Departments Discuss Interdisciplinary Course Offerings for 2015-2016 Year

From Russian literature, to epistemology, to water, PEA plans to focus on offering more interdisciplinary courses in the coming year. These classes, which combine studies in two or more subject areas, are becoming increasingly common at other boarding schools such as Choate Rosemary Hall and Phillips Academy. While Exeter has already developed one interdisciplinary course and is in the process of creating others, the school has yet to formalize a curriculum.

"I feel like there are courses that cover topics which are too vast; they require more diversity in the ways they are studied and addressed."

Both faculty and students have been debating increased implementation of interdisciplinary courses. According to history instructor and Department head Bill Jordan, “there is a lot of support from all over campus” for the idea.

A new Religion 490 class is currently the only true interdisciplinary course housed at Exeter. The course focuses on epistemology, the study of knowledge, and is taught by three teachers: one from each the science and religion departments, and another with ties to both the English and Theater Departments. All three teachers are present in the classroom at once and have an equal role in assignments and deciding the students’ grades.

The class holds 16 students, slightly larger than the usual 12 around the Harkness table. According to religion teacher Kathleen Brownback, she and her fellow teachers have been extremely impressed by their students’ ability to listen to each other in the big group. While so far the class has run smoothly, Brownback explained that it may be subject to change in the future.

“I’m sure we will [incorporate adjustments], but we don’t know yet what they will be,” Brownback said. “We’ll do a METIC next week and that may result in some changes. Though we have a clear outline, we are always building as we go along.”

Many faculty members have been in favor of increasing the number of interdisciplinary classes offered; however, the school still faces a wide variety of obstacles. First, departments need to create plausible and functioning curricula for the courses. An equally challenging task, faculty members must be found who are willing to instruct the courses. These courses are much harder to staff with their requirement of more faculty members per class; this inevitably causes staff payment to rise, which might raise fiscal problems within the departments.

Richard Schieber, head of the Modern Languages Department, said that departments are debating the possibility of incorporating a two class, two teacher system in order to solve the instructor payment problem.

According to Schieber, a possible new interdisciplinary course surrounding physics and computer science, starting next year, will be split into two required classes, each led by different teachers. The classes will be run parallel to each other with the same group of students, allowing the two teachers to correspond with one another and create lesson plans for their classes that utilize concepts from both subjects equally.

Another potential interdisciplinary design is the Water course, a new hybrid online class piloting in the spring. Along with a multidisciplinary aspect, the course will also be interscholastic, encompassing eight different schools ranging geographically from New Hampshire to New Jersey. Each school will provide its own teacher for a total of two history teachers, several science teachers, a religion teacher, an art teacher and a classics instructor.

According to history instructor Molly MacKean, who will be teaching the course in the spring, the syllabus will focus around “the way in which water has shaped human history and will continue to shape our future.”

MacKean further explained the online aspect of the course and what benefits it will bring to the students. “We are trying to allow students to have a deeper learning experience than they would be able to have on their own campuses,” she said. “We are using the online interface to allow our students to talk to students from very different geographic environments. However, because I am here on campus, I will also be having face-to-face interactions with my Exeter students during class time.”​

While these two courses both differ from Exeter’s current interdisciplinary course, English instructor Christina Breen and modern languages instructor Inna Sysevich recently suggested a new English interdisciplinary elective with a curriculum that reflects the epistemology course.

According to Breen, the elective will focus on Russian literature and “will look at the primary texts from a ‘360 degree’ perspective.” With Breen as an experienced English teacher and Sysevich as a native Russian speaker, the two hope to provide unique perspectives on various forms of Russian literature for their group of students that will probably include a large number as high as 18.

Sysevich explained that the course has already received positive feedback from various department members and will be ready to go to the department heads as soon as a few nuances are “ironed out.” She hopes to see the course incorporated in the next year or two. “The course right now is like a seed in the ground,” Sysevich said. “It looks like it has a nice root and it is coming up. We are going to go on and go through and hopefully there will be flowers.”

Students were generally in favor of adding interdisciplinary courses, such as the English elective, despite the current large variety of existing courses they can choose from. Lower Athena Gerasoulis believes that while there is “a lot of merit to adding [new courses],” there is also a need to evaluate the type of courses being added.

“I feel like there are courses that cover topics which are too vast; they require more diversity in the ways they are studied and addressed,” Gerasoulis said. Adding interdisciplinary courses, she agreed, was a way of providing this diversity in perspectives. However, certain students feel that bringing in more interdisciplinary courses—and more new courses in general—would be accompanied by confusion. Upper Jonathan Goldsmith questioned the logistics of awarding course credits for interdisciplinary classes.

“I think there would be confusion in determining whether double credits can be awarded for courses that combine multiple subject areas,” Goldsmith said. He also added that it’s unclear for which discipline students will receive credits.

While Exeter has already begun the process, there is still much to implement and evaluate before the addition of more interdisciplinary courses. Interdisciplinary courses may be seen by both students and faculty as the right direction, but the current system of departments may not leave enough room to accommodate such courses. Faculty members hope to see more additions in the coming years and will continue to discuss possible solutions for any problems that arise with their implementation.

Contributions from Annie Ning