDS majors are not
content with mere facts . they want to understand the significance
of those facts in context of a bigger picture.
IDS students have a genuine desire
to ask questions no one else will ask and to find answers,
difficult as they may be, that others may overlook. Cultivating
an attitude of inquiry is crucial to the IDS major.
Integration
From designing a program of study,
to choosing thematically congruous courses, to completing
a major research project—IDS majors must have a sense
of the why behind the what.
In other words, they must have the
inclination to investigate how various aspects of knowledge
from across the disciplines actually relate. Whether from
the arts, social sciences, humanities, or natural sciences,
the interrelation of various facets of learning is of utmost
importance to the IDS major.
Cross-disciplinary integration of
ideas and methodologies is the ultimate goal of IDS, and
always from a biblical perspective.
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