CIRCLE is MSU’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research, Collaboration, Learning, and Engagement. As its associate director for teaching and learning, I organize programming and resources to support MSU educators’ skills development in interdisciplinary teaching and course design. At CIRCLE’s Fall 2025 Teaching & Learning workshop, participants heard from a panel of course instructors and administrators about their successful CIRCLE seed grant project: a collaborative course on the theme of monsters and urban legends, taught across 3 of MSU’s Integrative Studies centers: General Science (CISGS, ISP & ISP courses), Social Sciences (CIS/SS; ISS courses), and Arts & Humanities (CISAH; IAH courses). A parallel track of work in this project, developed by administrators across those 3 centers, was a sustainable course creation pathway, which had the aim of lowering barriers to future collaborative course implementation.
For our workshop panel, Vered Weiss (IAH), Janet Burke (ISB), and David Baylis (ISS) shared their experiences planning and teaching their collaborative course arrangement, the benefits and challenges coordinating their roughly 50 students each, how their own disciplinary backgrounds contributed to the theme of monsters, their observations about student engagement in the course, and their hopes for future iterations of the collaboration. We also heard from Gabe Ording, CISGS director, about the administrator’s-eye view of this project: the bureaucratic challenges and logistical barriers that make organizing and supporting interdisciplinary courses so hard, their experience in the Seed Grant program, and what concrete resources and choices made the most difference.
You might find the following resources useful in your own interdisciplinary skills development, course design, and/or collaborative teaching:
- Resources from the 2024-25 Teaching & Learning Seed Grant project:
- Slides from our panelists, integrative center instructors Vered Weiss, Janet Burke, and David Baylis, about their experiences designing and teaching their collaborative courses about monsters and urban legends
- The MSU Administrator Guidebook for Interdisciplinary Course Planning, authored by Brandy Ellison, Michael Lockett, Gabe Ording, and Stephen Thomas.
- CIRCLE’s co-teaching tip sheet (developed in partnership with Rachel Barnard)
- CIRCLE’s course design and campus resources for interdisciplinarity including suggestions, benefits and challenges, and MSU resources
- A worksheet you can use to create your personalized plan for interdisciplinary teaching
- Scholarly resources
- “Who coaches the coaches? The Development of a Coaching Model for Experiential Learning,” (Heinrich et al., 2021) an article in Innovative Higher Education about the prototype courses from the Spartan Studios project. This article describes our course model as well as some of its logistical and co-teaching challenges and potential solutions.
- “The integration ladder: a tool for curriculum planning and evaluation” (Harden, 2000), a Medical Education article offering a useful framework for considering different levels of interdisciplinarity.
MSU educators interested in deepening your involvement with CIRCLE can join our affiliate program. This community of interdisciplinary collaborators is open to MSU faculty, specialists, instructors, post-docs, and staff; you’ll have early access to news about our events, including workshops and write-ins, as well as opportunities for collaboration like our seed grant program.
Graduate students interested in interdisciplinarity can apply for our CIRCLE graduate cohort fellowship, supported by the MSU graduate school. We are also developing a graduate affiliate program and planning a workshop for grad students to better support their interdisciplinary skills development and how to frame and describe their experience while applying for jobs or further opportunities.
Please contact Ellie Louson (lousonel@msu.edu) for any questions about CIRCLE or interdisciplinary teaching at MSU.