Interdisciplinary Studies Program Core
BIS 300 Interdisciplinary Inquiry
The purpose of BIS 300 Interdisciplinary Inquiry is to introduce and orient students to upper-division work in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Program.
Students learn to
- take intellectual risks
- write and think critically
- communicate clearly
- read closely
- research effectively
- work collaboratively
Faculty teaching BIS 300 work closely with the staff in the Library, the Writing Center, and/or the Quantitative Skills Center to introduce students to the rich variety of resources and support services available at UW Bothell.
Recent BIS 300 faculty have taught it as a flexible course, one that responds to students with diverse levels of preparation. Students are encouraged to think about how various types of knowledge are socially produced, how they as students can become active, creative, and self-critical producers of knowledge (in either academic or non-academic genres), and why the IAS program as a whole values interdiciplinary modes of inquiry.
While indvidual sections of BIS 300 differ in the modes and emphases, they all encourage students to:
- Understand and appreciate the interdisciplinary production of knowledge and the ways in which it underwrites different aspects of the IAS program.
- Gain a critical understanding of the IAS program's diverse and interrelated (inter)disciplinary fields and methods of inquiry.
- Become better critical thinkers and writers, ones who are capable of posing, answering, and reposing a variety of complex questions.
- Become better researchers, ones who are able to use the resources at UW Bothell and elsewhere in order to identify existing and complementary scholarly work while producing original knowledge through data gathering and interpretation.
- Become better speakers, ones who are able to communicate clearly and engagingly about complicated topics, arguements, and issues.
- Learn to work well collaboratively, as both learners and teachers.