Unleashing the power of team-taught, interdisciplinary courses (opinion)

Post-pandemic student disengagement and the troubling impact of new technologies have added pressing and unexpected dimensions to the more perennial concerns of those of us who teach college students. As two instructors in two different disciplines, one way we were able to meet some of these challenges in our daily work has been in constructing a profoundly immersive and interdisciplinary team-taught class.

We are professors at the University of San Diego, one of whom specializes in environmental geology. The other is a philosopher with research interests in the 18th-century Irish thinker and statesman Edmund Burke. A shared interest in the desert led to conversations about how we could blend our two disciplines, particularly in relation to the idea of the sublime.

After thoughtful planning, we developed a team-taught class called The Desert Sublime, in which students are introduced both to the geologic forces that created the desert landscape and to the ideas contained in Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. This integrative disciplinary approach gave students a new vocabulary to describe the geological aesthetics of the desert landscape, as well as allowed them to compare their own experience in the desert with how philosopher Burke described the sublime.

The distinctiveness of this class was twofold. First of all, it paired two disciplines rarely combined in the classroom: geology and philosophy. Second, and most important, the centerpiece of the semester’s work was an immersive component: a four-day field trip into Death Valley, a geologic focal point of desert landscape processes and a place deeply inhospitable to human beings. Such a field trip may be commonplace in the geosciences, but it was utterly rare in a philosophy class.

We spent our field time contemplating the vastness of a star-rich, unpolluted night sky, engaging in silent walks across expansive salt pans and marveling from great heights at desert panoramas. Staying four nights in a very basic research station, complete with the wind howling through doorjambs and a resident rodent in the community kitchen, students and professors engaged in an emotionally intense exploration of a landscape far removed from the amenities and luxuries of contemporary life.

The effect on the students was both academic and of a strikingly existential nature. Academically, students used geology and philosophy in combination to come to a deep appreciation and understanding of the character of the desert. One senior environmental science major commented that though “rocks and formations have always interested me, I never really considered the feelings they evoke.” On a more reflective level, a senior biology major observed, “I did not have the distractions of school, work, technology or my future. I felt at peace with myself and being so insignificant where my problems were put in perspective and felt so small.”

Themes in student feedback on the course largely fell into three categories. First, almost all students commented on the benefits of disconnecting from the all-pervasive distractions of technology, academics, work and the uncertainties of life after graduation. Second, they were grateful to form friendships and connections with peers across different majors, stretching from architecture, visual arts and philosophy to math, biology and anthropology. Together they cooked, navigated cars off-road without maps and came together at night to share stories and teach one another how to play cribbage, forming a new sense of belonging and community. Finally, they felt connected to nature in a way that their intensely scheduled university life had previously not allowed them to explore.

It was not just the students for whom the class was transformative. As instructors, each of us found our distinct disciplines augmented and enlivened by the immersive experience. For Brian, the philosophy professor, it was delightful to feel the words of Burke (not now the most fashionable of thinkers) come alive as students came into contact with a landscape almost uniquely suited for a demonstration of the meaning of his ideas. And, as Beth, the geologist, well knows, asking students how they feel about a deep valley or towering mountain is not commonplace in geology classes. Yet she found that prompting students to link their feelings in nature to Burke’s writings on the sublime were key to understanding the vastness of geologic time and the immense scale of force required to create the basin and range landscape. Can geology be taught effectively without contemplating such humanistic questions?

Both of us agree that this has opened a window on the transformative possibilities such deeply immersive, creative and unlikely interdisciplinary pairings promise.

Encouraged by seeing our students fully engaged, falling in love with two disciplines that some may consider arcane, we hope other faculty members consider similar immersive interdisciplinary experiences. To do so, we recommend the following:

• Find a destination that enlivens the material you are discussing. For example, it is hard to overstate the extent to which the literature of the sublime is illuminated by the dramatic experience of being confronted by a vast, obscure and unforgiving landscape.
• Play to your pedagogical strengths. In geology, we rarely encounter the possibility of discussing something controversial (climate change aside). Nor are you likely to hear, “Tell me what aesthetic feeling led you to identify a syncline over an anticline.” In philosophy, though, contemplation and argument abound. Lean on your pedagogical experience. Instructors in the humanities are likely better prepared to lead an hourlong discussion that engages all students while balancing respect and the opportunity to be heard. Conversely, instructors in disciplines that lend themselves to the outdoors may already be adept at planning itineraries, considering field inclusivity and leading groups on overnight trips.
• Provide clear expectations for students to successfully navigate norms in disparate disciplines. This advice extends from the nitty-gritty of citation style to encouraging students to write in ways they don’t typically do in their major; the first-person point of view and contemplating emotion is not frequently used in scientific writing, for example. Consider offering creative and flexible assessments that allow students to integrate the two disciplines in their own way.
• Be willing to adjust on the fly. You might have prepared a highly structured class when a provocative discussion question arises. Be flexible and willing to abandon lesson plans in lieu of exploring the topic, as everyone in the room is learning something new. Also ask yourself how comfortable you are taking students outside the classroom and being with them 24-7.
• Seek support from your institution. Immersive experiences cost money, though research stations and campgrounds are often reasonably priced and located in spectacular geographic regions. If a curricular structure is not yet in place for team teaching, start those conversations. You’ll want to have the support from your department to teach outside of your regular load, along with the permission of other faculty members for students to be absent from their classes if the field trip occurs outside of spring break or an extended weekend.
• Consider yourself something of a student in the other discipline. Be humble. It may be that some students know more about the other discipline than you, and that’s OK. We recommend reading a few articles or book sections and then discussing major disciplinary themes over coffee to inspire the crafting of a truly integrative syllabus. The sooner you begin making connections, the better integrated the disciplines become, which is why we recommend always being present while the other person is teaching, looking for ways you might demonstrate connections. To this end, we think the best approach to develop an immersive interdisciplinary community of learning is to consider one another as co-learners rather than co-teachers.

As we hope to have shown, the structure of this class on The Desert Sublime facilitated a significant and lively interaction between two markedly different disciplines, in the process allowing students to disconnect from technological distractions and to reconnect with each other and with the glories of the natural world. Its impact has been felt and appreciated on our campus. Indeed, not only will we be teaching this class again in the spring of 2025, but the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences has committed ongoing funds for the development of such team-taught and profoundly immersive classes. To us this seems a very promising step toward an engaged and truly interdisciplinary education.