The School of Interdisciplinary Studies (Western College Program) offers team-taught interdisciplinary curriculum, a residential learning program that emphasizes student-faculty interaction, and an advanced program of study that may be directed toward specific career or professional goals.

Located in a historic district of Miami University's campus, formerly the site of Western College, the program has the educational style of a small college within a major university. It offers faculty in residence, discussion classes, opportunities for research and study in humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, and participation in a wide range of student activities. In addition, you have full access to courses and activities of a major university.

The program features an interdisciplinary studies curriculum, an advanced program, peer education, tutoring and research opportunities in writing, natural science, and computers, and a residential learning program.

Special Admission Requirement

Enrollment is on space-available basis. More information is available from the Office of the Assistant Dean.

Transfer Policy

Transfer students from other divisions and outside the university are welcome when space is available. Requirements can be adjusted in most cases to accommodate completion of the program. Students are advised to transfer during their first year or before the beginning of their second year.

Interdisciplinary Studies Curriculum

Note: The School of Interdisciplinary Studies is currently revising its major requirements. Please contact the Office of the Assistant Dean for complete information.

Team-taught courses focus on issues and concepts by bringing together information and analysis from more than one field. The goal of study is to place knowledge into perspective. Each area of humanities (creativity and culture), social sciences (social systems), and natural sciences (natural systems) is treated in integrative courses.

Majors in the program take four Western College courses each semester of their first year and three Western College courses each semester of their sophomore year, as well as courses elsewhere in the university. In this way, goals of both general education and preprofessional or career interests are met.

Advanced Program

Juniors and seniors complete a program that includes advanced seminars, a senior project completed in a research workshop, and 32 semester hours of advanced course work selected from university offerings with assistance of an academic adviser, focused on a particular academic or career goal.

Each student, in consultation with a faculty adviser, develops a Statement of Educational Objectives (curriculum plan) during the sophomore year. This statement guides the selection of specific course work in the last two years. This approach allows both flexibility and clear direction. Successful programs have been developed in many fields, including pre-law, pre-medicine, environmental science, social service, historic preservation, art therapy, international business, cultural studies, fine arts, and others.

Upon completion of the first two years of interdisciplinary studies courses and the advanced program, students are awarded a Bachelor of Philosophy with a major in interdisciplinary studies.

Residential Learning Program

The Western program intentionally relates informal learning activities to formal class work. Majors live together in residence halls during their first two years; some faculty live in these halls, where classrooms and staff offices are also located.

Learning outside the classroom is encouraged by frequent informal activities. Relatively small, discussion-oriented classes that accompany weekly lectures are held in residence halls and classrooms. Students are active on committees dealing with curriculum, government, and community life.

Thematic Sequences

The Western College Program offers three Miami Plan Thematic Sequences: Creativity and Culture (WCP 1), Natural Systems: Science in Interdisciplinary Perspectives (WCP 2), and Social Thought and Action (WCP 3).

Minor

In addition to the major in interdisciplinary studies, the School also offers a minor, a shorter program that may be taken with any major. Requirements include completion of 18 semester hours of WCP 200- and 300-level courses, with at least one course from each of these areas: creativity and culture, social systems, and natural systems.

Study Abroad

Each year opportunities for students to study abroad expand. You are encouraged to consider adding such an experience to your advanced program. Western College Program students have successfully completed study abroad programs for a semester or a year, typically in their junior year or in the summer. You may participate in the International Student Exchange Program (ISEP) and choose from many institutions in more than 30 countries, or exchange with the established Miami program in Austria, Denmark, Japan, Mexico, or Scotland. The Study Abroad Office in the Office of International Programs, Langstroth Cottage, helps students select the program that best suits their academic objectives.

Non-Majors

Architecture and interior design students take three required Western College Program courses each semester of their first year. When space is available, other Miami students may enroll in courses. Many interdisciplinary studies courses apply toward the Miami Plan requirement; these courses include WCP 111, 112, 121, 122, 131, 132, 141, 142, 211, 221, 231. Priority for registration in these courses is given to Western College Program students and to students who are taking several courses simultaneously (for example, those taking WCP 111, 121, and 131 together).

Freshman and Sophomore Curriculum:

48 semester hours of designated course work, 32 meet the Miami Plan for Liberal Education requirement.

Residency:

Two years of residency in a hall designated for the Western College Program (typically in the first and second years of study).

Advanced Program:

Advanced Program: Eight semester hours of junior seminar and 10 semester hours of senior project workshop. Completion of an approved Statement of Educational Objectives submitted at the end of the sophomore year. This statement lists 32 semester hours of course work focused on an interdisciplinary topic or theme.

Program Outline

Freshman Year (30-36 semester hours)

WCP 111, 112 Creativity and Culture I (3, 3)

Philosophical, aesthetic, and cultural approaches to literary texts and other artistic expressions. Introductions to poetry, plays, autobiographies, novels, short stories, emphasizing how ways of knowing affect the form of subject matter, and relates these to artistic expressions such as creative writing, film, painting, performance, architecture, or other arts when exploring a topic or theme. Courses extend interpretation of human expression by placing it in cultural contexts; consider the degree to which forms of expression are culturally bound and engage students with primary source materials in humanities. Class format includes lectures, creative projects, exhibits or performances, and a conscious development of effective seminar techniques for interaction.

WCP 121, 122 Natural Systems I (3, 3)

Integrated introduction to concepts and methods of natural sciences through lectures, laboratories, field work, and seminars.

WCP 121

This course focuses on origins and changes at many scales in physical and biological systems and draws upon materials from evolutionary biology, geology, physics, chemistry, and geochemistry. Patterns of change, problems of size and scale, extinction, and survival are considered as well as origin and change of human ideas and interpretations of natural systems. Features of this course include instructor and student-generated laboratories and field experiences; quantitative skills, experimental reports, and scientific expository work typical of natural history essays and nature writing.

WCP 122 (3)

This course examines the fundamental connections between science and other avenues of knowledge. Scientific ideas including atomic theory, cosmology, and theories of motion, thermodynamics, general and special relativity, evolution, Mendelian and molecular genetics are explored in the context of their historic interactions with culture. Class format includes lectures, seminars, research, hands-on laboratories, written and oral presentations.

WCP 131, 132 Social Systems I (3, 3)

Introduction to key social science perspectives, identifying ways they are distinguished from those of humanities or natural science, and includes perspectives outside the mainstreams of American culture. Issues are explored in a seminar format; written and oral expression via papers and discussion.

WCP 131

In "the individual and society" historical treatments exploring processes of social, economic, and religious change, non-dominant perspectives such as race, gender, and ethnic background are joined with methodological issues of prediction, control, and ethics, philosophic issues of free will and determinism, and consideration of key disciplinary assuMPTions from anthropology, economics, education, geography, history, political science, psychology, and sociology.

WCP 132

This course examines relations within and among groups in a society; continuity or discontinuity of social organization in relation to economic and political justice, communication and miscommunication, conflict and cooperation, power and powerlessness. Socioeconomic classes, religious groups, regional or urban communities, race, gender and ethnicity, and relations of industrial and two-thirds world nations may be considered, as well as conflict resolution in small groups or families. The importance of life experiences to authors in the development of their theoretical perspectives is explored. Views that articulate and challenge dominant values and life styles stimulate students to analyze arguments of others and their own beliefs.

WCP 141 Interdisciplinary Fine Arts (3)

Introduces students to fundamentals of artistic perspective in the classroom, laboratory and field settings, as well as fundamentals of design, multi-media and three-dimensional artifacts, and performance processes, asking students to find conceptual and interpretive commonalities among these. Discussion of ways to understand traditions of artistic excellence is included, as well as exploration of how art works resonate with personal experience.

WCP 142 Interdisciplinary Technology (3)

Develops conceptual tools for solving problems with technology and explores roles of technology in social contexts. Proficiency with evaluation of empirical data and application of scientific principles emphasized. Technology is also considered as a cultural phenomenon and agent of social change, and product of human invention and creativity. Reasoning skills such as the logic of evidence and assertions and understanding how conclusions may be reasonably drawn from a body of evidence. The course covers guidelines for making inferences and exercises in quantitative intuition.

Electives (6-12) taken in other divisions of the university.

Sophomore Year (30-36 semester hours)

WCP 211, 212 Creativity and Culture II (4, 4)

These courses explore human creativity in diverse situations and employ approaches of arts, humanities, and social sciences, and consider methods utilized to understand and analyze a wide range of cultural expression. Students learn to value synthetic as well as analytic modes such as working together, completing personal writing and annotated essays, participating in seminars, panels, presentations and research projects, interacting with guest speakers. A major research paper or creative performance is required.

WCP 221, 222 Natural Systems II (4, 4)

Overview of major environmental problems humans face today from a scientific perspective and emphasizes potential solutions to them; impact of global population upon the biosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere; significant global geochemical cycles and how human activity has altered them since the Industrial Revolution; impact of human societies, particularly energy-intensive ways of life, on the composition of the atmosphere and the oceans. Explores philosophical and historical context of significant scientific fields, for example: biodiversity, human ecology, biomedicine, or lives in science. Writing may involve laboratory reports, naturalist essays, instructional writing for laboratories and term papers; quantitative skills may include mathematical modeling.

WCP 231, 232 Social Systems II (4, 4)

Examines how people may change society, seeks to understand persistent forces that have shaped it, and considers how social science theories from anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology characterize social change; considers basic orientations such as idealism and materialism, ideologies with radical, liberal, and conservative perspectives, and deliberate change strategies such as legislative action, boycotts, community organizing, and non-violence. Seminar discussion, journal or autobiographical writing, newspaper reading, critiques of guest lectures, readings that explore diverse theoretical and philosophical postures characterize these courses.

Electives (6-12) taken in other divisions of the university.

Junior Year (30-36 semester hours)

WCP 333, 334 Junior Seminar (4, 4)

Seminars are organized around three general areas: arts, humanities, and culture; behavior, institutions, and social change; and science, technology, and environment. Seminars are organized by themes, problems, or issues.

Seminars explore methodological approaches for carrying out research or actual research experience that may be useful for senior project.

One seminar is selected each semester in the area of the student's interest. Recent examples from arts, humanities, and culture include a seminar on "The Regional Character of the American South," and a seminar on "The Image of the City in the Arts: Paris, 1850-1920." In the area of behavior, institutions, and social change, recent seminars explored "Classical Political Theory: Issues of Interpretation" and "Interdisciplinary Social Science Methodology." In the area of science, technology, and environment, seminars included "Problems and Methods of Environmental Assessment" and "Physiological Ecology in Aquatic Systems."

Additional Course Work (24-32)

taken in other divisions of the university, or perhaps study abroad, to meet the Statement of Educational Objectives program.

Senior Year (32-42 semester hours)

WCP 444, 445 Senior Workshop (5, 5)

These courses organize development of an in-depth project. This may be a scholarly paper, a scientific experimental investigation and report, an extended field research project, or a creative effort and presentation in the arts. Workshop meetings discuss matters pertinent to students' progress.

Additional Course Work (32-40)

taken in other divisions of the university to meet the Statement of Educational Objectives program.