Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U)

AAC&U is the leading national association dedicated to advancing the vitality and public standing of liberal education by making quality and equity the foundations for excellence in undergraduate education in service to democracy. 

American Association for the Advancement of Science

AAAS (pronounced “Triple-A-S”) is a nonprofit professional society dedicated to the advancement of scientific and technological excellence across all disciplines, and to the public’s understanding of science and technology. AAAS is among the oldest societies in America, having been founded in Philadelphia in 1848. This website provides links to the full text of the journal Science, as well as a hypertext list of affiliated organizations. 

ASIANetwork

ASIANetwork is a consortium of over 170 North American colleges striving to strengthen the role of Asian Studies within the framework of liberal arts and interdisciplinary education to help prepare a new generation of undergraduates for a world in which Asian societies are playing more and more prominent roles.

Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs

The Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs (AGLSP) is an international organization of over 125 institutional members that share a common interest in graduate-level liberal education primarily serving adult, part-time students. The AGLSP, founded in 1975, represents a broad selection of American higher education — from small liberal arts colleges to large, research-oriented universities in the public and private sectors. The member list is extensive and links you directly to a long list of institutions (and their websites) with master’s in liberal studies programs.

Association of General and Liberal Studies (AGLS)

Composed of faculty and administrators from a wide variety of disciplines and institutions in higher education, the Association of General and Liberal Studies (AGLS) is a group of friendly people who believe in the positive impact that an effective general education/liberal studies program can have on students’ personal and professional lives. 

Center for the Study of Interdisciplinarity (CSID)

CSID conducts research into the theory and practice of inter- and transdisciplinary approaches to knowledge. Interdisciplinary centers focused on a particular theme or problem are ubiquitous, but there is no other center within the American academy dedicated to developing the theory and practice of interdisciplinarity.

Consortium for Innovative Environments in Learning

The Consortium for Innovative Environments in Learning is a growing network of distinguished, progressive higher education institutions. CIEL shares a common goal: to advance innovations in student learning. Faculty members share ideas among faculty in the network, broadening their resources for teaching, curriculum development, assessment, and research. Students present their academic work in the online student journal and at annual symposia. Students also participate in exchanges at CIEL member campuses or in study abroad programs offered through the network. CIEL also engages in outreach to the higher education community to share best practices in place among the CIEL institutions.

The Creative Research Center (CRC)

The Creative Research Center (CRC) is a born-digital, dynamic, nimble, open-source, collaborative space — a Web forum to stimulate, reinvigorate, promote and publicize Very Large-Scale Conversations. While the CRC lives in the College of the Arts of Montclair State University, the arts are not the sole proprietors of imaginative thinking. The reason-for-being of the Creative Research Center, thus, is to inspire discussion of shared commonalities of imagination and creativity across all fields of knowledge, including (but not exclusively) the expressive arts.

Eco League

Eco League colleges offer semester exchange programs that allow students of one school to study at another, giving them access to ecosystems throughout the nation. The member colleges include: Alaska Pacific University, College of the Atlantic, Green Mountain College, Northland College, and Prescott College. These small liberal arts institutions all share similar missions and value systems based on environmental responsibility, social change, and educating students to build a sustainable future, and all have strong environmental learning programs that stress experiential education, so students are prepared to take on real-world challenges when they graduate.

General and Interdisciplinary Scholarly Societies

The University of Waterloo Electronic Library Scholarly Societies Project has been created to facilitate access to information about scholarly societies across the world. Societies are listed alphabetically and by subject area. A set of essays shows how societies began as meeting sponsors and publishers, then took on bibliographic work, interacted with commercial publishers, and now have begun to tackle the current crisis in scholarly publishing. Suggestions are provided for creating an effective society website.

Global Alliance for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity

The ITD Alliance exists to serve a diverse, distributed network of institutions and individuals cutting across disciplinary, institutional, cultural, sectorial, and geographical boundaries. The shared goal of Alliance members is to address complex problems and societal needs common to inter- and transdisciplinary communities around the world. We contribute to theory and practice by providing specialized knowledge, tools, and techniques that support, guide, and drive global cross-disciplinary and cross-sector collaborations. We adopt a context-driven approach, while acknowledging a plurality of paradigms, experiences, ways of knowing, acting and being, values and methods. By focusing on boundary-crossing and boundary-spanning research, the ITD Alliance aims to advance capacity for collaborative research, interrelate or integrate diverse perspectives, and foster innovation, while building an international community to address significant societal needs.

HASTAC: Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory

HASTAC is a consortium of humanists, artists, scientists, and engineers, of leading researchers and nonprofit research institutions, committed to new forms of collaboration across communities and disciplines fostered by creative uses of technology. Its mission is two-fold: to ensure that humanistic and humane considerations are never far removed from technological advances, and to push education and learning to the forefront of digital innovation. The HASTAC network consists of more than 80 institutions located principally in the U.S. and reaches over 30,000 people worldwide. Click here for a profile of Julie Thompson Klein on the HASTAC Website.

The Hastings Center

The Hastings Center is an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit interdisciplinary bioethics research institute founded in 1969 to explore fundamental and emerging questions in health care, biotechnology, and the environment.

The Hodges’ Health Career Model

The Hodges’ Health Career Model is based on a descriptive model of the structure of nursing curriculum. The website aims to use the model to bring together health and social care, informatics, practitioners, patients, their families, and their care-givers. The developers envision the model being used by multidisciplinary health care teams, faculty, patients, advocates and policy makers. The website shows the relations of subject domains and provides multiple related links.

Holistic Education Network of Tasmania, Australia

While its definition of “transdisciplinary” may strike many AIS members as close to what they mean by “interdisciplinary,” this site sponsored by the Holistic Education Network of Tasmania, Australia, has useful links to European as well as Australian, Canadian, and U.S. websites. Take a look in particular at the “Charter of Transdisciplinarity” from the First World Congress of Transdisciplinarity for its vision of a “transdisciplinary” world.

Humanities Education and Research Association

The Humanities Education and Research Association (HERA) is a professional organization for humanities teachers, scholars, and museum directors. It publishes a newsletter three times per year and a refereed scholarly journal, Interdisciplinary Humanities, two times per year. 

IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning

IMPACT, the peer-reviewed, bi-annual online journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning (CITL), publishes scholarly and creative non-fiction essays about the theory, practice, and assessment of interdisciplinary education. It also publishes essays that explore compelling connections between the ideas of great thinkers from different disciplines and different times. Its website includes information on submission guidelines.

Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities

IATH is at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Its goal is to explore and expand the potential of information technology as a tool for humanities research. To that end, it provides consulting, technical support, applications programming, and networked publishing facilities. It also cultivates partnerships and participates in humanities computing initiatives with libraries, publishers, information technology companies, scholarly organizations, and others interested in the intersection of computers and cultural heritage. This vigorous website provides some state-of -the-art thinking about hypertext, as well as advanced imaging software programs and excellent links within UV and beyond.

Integration and Implementation Sciences (I2S)

I2S is a new discipline providing concepts and methods for conducting research on complex, real-world problems. It supports researchers (I2S specialists) who contribute to cross-disciplinary teams tackling challenging social and environmental problems. The I2S website is the portal to a rich array of resources of interest to interdisciplinarians. These include the I2S News; a growing bibliography including works on interdisciplinary studies and related fields you are unlikely to encounter outside Australia; I2S publications including journal articles, book chapters, reports, presentations, and books (most of which may be downloaded electronically without charge); repositories of case studies, conferences, links to professional associations and networks, current projects, and online courses for professional development or graduate credit. The I2S-sponsored books are on the topics of dialogue methods, knowledge brokering, and uncertainly.

Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship

The National Science Foundation’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) Program educates U.S. PhD scientists, engineers, and educators with the interdisciplinary backgrounds, deep knowledge in chosen disciplines, and technical, professional, and personal skills to become in their own careers the leaders and creative agents for change. It works to create innovative new models for graduate education and foster collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. It is also intended to facilitate greater diversity in student participation and preparation and to contribute to the development of a diverse, globally-engaged science and engineering workforce.

Interdisciplinary Hiring, Tenure and Promotion

A report on Interdisciplinary Hiring, Tenure and Promotion: Guidance for Individuals and Institutions, was released in 2007 by the Council of Environmental Deans and Directors (CEDD) of the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) as the first comprehensive how-to-guide, providing best practices for each stage of a scholar’s career. It addresses issues faced by both faculty and research scientists, raising points for consideration and providing recommendations with examples. The resource is designed to help guide individuals, as well as institutions, in fostering and promoting interdisciplinary scholars throughout their careers. Click here for a supplemental presentation by Stephanie Pfirman, one of the report’s authors. A second edition of the report was completed in October 2011 and is available for a fee from the NCSE; click here for more information. Pfirman and Paula Martin, another author of the report, also wrote a chapter on “Facilitating Interdisciplinary Scholars” in The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Interdisciplinary Research Centers

This site links to a Hybrid Vigor final report to the National Science Foundation on interdisciplinary research centers: “A Multi-Method Analysis of the Social and Technical Conditions for Interdisciplinary Collaborations” by Diana Rhoten, principal investigator, September 2003.

Interdisciplinary Teaching and Research Group

This group was set up in 2005 to explore all facets of interdisciplinary teaching and learning. This includes investigating the student experience, examining the ways in which institutions encourage or discourage cross-disciplinary collaboration (in teaching), exploring how subject centers can support staff teaching on interdisciplinary programs and supporting staff who do not have an obvious subject center home. The page is part of the Higher Education Academy website and includes links to publications and projects.

International Network for Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity (INIT)

INIT seeks to provide an international platform for discussion and promotion of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, teaching, and policy. INIT will inventory existing understandings, facilitate and enhance communication, and stimulate new research. The network was formed at a meeting in New York City, attended by representatives from the US-based Association for Integrative Studies (AIS), the European-based Transdisciplinarity-Net (td-net), and the Center for the Study of Interdisciplinarity (CSID) at the University of North Texas. Organizers envision INIT as facilitating communication and collaborative work among organizations, institutions, and individuals that view ID and TD as a vibrant way to respond to the challenges of 21st-century society. The inaugural symposium was held in Utrecht, Netherlands, on June 2011. 

Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA)

Founded in the Netherlands in 1990, the Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA) is an international nonprofit organization fostering interdisciplinary academic discourse and exchange among culturally diverse organizations and individuals working with art, science and emerging technologies. ISEA publishes a newsletter; hosts an online archive and exchange environment and oversees the International Symposium on Electronic Art, a regular gathering of the international art, science and technology community.

Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies

An International Journal of Interdisciplinary and Interfaith Dialogue. This journal highlights interdisciplinary, faith-informed reading, research, writing, book reviews, theme-oriented courses, and seminars.

Journal of Research Practice

JRP is an international refereed journal with a transdisciplinary focus, available in the open access mode, i.e., available free of charge to the readers. The journal is supported by a consortium of institutions drawn from different parts of the world. It is produced electronically and hosted on the Web by Athabasca University Press (AU Press). In 2007 (Vol. 3, Issue 2) the journal published a special issue: “On Beyond Interdisciplinarity.”

KronoScope: Journal for the Study of Time

Since 1966, the International Society for the Study of Time (ISST) has been providing a framework for an interdisciplinary dialogue about the nature of time. KronoScope, edited by an international board of scholars, carries forward the work of ISST. It offers a forum for the cross-fertilization of scholarly and scientific study about the nature of time as seen from a range of perspectives and disciplines. As a journal, it can accommodate the expanding concerns of the global community in search of understanding and meaning. KronoScope invites critical contributions from all disciplines.

Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL)

Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) is an informal national alliance of individuals, institutions, and organizations committed to strengthening undergraduate science, mathematics, engineering, and technology education. PKAL’s site maintains information about faculty, facilities, curriculum, and both national and institutional issues in the math, science, engineering, and technology education disciplines. In 2011, PKAL published What Works in Facilitating Interdisciplinary Learning in Science and Mathematics, the executive summary from the KECK/PKAL Facilitating Interdisciplinary Learning project, which is available from AAC&U Publications by clicking here. 

Quadrant

Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and developed in cooperation with the Office of the Provost and the Graduate School, Quadrant is a joint initiative of the University of Minnesota Press, a leader in interdisciplinary scholarly publishing, and the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), a catalyst and incubator of research and discussion across disciplinary boundaries. Quadrant provides tools for scholars to pursue interdisciplinary work and offers a new, more collaborative model of scholarly research and publication. Four interdisciplinary research and publication groups provide the intellectual foundation of Quadrant: Design, Architecture, and Culture; Environment, Culture, and Sustainability; Global Cultures; and Health and Society. The groups are made up of faculty from across the university as well as scholars from around the world who are invited to participate in this initiative. Quadrant provides the administrative and financial support for these groups to hold public lectures, workshops, and, as appropriate, colloquia, panel discussions, or round-tables. In addition, the Press provides editorial support to group members, including fellows and visiting scholars who are developing book projects that may be considered for the Quadrant book imprint.

Science of Team Science (SciTS)

The emerging science of team science (SciTS) field encompasses both conceptual and methodological strategies aimed at understanding and enhancing the processes and outcomes of collaborative team science. The SciTS field focuses on understanding and enhancing the antecedent conditions, collaborative processes, and outcomes associated with team science initiatives, including their scientific discoveries, educational outcomes, and translations of research findings into new practices, patents, products, technical advances, and policies. 

Society for Literature, Science and the Arts (SLSA)

The Society for Literature, Science and the Arts(SLSA) fosters the multi-disciplinary study of the relations among literature and language, the arts, science, medicine, and technology.

Society for Values in Higher Education

The Society for Values in Higher Education is an interdisciplinary association committed to promoting citizenship, socially responsible values, and intellectual exchange. 

University Studies

The University Studies Program, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is a transdisciplinary faculty development program facilitating the exploration of disciplinary boundaries and providing for the expression of faculty excellence through a wide range of interdisciplinary activities. The program offers faculty development workshops, a listing of interdisciplinary courses, colloquia and lectures on interdisciplinary issues, and awards for faculty who engage in interdisciplinarity. The website contains sections on publications on interdisciplinarity, as well as resources related to interdisciplinary teaching and scholarship initiatives.

Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education

Established in 1985, the Washington Center (The Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington) emphasizes collaborative, low-cost, highly effective approaches to educational reform. The center works with faculty, staff, and administrators at regional and national levels to support student engagement and academic achievement, particularly for students underrepresented in higher education. The website has links to publications and projects that promote interdisciplinary learning, curricular integration, and educational equity.

The World Lecture Hall (WLH)

The WLH links to pages created by faculty worldwide who are using the Web to deliver class materials. For example, you will find course syllabi, assignments, lecture notes, exams, class calendars, multimedia textbooks, and so on. The site is inclusive: expect to roam for a while. This site is managed by “Teamweb” at the University of Texas, Austin. WLH is organized by subject and includes areas such as liberal studies, cultural studies, and women’s studies.

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