Memo from Sara Coulter to Kenneth Shaw, 1973

TOWSON STATE COLLEGE Baltimore, Maryland 21204 1/31/73 TO: Dean Shaw FROM: Sara Coulter SUBJECT: Interdisciplinary Courses Dear Dean Shaw: For several years faculty have been encouraged to initiate interdisciplinary courses but have not been provided with a reasonable and positive means of staffing such courses. The present and future development of interdisciplinary work depends on finding a way to permit faculty to develop interdisciplinary courses without assuming an extra burden in contact hours or imposing a hardship on their departments. In an effort to gather information on how other schools are staffing such courses, we have sent about fifty letters to faculty and administrators involved in teaching interdisciplinary courses elsewhere, asking for information on their staffing procedures. It will probably be a month or two before we receive many answers. In the meantime and in lieu of a better idea, I would like to suggest that a pool of hours and a reasonable sum of money be set aside for work in General Studies. The money would be used by the departments to hire part-time replacement faculty for those involved in interdisciplinary courses in a particular semester; the hours could be allocated on a reasonable basis determined by a General studies Committee or similar body. Such a pool would provide two methods of freeing faculty for interdisciplinary work and is flexible enough to respond to the varying circumstances in individual departments. Let me explain that I see interdisciplinary courses as requirine a genuine integration of the disciplines and full time participation of the instructors involved, not the drop-in drop-out lecture procedure that is sometimes used. It seems reasonable to me to expect the instructors, rather than the students, to assume the major responsibility for integrating the individual disciplines. This would require