Setting up for interdisciplinary success
The world moves fast, and UBC Faculty of Applied Science students deserve an educational experience designed to keep pace.
Dr. Naoko Ellis and Dr. Xun Liu are our two newest Marshall Bauder Chairs in Innovation in Interdisciplinary Education, who will be championing just that.
Over the next three years, they will craft the institutional infrastructure needed to develop meaningful, interdisciplinary learning experiences and teaching tools for students and educators alike.
Their work draws from and builds upon the Applied One ethos: a commitment to connecting disciplines around the challenges that matter most.
Creating an educational framework for interdisciplinary learning
Dr. Ellis, a Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the UBC Vancouver campus, aims to design a Faculty-wide educational framework to support collaborative learning, interdisciplinary research, professional practice and community engagement.
“Universities are increasingly challenged to prepare graduates who can work across disciplines, engage with complexity and lead meaningful societal change,” said Dr. Ellis.
“One-time grants and individual projects are not enough to develop the skills needed to co-create across boundaries. To truly prepare our next generation of practitioners, we need long-term, sustainable frameworks that embed interdisciplinarity into all our students' learning experiences and into our teaching practices.”
Through cohort-based undergraduate and graduate experiences, students will learn with and from one another, while working alongside faculty, practitioners, communities and external organizations on authentic societal problems.
Design and AI in practice
Dr. Liu will establish the Design Intelligence Commons, an educational infrastructure which will treat design and AI as shared languages for interdisciplinary education across Applied Science.
“Our students are separated by two walls,” said Dr. Liu, who teaches in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. “A wall of problems, where each discipline frames the same societal challenges in its own vocabulary, and a wall of tools, where technical capability remains locked behind specialized software and expertise.
“Design and AI are the two languages that can take down both walls: design gives technical capacity direction and judgement; AI gives design inquiry new reach.”
The Design Intelligence Commons will put this vision into practice through an interdisciplinary curriculum, an open-licensed teaching toolkit and a faculty network across Applied Science on both campuses.
Integrated experiential learning
Inaugurated in 2020, the Marshall Bauder Chairs are an important part of UBC Applied Science’s strategic plan and mission to shape the leaders and professions that shape the world.
“These exciting educational initiatives will further our aim of developing professionals who are able to see beyond their own disciplines, to create solutions for and with communities,” said Dr. Agnes d’Entremont, Associate Dean, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Student Success.
“We are honoured to have Dr. Ellis and Dr. Liu lead this important work that will reshape how we equip the innovators and problem-solvers of tomorrow.”
