Heather Pon-Barry says it usually takes 10 minutes to explain her major—symbolic systems—to friends. And when her parents ask what she’s studying? “Even longer.”
Ezra Callahan has been working on a shorthand description, too. “Basically, sym sys shows you how subjects that seem like polar opposites—computer science, psychology, linguistics and philosophy—relate to each other,” he says. “Instead of seeing 100 steps between Plato and computers, you find bridges that make the distance only about two steps. And the formal theories you learn about philosophy and logic really trip you out.”
Pon-Barry and Callahan, both ’03, are among the more than 140 students who have made sym sys one of the hottest of Stanford’s 18 interdisciplinary programs (IDPs) that grant degrees to undergraduates.
Talk to a major in American studies—which includes courses in history, literature and the social sciences, and sometimes art, drama and religious studies—and you hear the same enthusiasm. “I feel like I have a good appreciation for many of the complex problems facing American society that I might later chronicle professionally [as a journalist],” Ramona Shelburne, ’00, wrote for the program’s self-study last spring. “American studies helped me think about inequalities in society,” added Theresa Hwang, ’98.
Interdisciplinary programs are supposed to provide students with a unique course of study they cannot pursue in a traditional department. They’re popular with undergraduates, 25 percent of whom choose one as a major. Some are big (human biology, with 313 majors); some are small (Native American studies and Asian-American studies, each with three). Some are self-explanatory (feminist studies); some are not (science, technology and society—a combination of “ethical, aesthetic, historical, economic and sociological perspectives,” according to the Stanford Bulletin). And they have been a hot button for Faculty Senate discussions this year, as seven of the programs have come up for reauthorization.
The problem, say critics, is that these programs thrive and shrivel according to the level of faculty commitment. They cannot hire faculty, so they must attract more than 1,000 professors each year from departments to teach courses and serve as directors. Also, some faculty say undergraduates should be educated in departments, not programs. “I tend to feel that students are better served intellectually by having to learn techniques and analysis that are associated with a particular discipline,” says history professor Jack Rakove, who teaches many American studies students in his courses. “In IDPs, students are sampling from more disciplines, but arguably mastering fewer, or perhaps none.”
Stanford’s interdisciplinary programs enjoy varying degrees of success. On the one hand, there are programs like symbolic systems, which has high faculty involvement and consistently enrolls about 150 majors who study the nature of intelligence and human-computer interaction. Symbolic systems was born out of a collaboration among philosophers, linguists, psychologists and computer scientists working at the Center for the Study of Language and Information. Linguist Tom Wasow, who chairs sym sys, was associate director of the center in 1985, when philosopher John Perry was director. “One day John said to me, ‘You know, it would be really neat to have an undergraduate program that reflected the research interests of what we’re doing here and brought some students over here.’” The result has been so successful that a master’s degree program will be implemented this fall.
On the other hand, there are programs like American studies, which was viewed with skepticism when it came up for reauthorization last spring. Russell Berman, associate dean for undergraduate studies in the School of Humanities and Sciences, told the Faculty Senate that the program lacked intellectual focus and a progressive curriculum sequence, and that participation by tenured faculty was “growing thin.” (History professor Barton Bernstein, then director of American studies, disputed these contentions.) Senators voted for a three-year reauthorization rather than the five years recommended by the committee on undergraduate studies—and called for a committee of leading Americanist scholars to look at the perceived weaknesses of the program and propose steps for revitalizing it.
American studies is a historically popular program that graduates about 35 students per year (more than the average of small departments like classics, with eight, or music, with 12). Dick Gillam, one of the coordinators of the program and a senior lecturer who has taught American studies for 16 years, argues that “looking at the difficult enterprise that is America can’t be done within disciplines.” Instead, says Gillam, ’65, PhD ’72, faculty from a number of departments collaborate in examining the “elusive issue of what we have in common as a people and how we differ, over time.”
Shuttering the program would be an unusual step—in fact, a report issued last year by an ad hoc advisory committee on interdepartmental programs suggested that administrators are hesitant to eliminate those that don’t measure up. But Berman says deans are determined to take a hard look at programs’ academic vitality. “The issue is really intellectual dynamism,” he says. “I think IDPs should remain part of the landscape, but that doesn’t mean we will always have the same list. Some may grow old, and we should be able to end them as new ideas come on the horizon.”
The committee that will consider whether American studies has grown old is chaired by economist Roger Noll, who also will serve as the program’s director this year. Noll, a longtime director of the public policy program, is an admitted fan of interdisciplinary programs. American studies “is not a program that lacks faculty support,” he says. “But it offers flexibility for students to take almost anything, and that is seen as a red flag by faculty who think it lacks structure and coherence.” History professor David Kennedy, ’63, says the committee is thinking of developing two tracks—a “social sciences” track that would “embrace the notion of some kind of national culture” by focusing on American law and institutions, and an “identities” track that would examine topics such as race, ethnicity and gender within American society, which Kennedy calls “a bundle of subjects that is viable in its own right as a concentration.”
Noll adds that seven or eight friends of his, in several different departments, joined the faculty because they would have an opportunity to teach in interdisciplinary programs. “There has always been at Stanford an attitude of intellectual playfulness and entrepreneurship,” he says. “And that’s a good thing.”
Many Are Called
One-fourth of Stanford’s undergraduates major in interdisciplinary programs. A breakdown:
Program Majors
Human biology: 313
International relations: 221
Symbolic systems: 143
American studies: 91
Urban studies: 69
Public policy: 62
Science, technology and society: 50
Comparative studies in race and ethnicity: 44
Feminist studies: 27
African and African-American studies: 24
Humanities: 23
Individually designed major: 17
East Asian studies: 13
Latin American studies: 10
Chicano studies: 6
Asian-American studies: 3
Native American studies: 3
Archaeology: Coming soon
