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In their First Friday luncheon talk, Anne Dalke and Liz McCormack
discussed their senior capstone seminar on Gender and Science.
A key intention (and outcome) of the course was to consider
the topic from more than one disciplinary and in fact, divisional
perspective. That is, to bring together faculty and students from the
humanities and the sciences. Not surprisingly, interesting and exciting
things happened when a group of Bryn Mawr-educated seniors were brought
together for extended conversation on a rich topic. The only surprising
thing is how seldom we do it.

Some curricular Concentration programs at Bryn Mawr allow students to
focus on a sub-field within a major discipline, whereas other
Concentration programs very intentionally encourage students to cross over
and engage in synthesis with students and faculty from backgrounds that
are decidedly different than their own. Liz noted that this was part of
the intent of C-Sem II. However, the type of disciplinary crossover
experience that Anne and Liz described seem to be much more fruitful when
they come near the end of the student's career at Bryn Mawr, once the
student has developed the appropriate depth in her major field.

This "capstone" type of crossover experience has long been the intent of
the senior seminar that is required for all Environmental Studies (ES)
concentrators. With the hiring of an ES-oriented faculty member in a Div
I/III field (Ellen Stroud, Cities) last year, it now has become possible
to run the course with faculty members from both the Natural Sciences and
the Humanities in the room together with students majoring in departments
spanning the divisions.

In describing this type of activity, we have sometimes gotten bogged down
in the semantics of whether we‚re doing cross-disciplinary,
interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary work. I would suggest that the key
component is the practice of reaching across disciplinary or divisional
boundaries. Therefore, why not call our Division-spanning senior course
experiences Crossover Seminars?

A longer-term semantic question is whether some (but not all) of our
current Concentration program should be redefined as Crossover programs.
This might seem especially appropriate for programs such as Environmental
Studies where the bulk of the coursework requirements aim to enhance the
student‚s aptitude in approaching environmental issues from alternative
disciplinary and divisional perspectives.

But for now I propose the term Crossover for senior "capstone" seminars
that bring together students and faculty from different backgrounds to
discuss, synthesize and generate knowledge on a particular topic. If it
is preferable to avoid ambiguity, the Microsoft Word Thesaurus suggests
that "intersect" is a synonym for crossover. This would give rise to
Senior I-sems, which may or may not be preferable. Catalyst and
Connection are other c-words that might describe the seminar.