Interdisciplinarity & Collaboration
Becky Noel
Spring 2022
Can it be possible that my first post-CPLC outcome is that I crave an app?
I participated in all three years of the CPLC, attending (I am pretty sure) all required sessions since August 2019 and plenty of non-required workshops as well. Last year, I took part in the Design Forward Pilot group that started in the summer. I eagerly attended Jan Jam this year, ably led for our AU by Kristin Stelmok and Abby Goode, and contributed to the slide deck.
As I prepared to write this reflection, I clicked slowly, twice, through the 53-slide presentation we built collectively about cluster pedagogy in our AUs and among staff.
In its wonky way, it’s a thrilling document. AU after AU, faculty cluster pedagogy activities are bursting like popcorn all over PSU and beyond. It’s like a virtual bulletin board.
I agree with the Nursing faculty: we need a “virtual share place” to find out what everyone is doing in time to make even more connections. This slide deck amounts to such a space, but it’s a snapshot. Not for the first time, I wish there were a centrally located faculty/staff lounge, dedicated times when people could cross paths, and a good old-fashioned bulletin board. In terms of digital communications, we do have achievement documents like those in the Provost’s Report and spotlight articles, but those news items mostly consist of work already completed.
I’d say we could use classified ads for new collaborations, like Craigslist or some internal social media. My best recent collaborations have come almost without looking for them: a project with Nicole Jaskiewicz last year and an extension of it with Suzanne Gaulocher this year. Nicole and I had assigned the same book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, her for Biochemistry I and me for Health and Illness in American History. Steve Rheaume of the bookstore noticed the matching order and Alice Pearman elevated it by reserving the book at Lamson for both classes. This year, since Nicole had left, I happened to be in a meeting with Suzanne Gaulocher and mentioned that I wanted a new collaboration. Perfect timing, because Suzanne hadn’t finalized her syllabus for her senior seminar in Public Health, and even better luck, our classes met at the same time. We’ve had great help from Martha Burtis, Ted Wisniewski, and Erika Rydberg-Hall, as well as a few CoLab Student Affiliates. We’ve continued the Pressbook I started with Nicole last year, a Reader’s Guide to Immortal Life, and some of our students also collaborated on historical maps using ArcGIS, which Suzanne’s students already knew how to use.
I’ve really enjoyed those two collaborations have been wonderful. My upper-level history course has no prerequisites; students in my course have been sophomores through seniors from more than a dozen majors. Students in Nicole’s course were mostly sophomores and came from a few science-oriented majors, and in Suzanne’s they were seniors in Public Health. T