Interdisciplinary Team Teaching: Lessons for Engineering Instructors from a Capstone Course in Environmental Studies

The capstone course teaches students to analyze global environmental issues, resources, and human activities with a systems approach based on scientific, economic, political, social and ethical perspectives. Such an intrinsically multifaceted subject demands interdisciplinary treatment. To deliver the interdisciplinary treatment, the course uses diverse faculty teams comprised of faculty from fields in the natural and social sciences, engineering, and business. This work describes the interdisciplinary team teaching strategies adopted for the course and how they evolved with subsequent offerings of the course. We present assessment data measuring how well students achieve course objectives. Finally, experience gleaned from this course for non-majors has produced ideas for lessons engineering instructors can apply to their own courses