Interdisciplinary Studies
Our middle son Dan is a senior at Covenant, and has greatly enjoyed his years of study, living on campus, playing intercollegiate basketball and tennis, frequently leading our singing in chapel, and getting to know a grand group of friends.
After much searching, Dan decided to major in interdisciplinary studies, selecting coursework from the English, French, and music departments. This major has enabled him to pursue a variety of interests in literature, writing, languages, and music composition and performance. As he looks toward next year, he is investigating positions as coach and teacher in a secondary school, hoping to find a place where through his gifts and knowledge and experience he can make a worthwhile contribution both in the classroom and on the athletic field.
A key requirement for faculty approval of a particular interdisciplinary course of study is the student’s telling a coherent story about how these courses in these disciplines create a coherent and viable concentration. The reason telling such a story is important to us at Covenant is that we have a view about interdisciplinary work, whether it makes up a major, or provides the framework for our core curriculum, or contributes to a broader understanding of a specific discipline. Our view is that “interdisciplinary” means more than “multidisciplinary” or “crossdisciplinary”: it’s not just a matter of collecting courses from various disciplines that exist alongside one another (that’s “multi”); or of talking about other disciplines from the perspective of one discipline (that’s “cross”); but much more a matter of seeing how every course in every discipline actually affects and informs all the others (that’s “inter”), as part of the larger interrelated fabric of all knowledge. The various academic disciplines bear real, intrinsic relationship to one another, and knowledge and understanding in one area profoundly shape and enhance knowledge and understanding in the others.
Recently, Dr. William Dennison, professor of interdisciplinary studies at Covenant, published a treatise in which he explores the distinctly Christian foundation for interdisciplinary studies. In A Christian Approach to Interdisciplinary Studies: In Search of a Method and Starting Point, Dr. Dennison traces the history of increasing fragmentation among the realms of knowledge over the last several centuries, rightly diagnosing the underlying problem as the loss of a coherent and foundational starting-point. Without such a starting-point and the common heritage of all knowledge that it provides, the disciplines become separate and even antagonistic camps, pursuing their individual inquiries without regard for the others – with the result that they hardly want to, or are able to, speak with one another. As he puts it:
The result of such an unbiblical starting point seems to be apparent; the arena of academia is characterized by selfishness, pride, and power that often forfeit any conception of coherence and unity in the curricula unless it serves their own disciplinary interests. In this world of egotism, the Christian theist must recognize that human sinfulness is a monumental barrier for a true liberal arts education; realistically, its ideal of maintaining unity within diversity finds itself in constant conflict and resistance.
Some who recognize the harm of such fragmentation and seek to address it will attempt to build a framework of interdisciplinary understanding that emphasizes conceptual overlap or the value of pragmatic interaction. But if they fail or refuse to find “an ontological integrative starting point” that provides both the angle of approach and a methodology for true interdisciplinary work, then the education that results will inevitably remain fragmented and incomplete.
Dr. Dennison articulates very well the grounding of Covenant’s commitment to interdisciplinary studies: the original and final unity of all things in Jesus Christ. Taking us back to creation, where before the Fall all things were coherently related in God’s perfect order, and then forward to a consummated and recreated creation, where the unity of all things will be perfectly redeemed and restored, Dennison concludes:
Specifically, in Christ, the facts are given in the condition of integration…; humans immediately find themselves within the coherent universe as a whole.
Separation of the disciplines is, therefore, not primordial, even as the disciplines themselves constitute original and useful frameworks for understanding God’s amazingly manifold creation. A creation united in Christ, in the beginning and at the end of the age, provides both the possibility and the rationale for our interdisciplinary approach. Further, recognizing and rejoicing in this primordial and eschatological unity requires rejection of the “silo” mentality among faculty from different departments and makes possible the kind of gracious and fruitful conversations that happen daily on our campus – as historians, artists, psychologists, business and education professors, physicists, and philosophers put their joint efforts into the shared task of understanding God’s world.
What a rich framework for who we are and what we do at Covenant, celebrating and exploring together the rich and complex dimensions of human inquiry in a world foundationally understood as God intended. Our College motto, from Colossians 1:18, is set in the larger context of Paul’s doxology regarding this unity:
…all things were created through him (God the Son) and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of the cross.
Our task, therefore, is not to imagine unity and coherence where there is none, nor to attempt to create it artificially for the sake of pragmatic ends, but rather to grasp that it was there in the beginning, that in Christ we see the firstfruits of its restoration, and that it will be fully and perfectly manifest in the end. A vigorous interdisciplinary approach, grounded in the One in whom all things hold together and realized both in theory and in practice, is in fact the only educational approach that honors the God of the Scriptures.
Does this mean that we don’t delve deeply into the specific disciplines? By no means! Our physics students must – and do – receive a rigorous and highly competitive physics education, preparing them fully for further work in physics if that is their calling. And the same can be truly said of all our academic departments. But at Covenant this deep delving will never be walled off from seeing the breadth of other ways of seeing and understanding the world and everything in it, and rejoicing in the insights of other disciplines that complement and may even challenge conclusions derived from discipline-specific paradigms and methods.
Many thanks to Bill Dennison for his insightful account of interdisciplinary study. Kathleen and I are thrilled that our sons Dan and David are benefiting from Covenant’s soundly Scriptural and Christ-centered interdisciplinary framework. We are filled with an assured hope that they are being well-equipped to explore the pathways of God’s calling in a world of such diversity and complexity as ours. We are joyfully anticipating watching how God will use this blessing in their lives for his gospel purposes.
Published on 26 Feb 2008 at 9:03 am. 2 Comments.
Where can we find a copy of Dr. Dennison’s treatise?
Thanks.
-alum ‘96
Baus on 3 Mar 2008 at 8:53 pm.
Bill Dennison’s book A Christian Approach to Interdisciplinary Studies is available in Covenant’s bookstore, the Tuck Shoppe.
Niel Nielson on 4 Mar 2008 at 9:00 am.