New office provides focal point for interdisciplinary programs

The large and complex challenges facing society today don’t respect the boundaries of traditional academic disciplines. In support of research and education that address such problems, UVic has—for decades—offered a growing number of programs that integrate approaches and insights from different disciplines, providing students with deeper and more holistic understandings of complex issues.

But such interdisciplinary programs often encounter difficulties operating in an environment of administrative systems and structures created to serve traditional discipline-oriented units. For example, programs that cut across borders between faculties lack visibility compared with faculty-based schools and departments and information about them can be difficult to find.

To provide assistance, the vice-president academic and provost has recently established the Office of Interdisciplinary Academic Programs. It will provide services to undergraduate and graduate interdisciplinary academic programs that involve more than one faculty.

“We would like to foster the continued growth of interdisciplinarity at UVic,” says Dr. Reeta Tremblay, vice-president academic and provost. “We have established this office to help reduce the administrative workload for interdisciplinary programs and to provide innovative and creative structures to facilitate their growth while maintaining their academic autonomy.”

Dr. Michael Webb, faculty member in the Department of Political Science and associate dean academic in the Faculty of Social Sciences, is serving as acting director of the office, which will operate for an initial three-year period after which it will be reviewed. It will be responsible for policies and procedures, reporting and budget administration, advocacy and promotion for the programs with which it works. Funding decisions will remain with the deans.

“We want to help directors of interdisciplinary programs focus their energies and resources on the academic programs rather than administrative tasks and to make it easier for people with good ideas to put them into effect,” says Webb.

“We see this initiative very much as an ‘open tent’—creating opportunities for the further development of interdisciplinary programs and helping to distinguish UVic as a leader in interdisciplinary education,” says Associate Vice-President Academic Planning Katy Mateer. She points out that the centralization of administration will not involve additional costs. “This is an initiative that will help build on UVic’s established strengths even in the current environment of budget reductions.”

Initially, the office is working with the undergraduate programs in European studies; Indigenous studies; social justice studies; human dimensions of climate chan#8805; technology and society; and with the graduate programs in cultural, social and political thought; and social dimensions of health.

The office will also serve all new cross-faculty interdisciplinary programs, several of which are currently in the preliminary stages.

“Already I’ve had a steady flow of inquiries from colleagues interested in developing programs and even cross-faculty courses,” says Webb. “For example, as acting director, I’m taking the lead in developing a new interdisciplinary program in international development with colleagues from the faculties of social sciences, humanities and human and social development, with funding from UVic’s Learning Without Borders program.”

The interdisciplinary office, with a new and prominent website, will also serve as a university-level focal point for interdisciplinary programs, helping to address their relatively low visibility and the fragmentation of information about them.
In the end it’s all about providing enhanced opportunities for students, says Mateer. “There is great student interest in interdisciplinary studies. Such programs are pathways along which students can develop the critical frameworks of understanding needed to address the pressing issues facing us. And the special designations these programs add to our graduates’ degrees help open doors to careers in which they can make important contributions to society.”

For more about interdisciplinary programs at UVic, see “The (Inter)disciplined Approach” in the autumn 2012 issue of The Torch [http://issuu.com/uvic_torch_alumni_magazine/docs/2012-autumn]