Two institutions are blending curricula across disciplines to expand students’ skillsets and life experiences as graduates prepare for a workforce that demands continued learning.
Drew University in New Jersey recently announced a new college that will personalize curriculum based on societal issues students want to solve. Interdisciplinary learning across STEM, the humanities and other fields will form the basis of students’ academic program when the inaugural cohort enrolls this spring.
Launching the college is a reaction to questions about higher education’s relevance to a technologically driven workforce that demands new skills, says Hilary Link, president of Drew.
“Problem-based learning is a term you often hear in higher ed, but it’s a challenge for students to pull together different disciplines at a siloed institution.”
Collaborating with classmates, faculty and industry partners on real-world challenges will prepare graduates for the “jobs and careers that different industries will be offering down the road,” Link continues.
The first group of 12-15 Drew students will co-design the college’s problem-based curriculum, which may eventually scale into a four-year degree, depending on student feedback.
This model allows leadership to prototype new programming without impacting Drew’s traditional academic offerings, Link says. “We are embracing the ambiguity of our world right now. I think higher ed needs to find its next iteration.”
Other colleges and universities that have integrated interdisciplinary learning into their programming have experienced promising results.
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A 16-credit, semester-long program at Washington College lets students study the historical, ecological and cultural elements of Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay.
Offered in the fall, the dozen students chosen to participate may measure the estuary’s salinity and sedimentation, conduct interviews with farmers and watermen and study the surrounding communities’ arts and history.
“We often hear that the Chesapeake Semester is the reason why some students come” to Washington College, says Valerie Imbruce, director of the school’s Center for Environment and Society.
A majority of students who participated in fall 2024 said they shifted toward more collaborative work and improved their reasoning, according to an assessment report.
The report also revealed that multifaceted programming expanded students’ perspectives on environmental challenges facing coastal communities around the world.
“Interdisciplinarity learning is about perspective seeking, being inquisitive and finding those points of commonality and difference with others,” Imbruce says. “Those are all things that can translate to any profession and to being a human being.”
