<p>The Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities at Wash U is a good one - I have no way of evaluating it compared to other Universities but can attest that for my son it was a very rigourous and focused program with exceptional professors. </p>
<p>I thought the PNP program at Wash U looked fascinating as well - that would be the program I would choose if I had it to do over ( and I was an art and design major).</p>
<p>Haha, well I’m biased, but I think the Service Academies offer the best interdisciplinary programs in the country.</p>
<p>For Example, according to U.S. News Rankings, US Naval Academy and US Military Academy were ranked 20th, and 22nd respectively in liberal arts schools. Our engineering programs are not on the peer assessment score list, but I can assure you that engineering here is very challenging and taught by some of the best in the world. People here were outraged when USNA was ranked as a “liberal arts college” and not as a top university, and even more upset when our engineering wasn’t included with the rest of the peer assessment scores.</p>
<p>Traditionally, academics at the Naval Academy are rigorous in the maths, sciences, and engineering. Though we are able to major in humanities, we all must take chemistry I and II, Calculus I, II, and III, Physics I and II, Electrical Engineering I and II, Thermodynamics, Propulsion, Weapons Systems, Navigation, Leadership, and Ethics as part of the core curriculum. Foreign languages for humanities majors are also a requirement.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, how many people do you know with a B.S. in political science, history, or english? Congress mandates that USNA, USMA, and USAFA graduates all have a Bachelor of Science degree. I think it’s pretty unique to have a B.S. in history.</p>
<p>UVA has a pretty decent interdisciplinary program imho. If you want something interdisciplinary, you can either apply to one of the pre-created interdisciplinary programs or create your own major.</p>
<p>The International Relations Program at Tufts University is one of the largest and most developed programs at Tufts. The program recently redesigned the requirements so that there were more concentrations under its scope and that each concentration was even more focus than before. Some of the concentrations include: Regional and Comparative Analysis (choose one sub-concentration), International Economics (subconcentrations), Global Health, Nutrition and the Environment, International Security , The United States in World Affairs, Identity and Ideology, State, Empire, and Colonialism, etc. </p>
<p>There are also 5 core classes:
"Introduction to Politics of International Relations (PS 61)
Principles of Economics (EC 5)
International Economics (one course from approved list)
The Historical Dimension (one course from approved list)
Theories of Society and Culture (one course from approved list) "</p>
<p>And a large foreign language requirement that requires 3/4 years of study for students taking a new language. </p>
<p>I have found that many of my friends in the program are able to choose a course schedule with their advisers that not only interdisciplinary, but well focused.</p>
<p>Cognitive science is an interesting field that’s becoming and more prominent. It’s a combination of psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, computer science, philosophy, and anthropology (sometimes with a dash of some other disciplines).</p>
<p>Stanford has an interesting spin on the cogsci major called “symbolic system”–symsys for short. It has more of a focus on psychology (with the neuroscience and linguistics subsets) and computer science. Thus, it emphasizes the “human-computer relationship” (where “computer” is very loosely defined). It spans cogsci, but has a strong emphasis on artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, and the like.</p>
<p>Fun fact: one of the hiring managers at Google was a major in symsys at Stanford, and while I was visiting, he tried to convince me of majoring in it (after I’d mentioned my interest in linguistics and computer science to his wife)–he seemed really enthusiastic about the major, and many of the students speak highly of it.</p>
<p>Stanford really does emphasize an interdisciplinary approach to education, which is why it has quite a few interdisciplinary programs for students, most of which seem pretty interesting:</p>
<p>Claremont McKenna features two outstanding interdisciplinary progams. The Philosophy, Politics, and Economics major is based off of a similar program at Oxford. Students apply thier Sophomore year and a faculty panel selects 12 students. These students focus on one subject per semester in both a tutorial class and a seminar class. The tutorial class makes students pair up and write a 10 page paper every other week, while the partner has to write a criticism and then both discuss with the professor. The seminar explored issues related to the academic focus of the semester, but end up expanding to include the other disciplines.</p>
<p>Another major, the Environment, Economics, and Politics is much more flexible in that you choose which classes you’re interested in and figure out which area it satisfies. To satisfy the Environmental aspect, you could take any number of upper level science classes.</p>
<p>That WUSL neuroscience program sounds fascinating. Though, I do question the presumption of a correlation between the mind and the brain that is suggested in this statement:</p>
<p>Arizona State has the BIS (Bachelors of Interdisciplinary Studies) which basically takes 2 minors and puts them together to make a major. I believe that one of the graduation requirements for this major is writing a thesis or doing some sort of project that combines the two areas chosen.</p>
<p>The University Professors Program at Boston University. You basically take anything and everything that interests you in any of BU’s schools, and work individually with a University Professor (which is some kind of high standing professor I think). You spend your senior year creating a comprehensive, interdisciplinary thesis relating several of the fields you studied during your undergraduate years.</p>
<p>Lawrence University has many interdisciplinary programs for such a small school or maybe that is the reason it is so possible. I have looked for this article describing the interaction between the arts and sciences and especially the biological research done with the singers. It impressed me.</p>
<p>"I will take as an example of the research collaboration I envision between artists and scientists a study of singers’ immune systems that is currently going on at Lawrence and involves four professors and students in the college and conservatory. Here the principal research questions focus on how cognition, emotion, and physiology are involved in vocal arts activities.</p>
<p>At present, the research is concerned with measuring the production during singing of Immunoglobulin A, commonly known as IgA, a protein associated with the immune system. What has been found thus far is that levels of singers’ IgA jump during formal rehearsals and public performances. Moreover, the degree to which singers self-report that they have positive emotional experiences and performance satisfaction predicts the strength of the IgA effect. "</p>
<p>College of the Atlantic: Here’s some quotes from their website…</p>
<p>COA is a small school, but with a major difference - literally. All students major in Human Ecology, the study of our relationship with our environment. This major gives you the flexibility to design your own course of study. It’s all about creativity, investigation, engagement, and community.</p>
<p>The Human Ecology Degree
Human ecology is at the heart of an education at College of the Atlantic. This educational approach is founded upon the premise that the complex problems and issues of modern society and the environment are not departmentalized – or compartmentalized. Instead, human ecology posits that the roots of contemporary social, cultural, political and environmental issues are intertwined among various fields. “There is a tendency, especially in the academic world,” says Rich Borden, a professor at COA for the last 30 years, “to carve life into ever smaller pieces in order to make sense of it. The aim of human ecology is to remind us that we are part of a complex and interactive living world. Its broad mandate calls us to cross the boundaries of traditional disciplines and seek fresh combinations of ideas.”</p>
<p>At COA We Do:</p>
<ul>
<li> have a holistic view of learning and of our curriculum </li>
<li> require every student to participate in designing his or her own education </li>
<li> put environmental and social problems at the center of our curriculum </li>
<li> work to prepare students to develop and implement solutions to environmental and social problems </li>
</ul>
<p>We Don’t:</p>
<ul>
<li> Have academic departments, as in traditional colleges and universities </li>
<li> Have defined majors</li>
</ul>
<p>I don’t know that it’s especially well thought-out, but I’m personally looking at the University of Chicago’s Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities program. In many ways it just amounts to “build-your-own-humanities-major” from my little amount of research on the program, but it does have some structure to it. There’s a good PDF you can download from the UChicago course catalog:</p>
<p>number of interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary bachelors graduates last year.</p>
<p>There are about 20 specific majors recognized as “interdisciplinary” by US Department of Education such as Neuroscience and Gerontology. They cut across different departments. Below are students who had an interdisciplinary major that didn’t fit into any of the majors recognized by the US Department of Education, such as creating your own major.</p>
<p>Texas A & M University 724
The University of Texas at Austin 278
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities 228
University of Florida 189
University of California-Los Angeles 170
Stanford University 168
University of Missouri-Columbia 157
University of California-Berkeley 144
University of California-Irvine 130
Yale University 97
College of William and Mary 91
Ohio State University-Main Campus 78
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 76
Miami University-Oxford 58
University of Connecticut 57
University of Delaware 51
Tufts University 51
Indiana University-Bloomington 43
Boston University 42
Emory University 31
University of California-Santa Cruz 28
Franklin and Marshall College 28
Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus 27
University of Virginia-Main Campus 27
Marquette University 27
Vanderbilt University 26
Washington University in St Louis 25
Baylor University 24
Earlham College 23
University of Iowa 23
University of Richmond 23
University of California-Riverside 21
Spelman College 20
The University of Tennessee 20
University of California-San Diego 19
Wheaton College 18
Pomona College 17
University of Southern California 17
Colorado College 17
Mount Holyoke College 16
Duke University 16
Brown University 16
Birmingham Southern College 15
University of California-Davis 15
Claremont McKenna College 15
Austin College 15
Connecticut College 14
American University 14
University of Maryland-College Park 14
Kenyon College 14
Furman University 14
Hope College 13
Fordham University 13
SUNY at Binghamton 13
Reed College 12
Scripps College 11
College of the Holy Cross 11
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 11
Hendrix College 10
University of Colorado at Boulder 10
Iowa State University 10
Davidson College 10
Agnes Scott College 9
Amherst College 9
Cornell University 9
Bates College 8
Colby College 8
St Mary’s College of Maryland 8
Gettysburg College 8
Lafayette College 8
Trinity College 7
Bowdoin College 7
Dartmouth College 7
Bard College 7
Juniata College 7
Grinnell College 6
Wheaton College 6
University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus 6
Middlebury College 6
Pitzer College 5
George Washington University 5
Northwestern University 5
Brandeis University 5
Lawrence University 5
Mills College 4
Bucknell University 4
Hollins University 4
University of Wisconsin-Madison 4
DePauw University 3
Clark University 3
Wellesley College 3
Williams College 3
Macalester College 3
Rutgers University-New Brunswick 3
Hamilton College 3
Oberlin College 3
The College of Wooster 3
Haverford College 3
Sewanee: The University of the South 3
Occidental College 2
Goucher College 2
Worcester Polytechnic Institute 2
Gustavus Adolphus College 2
Lehigh University 2
Rice University 2
Southern Methodist University 2
Sweet Briar College 2
University of California-Santa Barbara 1
Harvey Mudd College 1
Tulane University of Louisiana 1
Princeton University 1
Barnard College 1
Vassar College 1
Wells College 1
University of Puget Sound 1
Whitman College 1
Beloit College 1</p>
<p>Here are some of the interdisciplinary majors recognized by the US Dept of Educ:</p>
<p>30.01-Biological and Physical Sciences
30.05-Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
30.06-Systems Science and Theory
30.08-Mathematics and Computer Science
30.10-Biopsychology
30.11-Gerontology
30.12-Historic Preservation and Conservation
30.13-Medieval and Renaissance Studies
30.14-Museology/Museum Studies
30.15-Science, Technology and Society
30.16-Accounting and Computer Science
30.17-Behavioral Sciences
30.18-Natural Sciences
30.19-Nutrition Sciences
30.20-International/Global Studies
30.21-Holocaust and Related Studies
30.22-Classical and Ancient Studies
30.23-Intercultural/Multicultural and Diversity Studies
30.24-Neuroscience
30.25-Cognitive Science
30.99-Multi/Interdisciplinary Studies, Other</p>
<p>Post #39 above is for 30.99 “Multi/Interdisciplinary Studies, Other”</p>