CGS: IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning
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Impact: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning is a peer-reviewed, biannual online journal that publishes scholarly and creative non-fiction essays about the theory, practice and assessment of interdisciplinary education. Impact is produced by the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning at the College of General Studies, Boston University (www.bu.edu/cgs/citl).
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Item IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 14, Issue 1, Winter 2025(Boston University College of General Studies, 2025) Chiteji, Ngina; Williamson Fletcher, Jeanine; Kassel, Ruth; Dennis, Krysta; Flatland, Robin; Foster, Scott Nelson; Ouellette, Cathy Marie; Anderson, Stacey Stanfield; Castillo, Heather; Patsch, Kiki; Dougal, Theresa A.; Ross, Robert; Scheunemann, AnnIn the fall of 2023, as the incoming Impact editor-in-chief, I held listening sessions with the members of Impact’s editorial board, several of whom had been serving since the journal’s launch in 2012. I heard pride and belief: pride in the many outstanding articles, interviews, and book reviews that have found a home at Impact; belief in Impact’s mission to investigate the role of interdisciplinary teaching, learning, and scholarship to address complex challenges such as climate change, the rise of AI, global threats to democracy, pandemics, and more. In the context of an increasing number of online journals, we made the decision to update our publishing platform and to recommit to our mission.Item IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 13, Issue 1, Winter 2024(Boston University College of General Studies, 2024) Fleming, Lindsay; Levitin, Daniel; Morgner, Christian; Quigley, Nicholas P.; Smith, Tawnya D.; Huang, Hao; Grumbling, MeganWelcome to the Winter 2024 issue of Impact: The Journal of the Center of Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning. The following essays explore interdisciplinary connections that link musical ideas and experiences to the environments that humans and non-human species inhabit. Readers will quickly note the range of approaches adopted in these essays, including insights from teacher training programs, psychology, critical theory, and the performing arts. Despite the differences, each essay is informed by an underlying assumption that musical engagement can help us make better sense of our current moment of ecological crisis.Item IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 12, Issue 1, Summer 2023(Boston University College of General Studies, 2023) Mroz, Michael D.; Scarborough, Vernon L.; Scheunemann, Ann; Smith, C. Mike; Tulloch, Scott; Weiner, CherylThe essays in this issue explore how to enhance teaching and student learning in the classroom. Our first contributor argues that providing students the opportunity to write questions about course material is a fruitful way to address students’ reticence about asking questions during class and also may result in students performing better on testable material. Moreover, instructors benefit from having students’ questions because the written questions can also be used by the instructor to know better what students are and are not understanding about course material and alerts instructors to where they can further explain or clarify course material. Finally, our first contributor also suggests that students in interdisciplinary classrooms might especially benefit from writing their questions, while instructors of interdisciplinary courses may find the flexibility with using technology to address the written questions in “real time” via the use of technology especially beneficial. In our second contribution, the author argues that pre-service teachers’ educational curriculum should address the academic literature that links poor musical-rhythmic tendencies with reading struggles for reading learners. The author also argues that the rhythm-reading connection is applicable to interdisciplinary educators because it asks those educators to reflect on possible connections between the body and the acquisition of skills that are usually considered purely intellectual. Our Impact book reviewers cover a varied set of interesting and important topics in this issue. One reviewer informs readers about a handbook on community psychology that prioritizes applied and interdisciplinary work; another reviewer details an author’s synthesis of what contemporary archaeology has now come to understand about Maya civilization’s resilient and complex society through time and within their varied mosaic of managed environments; a different reviewer delves into an author’s exploration of how digital media platforms generate novel opportunities for sufferers of trauma to make sense of their experience, and our final reviewer details an author’s accounting of the history, origins, and evolution of the Camp Fire Girls, one of America’s longest-serving girls’ youth movements, its impact on girls’ lives, and how the organization adapted to and resisted dominant ideologies about girls, culture, and race across time.Item IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 11, Issue 2, Summer 2022(Boston University College of General Studies, 2022) Bickford, Crystal; Chiteji, Ngina; Hughes, Jeanne M.; Mackey, John W.; Oliveira, Justina M.; Schweitzer, Marlis; Turner, Rob; Williamson, JeanineThe essays in this issue explore interdisciplinarity in the classroom and/or education. Our first contributor argues that making the economics curriculum more interdisciplinary corrects some common American misconceptions about Africa and encourages students to develop a richer understanding of both economics and Africa, while also teaching students that Africa need not be relegated merely to economic development courses and instead shows how Africa, particularly the Swahili Coast, was both inventive and innovative. In our second contribution, three authors writing together explore the power of storytelling in interdisciplinary learning communities, or cohorts of first-semester students enrolled in general-education classes that connect through a common theme. The authors detail how they developed their learning community around storytelling, while also arguing that interdisciplinary learning communities grounded in storytelling are high-impact practices that help students connect to their school community, classes, and to each other and to see their learning as relevant in their lives. Using two classification schemes (Biglan’s disciplinary classification scheme and Holland’s hexagon of occupational interests and personality characteristics) that are relevant for understanding collaborations between disciplines in multidisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary education to analyze disciplinary collaborations in education, our third contributor measured the correlation between the two classification systems to determine the relationship between them. Based on the study, the author argues the two classification schemes and their relationships provide helpful frameworks for understanding disciplinary similarities and differences, while also providing important insights about how members of collaborating disciplines may complement or differ with one another.Item IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 11, Issue 1, Winter 2022(Boston University College of General Studies, 2022-02) Boots, Cheryl C.; Dunlavy, Jean; Dutta, Suchismita; Goldman, Sasha B.; Opdycke, Kelly; Uy, Phitsamay S.; O’Brien Hallstein, LynnThis special issue of the journal is devoted to creating antiracist classrooms through interdisciplinary teaching, learning, curriculum, and leadership. The essays in this special issue explore a variety of issues related to doing the work—both personally and in the curriculum—of creating antiracist classrooms and universities. Indeed, the first essay of this special issue details the author’s thinking about and experiences with constructing a 21- day programmatic approach that offered structured learning along with accountability measures for graduate students, staff, and faculty at Boston University who were interested in unlearning racism and learning antiracism. After cautioning readers that antiracist efforts run the risk of being molded by neoliberal racist academia, the second essay explores how contingent faculty might be impacted in unique ways compared to their more secure counterparts when those faculty teach antiracist curriculum without institutional support to do this work. In light of the fact that Critical Race Theory (CRT) has been publicly debated and even banned in some places in the American education system, the third essay argues that successfully curating and teaching an antiracist curriculum cannot be done without properly understanding the value of CRT in teacher education. It also offers an example assignment for an antiracist composition and rhetoric curriculum as well as the author’s experience participating in an antiracist reading group for faculty at her university. The fourth and final essay explores intersectionality in both a case study of and interview with Dr. Carmen Twillie Ambar, an African-American woman who has successfully advanced through successive layers of academic positions in public and private institutions to become the president at two different American liberal arts colleges. Detailing Dr. Ambar’s emphasis on personal integrity and concern about historically disadvantaged student groups, it also explores her philosophy and varied experiences as a woman leader in academia. Additionally, this essay details the five foci of Dr. Ambar’s Presidential Initiative at Oberlin, which offer a heuristic model for other organizations doing antiracist work at universities. Our Impact book reviews explore texts that address antiracist classroom strategies. Both reviewers examine books initially written for K-12 educators, but show how these books can serve all educators in their classrooms, including university educators. Our first reviewer details an author’s practical guide to class discussions about race that also offers guidance for more effective classroom experiences. Our second reviewer explores an author’s call to decenter whiteness in schools both by helping their teacher candidates understand their racism and oppression as part of their teacher development training and by offering concrete strategies to disrupt the focus on whiteness in curriculum and curricular decisions. By offering these two windows into anti-racist curricula and practices for younger learners, we suggest that post-secondary educators also can deepen their understanding of some incoming students’ experiences and expectations regarding antiracism in their classrooms.Item IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 10, Issue 2, Summer 2021(Boston University College of General Studies, 2021-08) Henebry, Charles W.; Baublitz, Millard; Miller, Abby; Pheng, Alexis C.; Wessner, David R.; DeTora, Lisa; Sobel, Sabrina; Kassel, Ruth; Dennis, Krysta; Flatland, Robin; Foster, Scott; Schrock, John Richard; Genovese, SalThe theme of this issue is interdisciplinary approaches to, or including, the sciences. STEM disciplines like chemistry, biology, physics, computer science, and math are often taught as separate and distinct from the humanities. The concept of STEAM (STEM + Arts) has attempted to make STEM subjects more interdisciplinary, allowing students to interact with the material from different perspectives. The essays in this issue explore unique ways to design and implement interdisciplinary curricula that combine sciences and humanities/arts.Item IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 10, Issue 1, Winter 2021(Boston University College of General Studies, 2021-02) Ouellette, Cathy Marie; Snyder, Janea; Kanekar, Amar; Williamson, Jeanine M.; Panigabutra-Roberts, Anchalee; Underwood, Thomas A.; Fuentes-Rabe, Lorena; Driscoll, Laura C.; Deese, R.S.; O’Brien Hallstein, LynnIn this issue, a central question explored is, what kinds of programs and approaches can enhance interdisciplinary teaching and student learning? The essays in this issue explore this question in distinct and insightful ways. Grounded in her own experiences developing and running a Latin American and Caribbean Studies minor, one contributor argues that the minor enhances students’ interdisciplinary learning by exposing students to ethnic and racial difference, enriches student understanding of the depth and breadth of geo-cultural diversity, and prepares students to engage and work in multicultural settings. Writing together, two health educators highlight how various applications of service-learning pedagogy, such as traditional vs. online classroom approaches to service learning, application of service-learning strategies in the context of health education and health promotion, via internship courses and funded service projects, and the role of service-learning in enhancing core areas of responsibilities for certified health education specialists (CHES), can be a powerful interdisciplinary teaching and learning tool in health education. Finally, two faculty from the University of Tennessee interested in the Biglan/Becher taxonomy of disciplines, collaboratively show how the Biglan/Becher taxonomy of disciplines can be used to analyze disciplinary interrelationships in STEAM (STEM + Arts), with the ultimate goal of categorizing ways STEAM approaches can facilitate student learning in higher education. Our Impact book reviewers inform readers about new interdisciplinary and ground-breaking work in the under-researched area of parental incarceration, one author’s suggestions for how to teach undergraduates and still feel good about it, notes from a white professor in terms of teaching about race and racism in the college classroom, and, finally, another author’s arguments about how democracy can handle climate change.Item IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 9, Issue 2, Summer 2020(Boston University College of General Studies, 2020-07) Lamontagne, Kathryn; Anderson, Stacey Stanfield; Castillo, Heather; Patsch, Kiki; Novotny, Kristin; Wright, Katheryn D.; Deese, R.S.; Harrison, Brady; Malvestio, Marco; Sweeting, Adam; Sullivan, Megan; Coffman, ChristopherEvery essay, interview and book review published in Impact is important and special to our readers, the College of General Studies, and the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning. However, it may be that each essay, interview and review in our summer 2020 issue has a special resonance for us because it came to fruition in the midst of Covid-19. In the context of a global pandemic, themes such as democracy, general education, and how we teach history and safeguard the environment become even more meaningful. Not only must we stay safe and hold our loved ones just a little closer to us, but also we must reaffirm our commitment as teachers and scholars.Item IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 9, Issue 1, Winter 2020(Boston University College of General Studies, 2020-02) Flaisher-Grinberg, Shlomit; Roybal, Karen R.; Sullivan, Megan; Hill, Stephen; Beiter, Eileen; Leverone, Cathy; Smale, Maura A.; Engbers, Susanna Kelly; Vail, JeffreyExplicitly established to foreground interdisciplinary teaching and learning, Impact also welcomes evidence and discussion of experiential learning. Often the two – interdisciplinary teaching and experiential learning – co-exist. Yet even when they do not, both practices model how to think in myriad ways and to notice how knowledge is constructed. As our winter 2019 issue makes clear, interdisciplinary teaching and learning and experiential learning often begin with questions. Why does it matter that students grapple directly with archival material? What happens when undergraduates practice psychology by training dogs? Do students understand financial literacy? This issue also asks questions about students’ reading habits and faculty expectations of them as readers.Item IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 8, Issue 2, Summer 2019(Boston University College of General Studies, 2019-06) Baer, Roberta D.; Blair, Janet; Cordner, Sheila; Cruz, Ronald; Flaisher-Grinberg, Shlomit; Girdharry, Kristi; Holbrook, Emily; Iglesias, Charisse S.; Knott, Alex; Leard, Cyndy; Oppenheim, Willy; Ramsey, Melanie; Spector, Barbara S.; Stone, Debbi; Sullivan, Megan; Cordner, SheilaMany of us look for ways to help students forge concrete connections between their academic studies and the real world. Universities encourage professors to develop community-based learning, allowing students to contribute to the community beyond their campus in a way that enhances their academic studies and enables them to create these connections. Scholars have theorized the many benefits of community-based learning, but professors have many questions about how to implement community-based learning in practice. What does a successful community-based learning assignment look like? What are the different ways to assess students’ learning experiences in community-based learning assignments? How can one build effective partnerships with community organizations? In these pages, you will find practical advice, theoretical framework, and firsthand accounts of community-engaged teaching across disciplines. Learn from professors who have designed assignments allowing students to complete community projects with refugees, prisoners, veterans, elementary school children, science museums, nursing homes, public libraries, and ESL populations. Students in an Anthropology course, for instance, conduct oral history interviews with refugees, and provide written transcriptions of the interviews that the refugees can then use as a learning tool in ESL classes. In a Science Methods class, students collaborate with an aquarium to produce meaningful exhibits that educate the public. First-year writing students work with veterans to create autobiographical films and write papers related to the project.Item IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 8, Issue 1, Winter 2019(Boston University College of General Studies, 2019-02) Wakefield, Peter W.; Cage, Stephanie; Coffman, Christopher K.; Stiemsma, Shaun; Wilson, Nicholas C.; Morrissey, Melissa; Jankowski, Harmony; Sullivan, Megan; Coffman, Christopher; Buerger, Sandra; Boots, Cheryl; Lavalli, Kari; Renstrom, Joelle; Stewart, Matthew; Sweeting, Adam; Tyler, Meg; Vandenberg, Kathleen; Worth, AaronIn this issue of Impact you will find a humanities scholar deeply engaged with the arcing out of a new territory: the interdisciplinary study of the Grateful Dead. Impact’s own Christopher Coffman’s review essay should be required reading for scholars of popular music, performance studies and history. His review also serves as an important reference for those who aspire to teach a course on the Grateful Dead, as well as for those who wish to write review essays. In this issue we also hear from those who are engaged in teaching people who are incarcerated. Importantly, Stephanie Cage’s essay looks to incarcerated people themselves to find out what they think about prison education. Peter Wakefield encourages us to see The Great Gatsby anew, in particular in the context of American racism and White supremacy. Wakefield’s essay is important too because it had its genesis in Writing, the State, and the Rise of Neo-Nationalism: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Concerns, a conference sponsored by the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning.Item IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 7, Issue 2, Summer 2018(Boston University College of General Studies, 2018-06) Renstrom, Joelle; Fluker, Walter Earl; Silber, Nina; Piston, Spencer; Boots, Cheryl C.; Farmer, AshleyIn the weeks and months following August 12, 2017, members of the Boston University community struggled — like Americans everywhere — to comprehend the series of troubling, and tragic, events which would come, almost immediately, to be denoted in the national imagination by the metonym “Charlottesville.” This special issue of Impact: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning comprises a series of responses to these events and their aftermath, as well as the conditions which enabled them, by faculty members from across the BU campus.Item IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 7, Issue 1, Winter 2018(Boston University College of General Studies, 2018-02) Boger, Kathryn D.; Donohue, Micah; Doyle, Mary Beth; Bozzone, Donna; Henley, Liz; Cook, Susan E.; Meljac, Eric; Powell, Beth; Sharicz, Carol Ann; Buerger, Sandra; Coffman, Christopher; Hanxhari, Ilda; Holm, Michael; McGrath, John; Redihan, Erin; Renstrom, Joelle; Stewart, Matthew; Sullivan, Megan; Sweeting, Adam; Tyler, Meg; Vandenberg, Kathleen; Wiggins, Kyle; Worth, AaronHow do our students learn what it means to be a human being, with all the attendant responsibilities and joys? How do we learn to teach in a truly interdisciplinary manner? These are some of the questions that preoccupy this issue’s contributors.Item IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 6, Issue 2, Summer 2017(Boston University College of General Studies, 2017-07) Cole, Rick; Kramer, Beth; Holmstrom, Bethany; Gafney, Julie L.; Peterson, Kate; Perderson, Joshua; Mackey, John W.; Buerger, Sandra; Coffman, Christopher; O’Brien Hallstein, Lynn; Redihan, Erin; Renstrom, Joelle; Sullivan, Megan; Vandenberg, Kathleen; Wiggins, KyleIn this issue, podcasts are looked at as a pedagogical game changer. Using the award-wining podcast Serial as their catalyst, this issue's essayists look at podcast's emerging role in higher education, how multimodal learning can help students find their voices, the podcast's place in the curriculum at a criminal justice college, and how podcasts can inspire students to reflectively assess their own writing. Our reviewers take a critical look at the podcasts Welcome to Night Vale and Revisionist History.Item IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 6, Issue 1, Winter 2017(Boston University College of General Studies, 2017)Item IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 5, Issue 2, Summer 2016(Boston University College of General Studies, 2016-08)Item IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 5, Issue 1, Winter 2016(Boston University College of General Studies, 2015-01)Item IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 4, Issue 2, Summer 2015(Boston University College of General Studies, 2015-08)Item IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 4, Issue 1, Winter 2015(Boston University College of General Studies, 2015-01)Item IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 2, Issue 2, Summer 2013(Boston University College of General Studies, 2013-06)