For assistance beginning December 17, 2024 and through January 14, 2025, please reach out to Interdisciplinary Studies via email at acolgan@wcupa.edu or call us at 610-436-3505.
• We will have limited virtual availability during this time.
• We can assist you Jan. 14 – 17.
• In addition, please come in during the Add/Drop period for help with schedule
changes if needed: Jan 21 – 28.
Interdisciplinary Studies (IDS) is a unique, interdisciplinary, flexible, and customizable degree program designed for students who want deeper engagement with the development of their degree plan. Students typically pursue IDS because they want their undergraduate education to correspond to their post-graduate goals, including professional programs, graduate school, and careers or because they are looking for an academic home for credits they have earned in other programs. IDS faculty work closely with students and with other WCU departments to help each student craft the best path to degree.
Why Interdisciplinary?
The capacity to reason, synthesize, and problem-solve across disciplines is highly valued by all kinds of employers, businesses, and graduate schools. Most of the important problems and crises of our age require interdisciplinary approaches to resolve; for example, we cannot solve the issue of plastic pollution with science alone, nor with behavior changes such as not littering. Instead, seemingly intractable problems will require combined approaches and the types of thinkers who can grasp the magnitude of the problems.
IDS is a great fit for these students:
- Students who are looking for a major, but cannot find a “good match,”
- Students who think “outside the box,”
- Students who want to stay at WCU but major in a discipline not offered, such as Advertising, Real Estate, Animal Sciences, or Sustainability Policy,
- Students who are more interested in what is IN the major (and the skill set they can develop and hone while pursuing their curriculum), not what the major is called,
- Students with high number of credits earned who are not enrolled in a major, and
- Students who are presently enrolled in a major but will not be able to (or choose not to) complete the requirements for that degree.
Effective professionals need to communicate clearly, think critically, look outside ordinary disciplinary lines, appreciate diversity, and make informed decisions and ethical choices. Because of the unique nature of IDS, students have the power to construct their individualized programs of study. Students work with IDS academic advisors, as well as the advisors for their academic minors. Graduates earn the degree by taking ownership of the program and assuming responsibility to make informed, intelligent decisions. In addition to major, minor and general education requirements, this major emphasizes the development and/or enhancement of “transferrable skills.”