Stanford Observed

THE PARADOX OF MULTIDISCIPLINARY PROGRAMS

By Richard Zare

niversities are traditionally organized into departments. Such organization is more than a quaint academic custom - it evolved for solid reasons. A department provides a home for scholars with similar interests and backgrounds, somewhat like a family. It keeps the truth and determines the future directions of a field. A department is also the natural teaching unit, particularly at the undergraduate level. Indeed, to be a faculty member in a university and not a department member is usually to be a marginalized university citizen - lost, homeless and likely alienated.

I can attest to this fact from some personal experience. In the late 1960s, I was on the faculty of the University of Colorado as an assistant professor with an untenured position supported equally by the physics and chemistry departments there. It was a most disagreeable situation - I received twice as many committee assignments but each department regarded me as the spy from the other department. When it came time for a tenure decision, it was not clear which department, if either, really felt I was one of theirs. On the boundaries of two disciplines, I did not have a family of my own.

Despite this focus on and within disciplines, it is easy to recognize that some of the most interesting intellectual challenges we confront today occur at the boundaries of disciplines or cut across two or more disciplines. We need multidisciplinary efforts to tackle some very tough but important problems. Too often, thinking restricted along departmental lines is thinking limited to separate, distinct boxes when the solution can be found only by thinking "outside the box."

One simple example will illustrate the power of interdisciplinary efforts. Here I point with pride to the announcement of possible life on Mars. This effort required scientists to endure harsh conditions to find the meteorite in

Stanford Observed (Plain text)

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