Interdisciplinary Studies Programs
Amazingly, many such programs spend little time discussing interdisciplinarity itself. Students are exposed to several thematic interdisciplinary courses. They are largely left to their own devices in drawing connections across these courses. Such students often have difficulty articulating the essence of their program to others, including prospective employers. We cannot recommend too strongly that such programs need at their core a discussion of the nature of interdisciplinarity and how to perform interdisciplinary analysis.
In other words, students in interdisciplinary studies programs should become familiar with most of the topics addressed on this website, including:
History of Disciplines and Interdisciplinarity
Philosophy of Interdisciplinarity
Since we wish students to perform interdisciplinary analysis and write interdisciplinary papers, they should be familiar with most steps in the Interdisciplinary Research process.
The same advice can be broadly applied to Liberal Studies programs.
In addition, there are many Interdisciplinary Habits of Mind that should be fostered in an interdisciplinary studies program.
See also the section on Interdisciplinary General Education; Most of the analysis there applies also to interdisciplinary studies programs.
Fortunately there are now a handful of books that can be used as texts within interdisciplinary studies programs:
Augsburg, Tanya (2009) Becoming Interdisciplinary: An Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies. Dubuque: Kendall-Hunt.
O'Rourke, M., Crowley, S., Eigenbrode, S. D., Wulfhorst, J. D., eds. Enhancing Communication and Collaboration in Interdisciplinary Research. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2013.
Repko, Allen, with Rick Szostak and Michele Buchberger, Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies, Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2013.
Repko, Allen, Interdisciplinary Research: Process and Theory, 2nd ed., Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2011.
Repko, Allen, William H. Newell, and Rick Szostak Case Studies in Interdisciplinary research. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2012.