Transdisciplinary Skills: The Course Attributes
Devon L. Thomas
The purpose of the Gen Ed course attributes — Writing, Quantitative Reasoning, Diversity & Equity, and World Cultures & Societies — is to provide a framework for the perspectives you explore in your Gen Ed courses. The Gen Ed course attributes provide depth to your Exploring Perspectives and Building Connections classes by focusing on skills, methodologies, or contexts that help shape interdisciplinary ways of thinking and create new ways of knowing. These focal points add layers and dimensions to our complex ways of knowing and understanding the world around us.
For example, by practicing perspective-taking in a course with the Writing attribute, we can process, reflect on, and analyze our own experiences as, say, members of the borderlands community, and our responsibilities within this space. The Quantitative Reasoning attribute is an opportunity for you to utilize quantitative information to problem solve and propose solutions using numerical evidence to support your rationale. Engaging with the Diversity & Equity attribute focuses on our responsibilities as members of the Wildcat community to understand and disrupt systemic inequities so that we can work together to create a more just and equitable society for future generations. Lastly, the World Cultures & Societies attribute affords you the opportunity to explore how place, space, time, and culture inform how we tell our stories, shape landscapes, and imagine futures together as a global community.
Looking back on my own experience as an undergrad at SUNY Brockport, these attributes emerged in subtle ways — rather than the explicit way they’re embedded into your UA Gen Ed education — that allowed me to make connections and build skills I didn’t have before taking those Gen Ed courses. One course that stands out to me was Professional Ethics, where we explored different ethical dilemmas in various industries such as journalism, law, and medicine. We asked difficult questions of lawyers, journalists, and doctors who visited class each week. After learning through discussions with our guest presenters, we reflected on the ethical challenges they described, as well as the ethical issues that we could potentially face in our own careers. Then, we had to put our thoughts into writing. The writing prompts asked me to reflect deeply on my own values and to describe my stances on complex issues like organ donation. Professional Ethics was a writing-intensive course that involved a significant amount of research, reflection, and reasoning. The intense part wasn’t the amount of writing itself, but rather the process of writing responses to questions like, “Would I give an organ to a family member, a friend, or a stranger? Which organ or organs and under what circumstances? Why?”
While the course included writing practice in a particular disciplinary area, it also involved skills related to critical thinking and data analysis, skills you will practice via the Quantitative Reasoning attribute. These insights were not explicit to me at the time, but looking back, I can see how this general education class allowed me to apply such skills to personal decisions, like becoming an organ donor. I left that course with a better understanding of myself, how individuals weigh impossible choices, and the dynamics of who has agency, power, and resources to make life-or-death decisions. Additionally, the course provided me with important feedback on my writing voice and public speaking abilities. I share this because I hope you, too, leave your Gen Ed courses with more confidence in your abilities to research difficult topics, apply worldviews and perspectives other than your own, and voice your ideas on dynamic, real-world issues that impact your future.
As you read Part 5, consider the following questions:
- How confident do you feel in being a writer? What about as a quantitative thinker? Which of your experiences have shaped these views of yourself?
- What do the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion mean to you? Which life experiences have formed your own definitions of these terms?
- What does it mean to you to practice global perspective-taking? What are some mindsets that you embrace when considering perspectives and worldviews other than your own?
