Integrating Humanities With the Natural and Social Sciences

With an NEH grant, Doane University brought together faculty from its English, biology, and psychology departments to create a sequence of courses that approach the opioid epidemic from literary, psychological, and biological perspectives. The grant provided valuable professional development opportunities for faculty from across the university, supported dialogue and collaboration between departments, and encouraged the development of thematic units that would make the school’s general education courses more cohesive and productive for students. Now in place, this curriculum equips social and natural science students with the tools of the humanities while providing them with the experiential learning opportunities they need to solve real-world problems.

The grant funded an extensive planning process that brought stakeholders together to develop a model that would work logistically and serve students’ needs. Project leaders met with the university president and other administration officials and solicited guidance from students about how to structure the program to maximize its appeal and impact. And they worked with the registrar and dean to create an innovative credit structure that could fulfill both student requirements and faculty teaching assignments. The grant also enabled project leaders to attend multiple conferences dedicated to innovative teaching, where they shared their ideas for the project, received feedback, and learned new strategies from colleagues around the country. Through these efforts, Doane developed an innovative structure which splits a semester course on a specific topic into two halves, one taught by a humanities scholar and another by someone from the physical or social sciences. The model was so successful that in 2020 Doane was awarded an additional NEH grant to develop a new Certificate in the Integrated Humanities Program.

The project has garnered broad enthusiasm, not only from humanities faculty and university administrators, but also faculty in the natural and social sciences. A two-day workshop enabled faculty from each field of study to communicate how their work complements the work of others in developing well-rounded students. Biology and psychology faculty have volunteered not only to participate in the multidisciplinary course sequences, but also to incorporate humanities units into introductory courses in each department. In this way, the project integrates distinct perspectives while forging topical links across general education courses that help make students’ work at Doane more relevant and meaningful.