Interdisciplinary Programs Highlight the Arts and Sciences Advantage

Interdisciplinary learning is at the heart of the valuable degree programs that enhance the student experience throughout the College of Arts and Sciences. Students gain an academic advantage along personalized academic pathways that connect ideas across disciplines and develop unique skill sets that prepare them for a changing world. 

“By integrating knowledge, methods, and perspectives from across academic disciplines, our interdisciplinary programs help students build a broad intellectual foundation and skill set,” said Professor Joe Miles, associate dean for institutional transformation. “These programs foster critical thinking and adaptability, and prepare students to tackle complex, real-world problems.”

Design a Professional Experience Unique to Your Interests

Interdisciplinary education allows students to step beyond the confines of a specific major to choose coursework combinations that align with their individual interests, career goals, and other future aspirations. They are able to see beyond isolated viewpoints to get a well-rounded understanding of how to tackle problems.

The college’s Consortium on Social and Cultural Inquiry (CoSCI, pronounced co-see) lights the way for students to align their educational experience with their interests. This robust collection of interdisciplinary programs offers unique courses of study for UT students seeking to build valuable and diverse sets of skills.

Encompassing 30-plus majors, minors, and certificates, CoSCI programs allow students to explore a range of perspectives on their personal academic journey, building insight from natural sciences, art, literature, philosophy, psychology, and more in ways that let students transcend the knowledge and skills of any single field.

Teaching Assistant Professor Jeffrey Amos describes the Visual and Interactive Storytelling program that he chairs in a way that brings home the interdisciplinary point for all of CoSCI.

“One of the core strengths of this program is its flexibility,” said Amos. “There are all of these places where we tell stories and connect with each other that aren’t really served by one singular disciplinary track. This program brings it together in a way for students to chart a pathway of their own inside these big sandboxes of different disciplines.”

Connect Ideas for Bold Insight Across Disciplines

The college’s interdisciplinary approach to learning allows students to connect ideas while breaking down subject silos. Students experience overlapping, holistic concepts—such as utilizing math in the study of language or exploring historical context in literature classes.

The Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) program sets a prime example of this opportunity. Courses in NAIS connect historical experiences of the East Tennessee region with contemporary cultural dynamics, allowing students from all backgrounds to engage deeply with Indigenous perspectives and to carry those insights into their other academic studies, professional lives, and communities.

“This collaborative structure allows students to encounter Indigenous studies from multiple vantage points—historical, cultural, political, and creative—while seeing how these perspectives inform one another,” said Associate Professor of History Brooke Bauer, chair of the program.

Faculty in the college’s interdisciplinary courses apply classroom insights to real-world challenges in ways that ignite students’ critical-thinking skills, addressing problems from multiple angles in ways to find common ground among different viewpoints and generate remarkable solutions. Students prepare for a wide world of professional experiences—and any number of career pivots they might encounter as they build their resume.

CoSCI programs share a commitment to deeply interdisciplinary investigations of world-wide social, cultural, political, and economic issues, from the ancient past to the present and into the future. These rapidly emergent fields help students hone a cutting-edge advantage across the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.

by Randall Brown