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A liberal arts college or liberal arts institution of higher education is a college with an emphasis on undergraduate study in the liberal arts of humanities and science. Such colleges aim to impart a broad general knowledge and develop general intellectual capacities, in contrast to a professional or vocational curriculum . Students in a liberal arts college generally major in a particular discipline while receiving exposure to a wide range of academic subjects, including general sciences as well as the traditional humanities subjects taught as liberal arts. Although it draws on European antecedents, the liberal arts college is strongly associated with American higher education , and most liberal arts colleges around the world draw explicitly on the American model .

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79-688: The Little Three is a term started by and used in reference to athletic competition between three private liberal arts colleges in the New England region of the United States: Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts , Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut , and Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts . The exact origin of the term Little Three is lost to history, but

158-837: A high school education. Effat University in Saudi Arabia, a women's institution, is a member of the Global Liberal Arts Alliance. Israel's first liberal arts college, Shalem College , was established in 2013. Three institutions in Africa are members of the Global Liberal Arts Alliance: Al Akhawayn University in Morocco, American University of Cairo in Egypt, and American University of Nigeria . The Egyptian and Nigerian schools are universities with

237-465: A "sense of the whole pattern, of form and function as a unity", an "integral idea of structure and configuration". This has happened in painting (with cubism ), physics, poetry, communication and educational theory . According to Marshall McLuhan , this paradigm shift was due to the passage from an era shaped by mechanization , which brought sequentiality, to the era shaped by the instant speed of electricity, which brought simultaneity. An article in

316-585: A Europe-based, US-style liberal arts college in 1969, Saint Louis University Madrid Campus , established in 1967, and Richmond, The American International University in London , established in 1972 only recently have efforts been made to import the American liberal arts college model to Europe. In the Netherlands, universities have opened constituent liberal arts colleges under the terminology " university college " since

395-402: A commitment to interdisciplinary research will increase the risk of being denied tenure. Interdisciplinary programs may also fail if they are not given sufficient autonomy. For example, interdisciplinary faculty are usually recruited to a joint appointment , with responsibilities in both an interdisciplinary program (such as women's studies ) and a traditional discipline (such as history ). If

474-1176: A commitment to truth and reconciliation with indigenous communities. Most liberal arts colleges are private institutions, but a handful of public liberal arts schools exist (such as the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia). According to U.S. News & World Report , the top ten ranked Liberal Arts Colleges in America for 2022 were: Williams College , Amherst College , Swarthmore College , Pomona College , Wellesley College , Bowdoin College , United States Naval Academy , Claremont McKenna College , Carleton College , and Middlebury College , based on institutional stats and proprietary questionnaires . Liberal arts colleges in Canada include Acadia University , Bishop's University , Glendon College of York University , Mount Allison University , St. Francis Xavier University , St. Thomas University , Trent University , University of Lethbridge , and

553-465: A crowd of cases, as seventeenth-century Leibniz's task to create a system of universal justice, which required linguistics, economics, management, ethics, law philosophy, politics, and even sinology. Interdisciplinary programs sometimes arise from a shared conviction that the traditional disciplines are unable or unwilling to address an important problem. For example, social science disciplines such as anthropology and sociology paid little attention to

632-449: A liberal arts component, but Al Akhawayn was founded on the model of an American liberal arts college. Ashesi University is a liberal arts college located in Berekuso, Ghana , established in 2002. The school's president, Patrick Awuah , described the school's mission as "educating a new generation of leaders in Africa who think ethically and who are problem solvers and have the ability and

711-652: A merger between Yale-NUS College and the NUS University Scholars Programme. Kalayaan College in the Philippines is one of the best examples of a liberal arts college in the country. Located in the New Manila district of Quezon City , it was founded in 2000 by former educators from the University of the Philippines led by José Abueva , President of the University from 1987 to 1993 and current Chairman of

790-1050: A proper college in the SNU, it has become the only college that allows students to create their own major. Liberal arts colleges in India include undergraduate UG or bachelor's degree/diploma and postgraduate PG or master's degree/diploma as well as doctoral PhD and postdoctoral studies and research, in this academic discipline. The highly ranked IIT Guwahati offers a "Master's Degree in Liberal Arts" . There are also programs such as Ajeenkya DY Patil University in Pune , India , Forman Christian College in Lahore , Pakistan , Aga Khan University and Habib University in Karachi , Pakistan and FLAME University in Pune , Maharashtra , India , referred to as India's 'first college of Liberal Education '. The University

869-529: A research area deals with problems requiring analysis and synthesis across economic, social and environmental spheres; often an integration of multiple social and natural science disciplines. Interdisciplinary research is also key to the study of health sciences, for example in studying optimal solutions to diseases. Some institutions of higher education offer accredited degree programs in Interdisciplinary Studies. At another level, interdisciplinarity

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948-435: A single disciplinary perspective (for example, women's studies or medieval studies ). More rarely, and at a more advanced level, interdisciplinarity may itself become the focus of study, in a critique of institutionalized disciplines' ways of segmenting knowledge. In contrast, studies of interdisciplinarity raise to self-consciousness questions about how interdisciplinarity works, the nature and history of disciplinarity, and

1027-551: A single program of instruction. Interdisciplinary theory takes interdisciplinary knowledge, research, or education as its main objects of study. In turn, interdisciplinary richness of any two instances of knowledge, research, or education can be ranked by weighing four variables: number of disciplines involved, the "distance" between them, the novelty of any particular combination, and their extent of integration. Interdisciplinary knowledge and research are important because: "The modern mind divides, specializes, thinks in categories:

1106-534: A specialty in non-technical coursework. It may also sometimes refer to a university college within or affiliated with a larger university. Most liberal arts colleges outside the United States follow this model. Liberal arts colleges are distinguished from other types of higher education chiefly by their generalist curricula and small size. These attributes have various secondary effects in terms of administration as well as student experience. For example, class size

1185-442: Is a learned ignoramus, which is a very serious matter, as it implies that he is a person who is ignorant, not in the fashion of the ignorant man, but with all the petulance of one who is learned in his own special line." "It is the custom among those who are called 'practical' men to condemn any man capable of a wide survey as a visionary: no man is thought worthy of a voice in politics unless he ignores or does not know nine-tenths of

1264-471: Is a member of the Global Liberal Arts Alliance has also recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding ( MoU ) with Nuffield College , University of Oxford . Also, Ahmedabad University , a private, non-profit university offers its students a liberal education which is focused on research and interdisciplinary learning . Baghdad College has offered a liberal arts curriculum since the early 20th century, but despite its name it has never offered more than

1343-500: Is believed to be "America’s oldest, continuous intercollegiate athletic conference without a membership change," which earned another moniker, The Triumvirate. This article related to sports in the United States is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Liberal arts college There is no formal definition of a liberal arts college, but one American authority defines them as schools that "emphasize undergraduate education and award at least half of their degrees in

1422-529: Is best seen as bringing together distinctive components of two or more disciplines. In academic discourse, interdisciplinarity typically applies to four realms: knowledge, research, education, and theory. Interdisciplinary knowledge involves familiarity with components of two or more disciplines. Interdisciplinary research combines components of two or more disciplines in the search or creation of new knowledge, operations, or artistic expressions. Interdisciplinary education merges components of two or more disciplines in

1501-594: Is given back to the various disciplines involved. Therefore, both disciplinarians and interdisciplinarians may be seen in complementary relation to one another. Because most participants in interdisciplinary ventures were trained in traditional disciplines, they must learn to appreciate differences of perspectives and methods. For example, a discipline that places more emphasis on quantitative rigor may produce practitioners who are more scientific in their training than others; in turn, colleagues in "softer" disciplines who may associate quantitative approaches with difficulty grasp

1580-426: Is related to an interdiscipline or an interdisciplinary field, which is an organizational unit that crosses traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought , as new needs and professions emerge. Large engineering teams are usually interdisciplinary, as a power station or mobile phone or other project requires the melding of several specialties. However, the term "interdisciplinary"

1659-607: Is seen as a remedy to the harmful effects of excessive specialization and isolation in information silos . On some views, however, interdisciplinarity is entirely indebted to those who specialize in one field of study—that is, without specialists, interdisciplinarians would have no information and no leading experts to consult. Others place the focus of interdisciplinarity on the need to transcend disciplines, viewing excessive specialization as problematic both epistemologically and politically. When interdisciplinary collaboration or research results in new solutions to problems, much information

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1738-544: Is sometimes called 'field philosophy'. Perhaps the most common complaint regarding interdisciplinary programs, by supporters and detractors alike, is the lack of synthesis—that is, students are provided with multiple disciplinary perspectives but are not given effective guidance in resolving the conflicts and achieving a coherent view of the subject. Others have argued that the very idea of synthesis or integration of disciplines presupposes questionable politico-epistemic commitments. Critics of interdisciplinary programs feel that

1817-459: Is sometimes confined to academic settings. The term interdisciplinary is applied within education and training pedagogies to describe studies that use methods and insights of several established disciplines or traditional fields of study. Interdisciplinarity involves researchers, students, and teachers in the goals of connecting and integrating several academic schools of thought, professions, or technologies—along with their specific perspectives—in

1896-569: Is the School of Liberal Arts at Christian Heritage College located in Brisbane. It offers a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts in which students can choose to major in Philosophy, Theology, History or Literature. A new School of Liberal Arts has been formed in the University of Wollongong ; the new Arts course entitled 'Western Civilisation' was first offered in 2020. The interdisciplinary curriculum focuses on

1975-612: Is usually much lower at liberal arts colleges than at universities, and faculty at liberal arts colleges typically focus on teaching more than research. From a student perspective, a liberal arts college typically differs from other forms of higher education in the following areas: higher overall student satisfaction, a general feeling that professors take a personal interest in the student's education, and perception of encouragement to participate in discussion. Many students select liberal arts colleges with precisely this sense of personal connection in mind. From an administrative standpoint,

2054-862: The Ernesto de la Cárcova Museum . From 1983 to 2013 the institute was part of the IUNA National University Institute for the Arts, and since 2014, the Ruanova Institute of Performing Arts and Higher Education, named after Maria Ruanova , became part of the UNA Universidad Nacional de las Artes , (UNA) National University of the Arts With the exception of pioneering institutions such as Franklin University Switzerland , established as

2133-634: The Faculty of Humanities, Charles University , a part of Charles University started providing liberal arts education in 1994 as the Institute for Liberal Education and gained full academic autonomy in 2000. Although liberal arts colleges as such remain rare, liberal arts degree programs are beginning to establish themselves in Europe. For example, University College Dublin offers the degree, as does St. Marys University College Belfast , both institutions coincidentally on

2212-475: The Global Liberal Arts Alliance , an international consortium and "matching service" to help liberal arts colleges in different countries deal with their shared problems. Keep in mind, U.S. News & World Report no longer provides rankings for liberal arts colleges at "global" universities. These colleges are members of the top 2,000 universities U.S. News & World Report ranks around

2291-858: The Leuphana University of Lüneburg with their Bachelor program Studium Individuale and the University College Freiburg in Germany. Bard College Berlin was founded in Berlin in 1999 as the European College of Liberal Arts, and in 2009 it introduced a 4-year Bachelor of Arts program in Value Studies taught in English and leading to an interdisciplinary degree in the humanities. In the Czech Republic,

2370-543: The Social Science Journal attempts to provide a simple, common-sense, definition of interdisciplinarity, bypassing the difficulties of defining that concept and obviating the need for such related concepts as transdisciplinarity , pluridisciplinarity, and multidisciplinary: To begin with, a discipline can be conveniently defined as any comparatively self-contained and isolated domain of human experience which possesses its own community of experts. Interdisciplinarity

2449-891: The University of California campuses in Santa Cruz and San Diego , developed a cluster colleges model in which small liberal-arts-college-like units within a larger university form a "honeycomb of residential colleges ". In addition, some universities have maintained a sub-unit that preserves many aspects of the liberal arts college, such as Columbia College within Columbia University. Liberal arts colleges themselves sometimes cluster to offer greater curricular breadth or share other resources (for instance Colgate University and Hamilton College in New York allow cross enrollment). In academia, liberal arts generally refer to subjects or skills that aim to provide general knowledge and comprise

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2528-514: The University of King's College . The leading organization is the National Institute of Educators of Liberal Arts and Artistic Education "Instituto Nacional Superior del Profesorado en Artes" located in Buenos Aires , Argentina, initially created in 1923 by Ernesto de la Cárcova , under the name "Escuela Nacional Superior de Bellas Artes", the original school of Liberal Arts building became

2607-425: The 19th century; some 212 small liberal arts colleges were established between 1850 and 1899. As of 1987, there were about 540 liberal arts colleges in the United States. The oldest liberal arts college in America is considered to be Washington College , the first college chartered after American independence. Other prominent examples in the United States include the so-called Little Ivy colleges in New England ,

2686-634: The Association for Interdisciplinary Studies (founded in 1979), two international organizations, the International Network of Inter- and Transdisciplinarity (founded in 2010) and the Philosophy of/as Interdisciplinarity Network (founded in 2009). The US's research institute devoted to the theory and practice of interdisciplinarity, the Center for the Study of Interdisciplinarity at the University of North Texas,

2765-791: The Boyer Commission to Carnegie's President Vartan Gregorian to Alan I. Leshner , CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science have advocated for interdisciplinary rather than disciplinary approaches to problem-solving in the 21st century. This has been echoed by federal funding agencies, particularly the National Institutes of Health under the direction of Elias Zerhouni , who has advocated that grant proposals be framed more as interdisciplinary collaborative projects than single-researcher, single-discipline ones. At

2844-452: The Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at Appalachian State University , and George Mason University 's New Century College , have been cut back. Stuart Henry has seen this trend as part of the hegemony of the disciplines in their attempt to recolonize the experimental knowledge production of otherwise marginalized fields of inquiry. This is due to threat perceptions seemingly based on

2923-606: The Greek instinct was the opposite, to take the widest view, to see things as an organic whole [...]. The Olympic games were designed to test the arete of the whole man, not a merely specialized skill [...]. The great event was the pentathlon , if you won this, you were a man. Needless to say, the Marathon race was never heard of until modern times: the Greeks would have regarded it as a monstrosity." "Previously, men could be divided simply into

3002-585: The Humanities also launched a new liberal education programme. The four-year bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences at University College Freiburg is the first of its kind in Germany. It started in October 2012 with 78 students. The first Liberal Arts degree program in Sweden was established at Gothenburg University in 2011, followed by a Liberal Arts Bachelor Programme at Uppsala University 's Campus Gotland in

3081-503: The KC Board of Trustees. It offers the same kind of education provided by UP to qualified students who are unable to enter the country's premier state university because of its limited college quotas. The curriculum and grading system is patterned after the academic programs and the grade structure offered by the University of the Philippines and is composed of administrators and faculty members who graduated from UP, and/or are also members of

3160-544: The UP academic community. Sogang University was founded as South Korea 's first liberal arts college. In 1960, Jesuits founded Sogang College. Although, it became Sogang University in 1970, it is still following model of American liberal arts college in many aspects. Seoul National University in South Korea established the College of Liberal Studies in 2007, initially as an educational project. However, after being established as

3239-478: The adaptability needed in an increasingly interconnected world. For example, the subject of land use may appear differently when examined by different disciplines, for instance, biology , chemistry , economics , geography , and politics . Although "interdisciplinary" and "interdisciplinarity" are frequently viewed as twentieth century terms, the concept has historical antecedents, most notably Greek philosophy . Julie Thompson Klein attests that "the roots of

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3318-500: The ambition is simply unrealistic, given the knowledge and intellectual maturity of all but the exceptional undergraduate; some defenders concede the difficulty, but insist that cultivating interdisciplinarity as a habit of mind, even at that level, is both possible and essential to the education of informed and engaged citizens and leaders capable of analyzing, evaluating, and synthesizing information from multiple sources in order to render reasoned decisions. While much has been written on

3397-465: The arts, humanities, general sciences, and social sciences (rather than professional or technical skills). Most liberal arts colleges, however, also offer courses in subjects that are not traditionally considered part of the liberal arts, such as computer science. Liberal arts colleges are found in all parts of the world. Notwithstanding the European origins of the concept of liberal arts education, today

3476-408: The ascendancy of interdisciplinary studies against traditional academia. There are many examples of when a particular idea, almost in the same period, arises in different disciplines. One case is the shift from the approach of focusing on "specialized segments of attention" (adopting one particular perspective), to the idea of "instant sensory awareness of the whole", an attention to the "total field",

3555-613: The autumn of 2013. Liberal arts colleges in Italy include John Cabot University and The American University of Rome in Rome. The University College of North Staffordshire, founded in 1950 in the United Kingdom, was frequently referred to as the "Keele Experiment" because of its innovative curriculum and emphasis on a scholarly community resident together on campus. The college became Keele University in 1962 and continues to reflect many features of

3634-558: The broader dimensions of a problem and lower rigor in theoretical and qualitative argumentation. An interdisciplinary program may not succeed if its members remain stuck in their disciplines (and in disciplinary attitudes). Those who lack experience in interdisciplinary collaborations may also not fully appreciate the intellectual contribution of colleagues from those disciplines. From the disciplinary perspective, however, much interdisciplinary work may be seen as "soft", lacking in rigor, or ideologically motivated; these beliefs place barriers in

3713-479: The career paths of those who choose interdisciplinary work. For example, interdisciplinary grant applications are often refereed by peer reviewers drawn from established disciplines ; interdisciplinary researchers may experience difficulty getting funding for their research. In addition, untenured researchers know that, when they seek promotion and tenure , it is likely that some of the evaluators will lack commitment to interdisciplinarity. They may fear that making

3792-543: The championship of the Little Three, which includes Wesleyan and Amherst . . ." Little Three championships are contested in 24 sports throughout the academic year. They first joined as the Triangular League athletic conference in 1899, which lasted only three years before breaking up over an argument concerning the eligibility of college baseball players who received pay during summer league play. In 1910, they formed what

3871-532: The classic intellectual and artistic literature of the Western tradition . Courses in the liberal arts have also been developed at the University of Sydney and University of Notre Dame . Interdisciplinary Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics, etc. It

3950-578: The concepts lie in a number of ideas that resonate through modern discourse—the ideas of a unified science, general knowledge, synthesis and the integration of knowledge", while Giles Gunn says that Greek historians and dramatists took elements from other realms of knowledge (such as medicine or philosophy ) to further understand their own material. The building of Roman roads required men who understood surveying , material science , logistics and several other disciplines. Any broadminded humanist project involves interdisciplinarity, and history shows

4029-506: The desire to confront problems on the continent". Campion College is a Roman Catholic dedicated liberal arts college located in the western suburbs of Sydney. Founded in 2006, it is the first tertiary educational liberal arts college of its kind in Australia. Campion offers a Bachelor of Arts in the Liberal Arts as its sole undergraduate degree. The key disciplines studied are history, literature, philosophy and theology. The Millis Institute

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4108-404: The disciplines, it becomes difficult to account for a given scholar or teacher's salary and time. During periods of budgetary contraction, the natural tendency to serve the primary constituency (i.e., students majoring in the traditional discipline) makes resources scarce for teaching and research comparatively far from the center of the discipline as traditionally understood. For these same reasons,

4187-423: The future of knowledge in post-industrial society . Researchers at the Center for the Study of Interdisciplinarity have made the distinction between philosophy 'of' and 'as' interdisciplinarity, the former identifying a new, discrete area within philosophy that raises epistemological and metaphysical questions about the status of interdisciplinary thinking, with the latter pointing toward a philosophical practice that

4266-571: The history of lack of respect for civil and political rights in the state of Singapore". In response, many existing faculty and students have noted that there has been little repression of freedom of expression at the college and that it provides a great opportunity to promote the liberal arts in Asia. In August 2021, NUS announced the closure of Yale-NUS College, with the Class of 2025 being the last cohort to receive an NUS degree. It will be replaced by NUS College,

4345-404: The introduction of new interdisciplinary programs is often resisted because it is perceived as a competition for diminishing funds. Due to these and other barriers, interdisciplinary research areas are strongly motivated to become disciplines themselves. If they succeed, they can establish their own research funding programs and make their own tenure and promotion decisions. In so doing, they lower

4424-566: The island of Ireland. In 2010 the University of Winchester introduced its Modern Liberal Arts undergraduate program, the first of its kind in the UK. In 2012, University College London began its interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences BASc degree (which has kinship with the liberal arts model) with 80 students. King's College London launched the BA Liberal Arts, which has a slant towards arts, humanities and social sciences subjects. The New College of

4503-747: The late 1990s. This trend was spearheaded by Dutch sociologist Hans Adriaansens , who was "frustrated with the large-scale climate of university education in the Netherlands". Dutch university colleges of this kind include Leiden University College The Hague , University College Utrecht , University College Maastricht , Amsterdam University College , University College Roosevelt , Erasmus University College , University College Groningen and University College Tilburg . Other liberal arts colleges in continental Europe include The American University of Paris , Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts in Slovakia, Jacobs University Bremen , Bard College Berlin ,

4582-410: The learned and the ignorant, those more or less the one, and those more or less the other. But your specialist cannot be brought in under either of these two categories. He is not learned, for he is formally ignorant of all that does not enter into his specialty; but neither is he ignorant, because he is 'a scientist,' and 'knows' very well his own tiny portion of the universe. We shall have to say that he

4661-585: The liberal arts college education system. International Christian University in Tokyo , which opened in 1953, defines itself as "Japan's first liberal arts college". Other Japanese liberal arts programs include the other four members of the Global Five which includes School of International Liberal Studies at Waseda University , Akita International University , Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University and Sophia University 's Faculty of Liberal Arts. Yale-NUS College

4740-529: The liberal arts college model. It has been described as the closest example of a liberal arts college in the UK. This distinctiveness was reinforced with the opening of the new Keele Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences in 2016. In September 2016 Chavagnes Studium , a Liberal Arts centre in France, began offering a 2-year intensive BA in the Liberal Arts with a Catholic perspective. Lingnan University in Hong Kong

4819-420: The liberal arts fields of study". Other researchers have adopted similar definitions. Although many liberal arts colleges are exclusively undergraduate, some also offer graduate programs that lead to a master's degree or doctoral degree in subjects such as English , general biology , fine arts , and law . Similarly, the term "liberal arts college" most commonly refers to an independent institution with

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4898-488: The past two decades can be divided into "professional", "organizational", and "cultural" obstacles. An initial distinction should be made between interdisciplinary studies, which can be found spread across the academy today, and the study of interdisciplinarity, which involves a much smaller group of researchers. The former is instantiated in thousands of research centers across the US and the world. The latter has one US organization,

4977-687: The perspectives of two or more fields. The adjective interdisciplinary is most often used in educational circles when researchers from two or more disciplines pool their approaches and modify them so that they are better suited to the problem at hand, including the case of the team-taught course where students are required to understand a given subject in terms of multiple traditional disciplines. Interdisciplinary education fosters cognitive flexibility and prepares students to tackle complex, real-world problems by integrating knowledge from multiple fields. This approach emphasizes active learning, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills, equipping students with

5056-486: The philosophy and promise of interdisciplinarity in academic programs and professional practice, social scientists are increasingly interrogating academic discourses on interdisciplinarity, as well as how interdisciplinarity actually works—and does not—in practice. Some have shown, for example, that some interdisciplinary enterprises that aim to serve society can produce deleterious outcomes for which no one can be held to account. Since 1998, there has been an ascendancy in

5135-490: The pursuit of a common task. The epidemiology of HIV/AIDS or global warming requires understanding of diverse disciplines to solve complex problems. Interdisciplinary may be applied where the subject is felt to have been neglected or even misrepresented in the traditional disciplinary structure of research institutions, for example, women's studies or ethnic area studies. Interdisciplinarity can likewise be applied to complex subjects that can only be understood by combining

5214-417: The radically interdisciplinary curriculum of Marlboro . In addition, most liberal arts colleges are primarily residential, which means students live and learn away from home, often for the first time. The distinctiveness of these attributes is somewhat eroded by the tendency of universities to adopt aspects of the liberal arts college, and vice versa. For example, several American universities, including

5293-678: The risk of entry. Examples of former interdisciplinary research areas that have become disciplines, many of them named for their parent disciplines, include neuroscience , cybernetics , biochemistry and biomedical engineering . These new fields are occasionally referred to as "interdisciplines". On the other hand, even though interdisciplinary activities are now a focus of attention for institutions promoting learning and teaching, as well as organizational and social entities concerned with education, they are practically facing complex barriers, serious challenges and criticism. The most important obstacles and challenges faced by interdisciplinary activities in

5372-422: The same time, many thriving longstanding bachelor's in interdisciplinary studies programs in existence for 30 or more years, have been closed down, in spite of healthy enrollment. Examples include Arizona International (formerly part of the University of Arizona ), the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at Miami University , and the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at Wayne State University ; others such as

5451-461: The small size of liberal arts colleges contributes to their cohesion and ability to survive through difficult times. Job satisfaction is also typically higher in liberal arts colleges, for both faculty and staff. The smaller size also makes it feasible for liberal arts colleges to adopt relatively experimental or divergent approaches, such as the Great Books curriculum at St. John's or Shimer , or

5530-652: The social analysis of technology throughout most of the twentieth century. As a result, many social scientists with interests in technology have joined science, technology and society programs, which are typically staffed by scholars drawn from numerous disciplines. They may also arise from new research developments, such as nanotechnology , which cannot be addressed without combining the approaches of two or more disciplines. Examples include quantum information processing , an amalgamation of quantum physics and computer science , and bioinformatics , combining molecular biology with computer science. Sustainable development as

5609-705: The surviving predominantly female Seven Sisters colleges along the northeastern seaboard, the Claremont Colleges in Southern California , and the Ohio Five , but similar institutions are found all over the country. The Maple League in Canada is a consortium of four universities – Acadia , Bishop's , Mount Allison and St. Francis Xavier – who together form an alliance of small, rural, undergraduate liberal arts education institutions with Francophone heritage and

5688-404: The term is largely associated with the United States, and most self-identified liberal arts colleges worldwide are built on the American model. The Global Liberal Arts Alliance, which incorporates institutions on five continents, refers to itself as "an international, multilateral partnership of American style liberal arts institutions". In 2009, liberal arts colleges from around the world formed

5767-439: The traditional discipline makes the tenure decisions, new interdisciplinary faculty will be hesitant to commit themselves fully to interdisciplinary work. Other barriers include the generally disciplinary orientation of most scholarly journals, leading to the perception, if not the fact, that interdisciplinary research is hard to publish. In addition, since traditional budgetary practices at most universities channel resources through

5846-471: The value of interdisciplinary research and teaching and a growth in the number of bachelor's degrees awarded at U.S. universities classified as multi- or interdisciplinary studies. The number of interdisciplinary bachelor's degrees awarded annually rose from 7,000 in 1973 to 30,000 a year by 2005 according to data from the National Center of Educational Statistics (NECS). In addition, educational leaders from

5925-426: The world. The liberal arts college model took root in the United States in the 19th century, as institutions spread that followed the model of early schools like Harvard , Yale , and Dartmouth , although none of these early American schools are regarded as liberal arts colleges today. These colleges served as a means of spreading a basically European cultural model across the new country. The model proliferated in

6004-564: Was established as a liberal arts college in the early 20th century, although it subsequently became a full-fledged university . Ginling College in Nanjing similarly followed the model of an American liberal arts college from its founding in 1915 until forced to conform with the Nationalist educational system in the 1930s. In Zhuhai City, Hong Kong Baptist University and Beijing Normal University opened United International College , which adopted

6083-484: Was founded in 2008 but is closed as of 1 September 2014, the result of administrative decisions at the University of North Texas. An interdisciplinary study is an academic program or process seeking to synthesize broad perspectives , knowledge, skills, interconnections, and epistemology in an educational setting. Interdisciplinary programs may be founded in order to facilitate the study of subjects which have some coherence, but which cannot be adequately understood from

6162-483: Was started in 2011 as Singapore 's first liberal arts college as a collaboration between Yale University in the United States and the National University of Singapore . It attracted controversy over concerns that Yale was compromising on its liberal values by opening a college in a country where there are strong curbs on freedom of speech and assembly, with Yale faculty members expressing their "concern regarding

6241-791: Was used by the three colleges in an allusion to the Big Three , coined in the 1880s to describe the three big universities— Harvard , Princeton , and Yale —which dominated football in the Ivy League . Today, the term is used to define Amherst, Wesleyan and Williams as the three prestigious, academically elite original " Little Ivies ", crosscutting the Ivy League universities. The earliest known reference appeared in John Hallahan's Football in New England Colleges in 1923: "Williams College again won

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