Steve Horwitz: Why You Should Be An Interdisciplinary Teacher

In this Kosmos podcast, Dr. James Harrigan speaks with Dr. Steve Horwitz about interdisciplinary teaching. Dr. Horwitz explains the many benefits and some of the drawbacks of incorporating other disciplines into your teaching, and how to approach faculty from other departments.

James R. Harrigan:   Hello and welcome to this online Kosmos Podcast, I am James Harrigan your host today filling in for Jeanne Hoffman. Today we will be talking about interdisciplinary teaching with Professor Steve Horwitz, the Charles A. Dana professor and Chair of the Economics Department at St. Lawrence University. Dr. Horwitz, thank you again for joining us.

Professor Steve Horwitz:        My pleasure James.

JRH:   So what sort of interdisciplinary teaching do you do? 

SH:      Well actually a couple of different kinds, I think most of the interdisciplinary teaching that I have done has been in the context of team teaching in a first year seminar program. I have taught over the years with people from the English Department, Sociology Department, but the bulk of the teaching I have done there has been with psychologists and in particular over the last decade or so I have done a course on the evolution of the American Family. So I have obviously an economics background, but my some of the training as an economist is fairly broad. My teaching partner is a psychologist, but she also has a law degree so she brings that to the table so that is one major way that I have learned sort of engaging in a great deal of interdisciplinary teaching.

I have also taught of course in that program by myself on public policy and the family which again is a little more narrow, in the sense that it is more of me, it is me, but it is sort of economics, political science, philosophy more tightly. And even in my economics courses it is certainly I get outside economics a bit, I teach a course on the economics of gender and the family and we do a little bit of sociology, little anthropology, certainly some history and my even my more traditional economic classes I would like to have my students read a little political theory maybe a little philosophy, so I think in all of those kinds of ways, both, in my discipline and in these team teaching environments I have been able to stretch my legs outside economics.

JRH:   These things all sound pretty interesting. I am guessing that you are looking to develop well-rounded students?

SH:      Yeah, I think that is part of it, one of the things about St. Lawrence is we have a long history, this first year seminar program goes back to late '80s and certainly we had a long history and a kind of culture of interdisciplinarity on campus and so we as a faculty think it is important for that our students be able to see the world through multiple lenses and be able to engage in those comparisons in contrast and seeing those differences and I, for myself, I think just as you said, you know you want, you don’t want, I think it was either Mises or Hayek once said that there is nothing worse than an economist who is only an economist, right? What you want is an economist who is able to look at the world through all these other lenses as well.

So, even as I think about my majors, I want them to be economists who are able to think broadly in just the way as you are talking about.

JRH:   If we could stick with you personally for a moment, do you think that you benefit as a scholar, a teacher or even both as a result of this approach?

SH:      Yeah, I do both scholar and a teacher, I mean, I was just telling the story to some folks a few days ago, but I have now have this professional interest in the economics of the family, I am working on a book project I teach this course and all of that, I mean I was trained as a macro economist, monetary economist. The entire interest I have in this economics of the family topic grew out of that interdisciplinary teaching experience with colleagues from other departments, so as a scholar a big hunk of who I am now is a result of my engaging in this interdisciplinary teaching.

By the same token I think that I am a better teacher for being able to understand how other disciplines approach questions and this really goes back to what we were just talking about which is I think I am better able to produce students who can kind of step back and put economics in context because I have been able to do that and I am used to doing it and I am used to engaging in particular with non-economists in intellectual environments. So I would like to think anyway that helps me convey to students the importance of being able to step outside the narrow box of economics too.

JRH:   So we can see that it is probably a rather significant upside, but now I am interested maybe if there is downside. Do you feel that there is an opportunity cost here? You don’t get to cover as much of the material as you might like given your importation of the materials from other disciplines?

SH:      Yeah, I think that is it. I think that is an interesting question now, I mean one of the advantages of the first year seminar program is there is no, that is not a problem in the sense that there is no content expectation right? There is nothing to be covered. We can design that course to cover whatever we want, so there it is a wonderful playground for interdisciplinarity because you can, you can just, you don’t have to worry about exactly the issue you are raising.

Within the context of an economics course, yeah, I mean I think you do. When I think the way, I think one of the ways to get around that problem is to introduce things from other disciplines and then have students think about how an economist might view the problem or the issue that is at stake that the work from the other discipline is looking at.

Just one example of this in my economics of gender class I use this wonderful who is a classic bit of ethnography from the late '60s called "all are kin", which is a woman who lived in a poor urban, African-American community and she was an anthropologist and sort of describes the way in which family structure worked in these communities. You read it what she did, what she is doing there, if you read it as an economist, you see all kinds of wonderful economics in action in the different ways in which they shared resources and organized their relationships and so on and so, asking economic students to encounter something from another discipline, understand what this person is trying to do and then say, well how might we understand it with different lens by looking at it through, through the kind of economic concepts that we have been using in class? So, so I think there is a way in which, you can reduce that opportunity caused a bit by using the material from other disciplines as a way to sort of think about how economics would look at those things.

JRH:   What do you find as the reaction from faculty from other departments? Are they are happy to help, do they want to get on board or you a nuisance, that they would rather just ignore it?

SH:      Yeah that's, I think that's, that is a really, that is a real tricky question. I think the key for economists if you want to interdisciplinary work is, economists have a habit of coming across, disciplinary imperialists, right? That we will have to conquer every discipline in that, anytime if you elect an economist in the dorr of your discipline, your discipline is going to disappear and a maze of marginal benefit, marginal cost and all the rest; so, I think that, the thing we have to do as economist is to approach other disciplines not as imperialists, but also not as mere tourists right, and we want to go into other disciplines and say, you know, I really want to figure this out, I really want to understand how you guys see the world. You know I may bring my own insights to it, but, we have to have a certain level of sincerity we can't just be sort of out to conquer and we can't just be kind of naïve. We have to be fairly sophisticated.

I think if you approach people on other disciplines the right way as an economist, I think you can do it and you certainly and you can’t be out to conquer and you can’t, it can’t be out, it can’t be going in politically, it can’t be going out to show why they are all a bunch of you know, crazy socialists or something like that. This is not going to work okay. You have to go in a genuine spirit of enquiry and curiosity. I think if you do that it works and especially if you as an economist let's say are very good at conveying economics and you know, if you are a very good teacher with whatever discipline you are in and you can bring that discipline to the other discipline you added to, so if I go talk to psychologist helping them understand economics while in turn they are helping me understand psychology and that is the gains from exchange right? So the more that we can go into other disciplines in a spirit of gain from exchange and do it in a way that, you know it doesn’t come across as arrogant or imperialistic, I think the reception is pretty good.

Again but, you just have to be, you have to try it carefully.

JRH:   Now you had said a little earlier that the environment at your institution was such that the sort of thing is encouraged, did you sense that is common?

SH:      I think it reasonably common and becoming more particularly in the Liberal Arts colleges, you know like place like St. Lawrence I think, liberal educators like us are beginning to recognize that some of the old disciplinary boundaries are not always helpful and certainly that in the way knowledge that students understand the world as not organized by discipline and so the really interesting questions that we are dealing with are questions that span disciplinary boundaries.

Just as an example, we will ask since you are interested in neuroscience right and then that is a hot field for young people these days, but here is a field right that is, is it biology, is it chemistry, is it psychology, is it physics, is it even philosophy, is it economics right? I mean there is all of these ways in which studying how brains work and how people choose, this crosses over multiple disciplines and I think students are fascinated by that and from our end, why should we let the artificial boundaries of disciplines get in the way of really interesting collaborations that might work. So yeah I think there is more interest in seeing the world through multiple disciplinary perspectives. I do think, I am at a place where that has been around for a while and is valued, but as I look around other places like ours, I think you are seeing more and more of the around the country and around the world.

JRH:   Now you just spoke to the upside of dealing with students in interdisciplinary manner, what are the challenges?

SH:      Ah, they want answers. They want answers, they want to know what the right answer is and that is often hard enough in a discipline, but certainly when you look at things from multiple disciplinary perspectives, who is right? Are the psychologists right or the economist right or the philosopher is right? That sort of that notion of wanting an answer, I think is a real if we are going to engage in interdisciplinary education, we sort have to push back against that as the key question and say, how are these frameworks useful in understanding the world and which one enables us to tell better stories about, again how people choose, how the consequences of the choice play out? Whatever we might be studying and so I think the real challenge with, that is a real challenge with students.

I think the other challenge with students is, certainly with first year students let's say, it is often hard enough to get them to understand what a discipline is and learn one discipline and sort of ask them to already begin to engage that project of looking at things through multiple lenses, that could be very difficult too. By the time that they are juniors or seniors I think there are more able to do that and one of the things my teaching partner and I done this course, this interdisciplinary course for first year students and two years from now we are planning to do sort of senior version of the course and hopefully what we will do is we will have room full of 10 economics majors and 10 psychology majors, all seniors, and sort of take that similar topic of family and how economists and psychologists might look at family and do it with them. I think that will be a really different interesting experience looking at it with students who already have a strong disciplinary background and now have to confront how other people look at the same question.

JRH:   Alright for our last question, I would like to maybe address the pragmatics of the thing itself and just ask what advice you would have for a faculty member who is considering teaching in an interdisciplinary manner.

SH:      Well, I think a couple of things. Again let’s separate it into two categories. If you are going to do it yourself, right as opposed to teaching with someone. If you really want to do yourself, I think one of the things you can do is go to people at your institution who are in the fields you want to learn more about and say to them, I am interested in this topic and I want to learn about it, what does sociology have to say about this topic? Ask them and see what they recommend and read it. I mean I think, academics are always flattered when someone wants from outside our discipline wants to know more about what our discipline has to say about “x”. So flatter someone, go ask them for what they would recommend. What is the classic reading of or whatever, whatever the case maybe and see what happens.

I think that is the way to get started right, I think it is important especially for, for young faculty members to not start trying to teach interdisciplinarily without having some grounding, I mean you want them to have some confidence and some knowledge when you go into the background so ask. I think if you are going to do it as an, if you going to team teach it, again same rule applies, in the sense that you want to seek out someone who you think has things they can teach you and will be open to what you would bring to it from your discipline and so my best advice there is, you know go have lunch with colleagues from other departments and just chat about stuff you are interested in or go to presentations by colleagues from other departments who are giving research talks or published a book or something and just see what they are doing and see how they think about the world and ask them, would you be interested in doing something together and if your institution has programs that enable you to team teach, that is a terrific way to do it.

It gets you out of your department, gets you out and gets you around campus meeting people. I think it is good ambassadorial work for your own discipline too which is, whatever your discipline is and this is particularly the case in economics, you can kind of demonstrate that you are not intellectually incestuous. You really want to learn what other people have to say and want to take it seriously.

JRH:   Well thanks a lot for taking the time to talk to us today Dr. Horwitz.

SH:      My pleasure James.

JRH:   For more interviews on teaching, teaching advice, graduate school, the profession what have you, visit KosmosOnline.org providing career advice and intellectual resources for academics this is James Harrigan, signing off.