About Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke

Over the last 50 years, interdisciplinarity has become a Duke hallmark. Small enough to be nimble, Duke has sufficient scale to draw on broad faculty expertise across all divisions of knowledge. Today, boundary-crossing research, teaching and engagement animates activity across campus. Hundreds of faculty members conduct interdisciplinary research and incorporate interdisciplinary frameworks into their teaching, and students have many opportunities to pursue interdisciplinary pathways and experiences.

Duke now has more interdisciplinary capacity for research and teaching within its departments and schools than ever before. Cross-school mechanisms of support and coordination include a portfolio of university institutes, initiatives and centers.

Duke’s Distinctiveness

Duke’s approach to interdisciplinarity emphasizes the need to provide scaffolding for effective collaboration, including equitable and sustained partnerships with external entities such as community organizations and policymakers. We also seek to integrate authentic interdisciplinary inquiry into core academic and widely available co-curricular offerings. Learn about the Duke difference:

We go beyond a focus on research.

Duke blends interdisciplinary research with educational opportunities at all levels, often integrating extensive community and policy engagement.

Our university institutes, initiatives and centers incubate new research efforts at the intersection of fields and disciplines; in addition, they develop interdisciplinary master’s and certificate programs, oversee a wide array of co-curricular opportunities, and foster community and policy engagement.

We reach more than 1 in 2 of all students.

Duke’s signature interdisciplinary curricular and co-curricular programs, which emphasize collaborative inquiry and experiential learning, reach more than half of our students, at all levels and in all our schools.

Through signature programs such as Bass Connections, DukeEngage and Summer+ programs, along with courses designed around collaborative projects like Engineering 101, we have achieved comparatively significant scale. We are also embedding these approaches into core features of degree programs.

Undergraduates in the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences can create their own program of study or select an interdepartmental major. In the Pratt School of Engineering, undergraduates can design their own interdisciplinary majors. For graduate students, admitting programs such as Cognitive Neuroscience provide an interdisciplinary educational experience involving multiple departments in the first year.

We facilitate collaboration and community-engaged research.

Duke has invested broadly in resources and training mechanisms for faculty, graduate students and undergraduates to learn about teamwork, project management and the dynamics of effective external partnerships.

Our interdisciplinary units are committed to equitable relationships with their community partners, predicated on co-creation of research agendas and prioritization of activities that align with community-defined needs.

Most Bass Connections teams, for example, work with external partners. And all first-year engineering students begin their curriculum with a project-based design class in which small groups tackle authentic design challenges for project sponsors, many of which are local community organizations.

In addition, we have undertaken a comprehensive review of our research policies and practices to better facilitate community-engaged research. Our new Center for Community Engagement will deepen our capacities in this area.

We view our interdisciplinary units as connectors and key elements of Duke’s mission.

Since the early 2000s, Duke has had an Office of Interdisciplinary Studies to coordinate the work of major cross-school interdisciplinary activities, create communities of practice for interdisciplinary academic leaders and support staff, spearhead strategic initiatives, and ensure that cross-school endeavors complement and amplify the great work going on in our schools.

In recent years, Duke has revised processes of reviewing departments and programs to include assessment of faculty participation in signature interdisciplinary undertakings. Many faculty members hold joint or secondary appointments, reflecting the breadth of their interests and expertise. In several buildings across campus, we have created interdisciplinary neighborhoods to heighten interaction among faculty with shared interests and complementary expertise.

And we offer a robust set of internal funding opportunities, ranging from small-scale planning grants to much larger awards, to encourage cross-school collaborations.  

We support an experimental approach to interdisciplinarity.

A great deal of interdisciplinary experimentation and innovation happens at Duke. Our schools partner to create joint degree programs and cosponsored research centers. Our cross-school interdisciplinary units serve as testbeds, generating new master’s and certificate programs and supporting avenues of research and engagement that nurture emerging connections across disciplines. Duke Kunshan University represents an especially bold example, with interdisciplinarity woven through undergraduate requirements and faculty organization.

We evaluate our interdisciplinary units and take action to strengthen them.

We regularly review our ecosystem of interdisciplinary institutes, initiatives and centers to ensure that they align with the evolving interests and needs of faculty, students and society. We identify areas in need of investment or change and we work collaboratively to expand, merge, sunset or reconfigure units as needed.

We value interdisciplinary research, education and external engagement by our faculty.

Duke has revised tenure and promotion standards to recognize and reward interdisciplinary research and public-facing scholarship. We are working on a similar process to revise those standards for interdisciplinary teaching and mentoring.

We keep building on our long-standing commitment to interdisciplinarity.

Interdisciplinary research and education has been a strategic focus at Duke since the 1980s, and a full-time vice provost for interdisciplinary studies has been in place since 1998.

In 2024, Times Higher Education’s inaugural Interdisciplinary Science Rankings placed Duke at No. 5 out of 749 institutions in 92 countries.

Our multifaceted investments, adaptability and emphasis on integration across research, education and engagement animate a vital interdisciplinary ecosystem and culture. That environment attracts faculty and students and supports their innovative scholarship. It further ensures that we respond strategically to new developments, whether the promise and perils of AI or the imperative of responding to climate change.

About the Office of Interdisciplinary Studies

Led by Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies Edward Balleisen, the office provides central facilitation and oversight for interdisciplinary units across campus.  Those institutes, initiatives and centers are led by world-class interdisciplinary scholars, and each offers an evolving array of opportunities for interdisciplinary research and learning, as well as engagement with community organizations and policymakers.

The Interdisciplinary Studies team develops and implements policies and procedures that advance the administrative, research, educational and practice needs of interdisciplinary groups. We provide leadership and central organization for the Bass Connections program, coordinate faculty hiring for the university institutes, initiatives and centers, and facilitate collaboration and experimentation among faculty, deans and directors.

The office also provides administrative and fiscal oversight for interdisciplinary units’ space, budget and personnel.

Bass Connections

Bass Connections is a university-wide program that supports interdisciplinary, applied research teams involving more than 1,200 individuals each year. It has established Duke as a global leader in experiential learning and supercharged community-engaged research across campus.

Duke faculty, staff, postdocs, graduate and professional students, undergraduates and external partners work together to tackle complex societal challenges in year-long project teams, semester-long courses and summer programs. See opportunities for faculty and learn how students of all levels can get involved.