Junior Fellows Program

Junior Fellows Program

Will McConnell

Chair, Interdisciplinary Studies, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences sponsors a junior fellowship program for all undergraduates. For semesters in which the department offers the program, up to 20 students are selected to participate in a special transdisciplinary research studio. Students entering the seminar can expect to create a specific focus or theme of their choosing for the course: some examples might include poverty or social equity issues in Los Angeles or San Diego; global environmental and/or financial sustainability; privacy vs. surveillance in postmodernity; diversity, equity and inclusion issues, etc. Many of these issues will have overlapping complexities in the social world, and much of the class activity will be to develop research strategies across students’ interests to re- focus the framing of, and solutions to, these issues.

The seminar facilitates students’ explorations of transdisciplinary methodologies—such as research approaches drawn across multiple disciplines— culminating in the mastery of communication and representation strategies that meet the needs of inter- and transdisciplinary audiences.

Students are instrumental in designing the research approaches, syllabus calendar, and assignments of the seminar. Students work to hone a focus on their problem or issue in the contemporary world, contribute to the development of course readings, design a proposal to address the chosen problem, and present their findings and recommendations, often to the campus community. This course can be used to meet multiple requirements: an upper-level general education; the transdisciplinary seminar; a social science; or an unrestricted elective. The course often will involve fieldwork or site-specific research in the Burbank and Los Angeles areas.