Interdisciplinarity Is a Signature Part of the Duke Experience

More than half of Duke undergraduates and nearly one-fifth of graduate and professional students take part in university-wide interdisciplinary education initiatives each year, highlighting the university’s long-standing commitment to collaborative inquiry and experiential learning. These undertakings amplify extensive interdisciplinary education that occurs within schools, like the Computational Media, Arts & Cultures Ph.D. in Trinity College or the interdisciplinary engineering major in Pratt, or across two schools, like the new master’s degree in Business, Climate & Sustainability between Fuqua and the Nicholas School.

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Across campus and at all schools and academic levels, Duke’s offerings empower students to explore their interests across disciplines while often addressing especially thorny societal challenges that require multidisciplinary approaches. Students are shaping their education around the issues that matter most to them.

As a first-year student, Carter Zenke began in the Pratt School of Engineering. He quickly discovered new interests through the Focus Program, which offers multidisciplinary clusters and community engagement. A course on reimagining education through a social justice lens opened the door to a pivotal mentorship with Professor David Malone. Their discussions led Zenke to pursue Program II, an individualized major that allowed him to integrate computer science, education and policy into a purpose-driven academic experience.

“Program II was how I could combine these different strands — computer science, education and policy — into one course of study,” Zenke said. “Then Bass Connections enabled me to pursue all those strands together.”

With his Focus classmates, Zenke created a computer science education initiative called CSbyUs in partnership with Durham Public Schools. The initiative gained momentum and eventually scaled up through an interdisciplinary Bass Connections project team that developed an initial elementary school computer science curriculum for the state of North Carolina.

Participating in interdisciplinary initiatives gave Zenke the foundation to land a dream job teaching at Harvard.

“I don’t think I would have gotten that job if I had not done what I had at Duke,” he said. “Pursuing computer science, education and policy all together made me a really unique fit for that role.”

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Duke students at every level and in every school are engaging in a wide range of interdisciplinary opportunities, from dipping a toe into the water through a summer program to immersing in an interdisciplinary degree program. It’s a signature part of Duke.

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Dhaval Potdar is a graduate student in the Master in Interdisciplinary Data Science program. Seeking a summer project, he came across Data+, an interdisciplinary program for small teams of students to tackle challenges for clients who are often external to Duke. A project to improve operations at Durham Public Schools (DPS) appealed to him because of the potential societal impact.

“I got to do a project which would, if implemented correctly, have an impact on the lives of 30,000 children,” he said. “We were able to parse information in a way that would eventually allow DPS to redraw its district boundaries. It changed my trajectory looking forward. Now I no longer want to work for the biggest tech corporations, but I want to work at places that actually allow me to do something for the good of society.”

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Along the way to earning her Duke MBA, Rewa Malhotra served as a Margolis Scholar with the Duke-Margolis Institute for Health Policy. This year-long fellowship provides support to students who demonstrate a commitment to a career in health policy and management and show potential for leadership.

Malhotra engaged with other students and faculty from across campus to understand a broad range of complex health policy challenges. Today, she is an associate at McKinsey in Chicago.

Doctoral student Finnie Zhao credits Bass Connections for informing her decision to enter the University Program in Environmental Policy — an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program jointly hosted by the Nicholas School and the Sanford School — when she was an undergrad. “Bass Connections influenced my Ph.D. decision,” she said, “along my growth trajectory from a young mind to a more mature independent and interdisciplinary scholar.”

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As a Duke sophomore, Zhao participated in a year-long Bass Connections project team that explored civic action on plastic pollution. “I collaborated with a diverse group of 20 team members, which included undergraduates, master of environmental management students, and faculty from the Nicholas, Sanford and Fuqua schools,” she said. She declared a double major in economics and environmental sciences and policy.

In her junior year, Zhao took part in another Bass Connections project team. “We delved into the fascinating concept of resilience across various disciplines, and each week we explored an array of literature spanning social, ecological and educational fields,” she said.

“These two projects … provided me with different perspectives and methodologies in dealing with environmental issues,” Zhao reflected. “Both allowed me to experience the integration of research, service and engagement, from designing civic engagement curricula for secondary school students to studying coastal ecosystems and resilience through literature review to creating an environmental resilience toolkit for community-based practitioners.”

As a Ph.D. student, she continues to focus on climate resilience and sustainable development for communities around the world.

Learn about Duke’s approach to interdisciplinarity, and read more about interdisciplinary research, education and engagement.