Interdisciplinarity: The Right "People", a Supportive "Place", and a "Program" Emerges

Twenty-first-century biology is inherently interdisciplinary. Every aspect of biology, from molecules to organisms to ecosystems, is richly informed by the physical, mathematical, and computational sciences. It is both an exciting and daunting time for biology educators--exciting because of the vast opportunity for important new discoveries that will come about in an interdisciplinary context, yet daunting for many current biology educators who were not trained within such a framework. The call for transformation of the undergraduate biology experience to better address interdisciplinarity is not new. At St. Olaf College, a liberal arts college with an undergraduate-only population of [approximately] 3000, school administrators are fortunate in that their relatively small size allows for a certain degree of nimbleness as they consider changes that foster interdisciplinarity. In this essay, the authors share some perspectives and examples that have emerged for them over the past 10 years or so as they have attempted to offer a broadly interdisciplinary environment in which their students and faculty explore and understand biology. (Contains 1 figure.)