We began the long awaited Spring symposium “Liberal Arts Learning in the Digital Age” yesterday. Mala Radhakrishnan (Chemistry), Orit Shaer (Computer Science), Brian Tjaden (Computer Science), and Michelle Ferreirae ’13 talked about Interdisciplinary Science to a packed crowd in the Science Center 278 y’day evening. We had another 40 who viewed the webcast. The recorded version of the presentation will be made available on Wellesley’s YouTube later today. It was yet another display of the high quality teaching, learning and research taking place at the College. The presentations clearly demonstrated how the most interesting scientific research today requires knowledge that extends far beyond just the core subject. It was clear that the computational science is a core competency that would be required of all researchers and quite obviously, this is one of the areas of relevance to LTS as we move forward – how do we collaborate and engage with the faculty and students in helping with this competency.

The presenters talked about genomic data analysis , computational chemistry of protein-protein interactions and drug development and human computer interaction. In the first case, Brian, a CS faculty, is carrying out research that requires a deeper understanding of biology, biochemistry and chemistry amongst a few other disciplines. Similarly, in the second case, Mala needed to learn cell biology, physics, and applied math. BTW, she is also a poet who has written poems about atoms and molecules. Both Orit and Michelle shared their work in developing intuitive, gesture based software frameworks that helps biologists in their collaborative lab work. In each case, the presenter highlighted the importance of the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of their work and how the liberal arts education paradigm fits nicely with this model.

The charge for the College was clearly that we create virtual support environments that will become important for the faculty and students to be able to carry such excellent work forward.

We have begun directly engaging with the faculty in supporting their needs. For eg. we helped install an HPC (High Performance Computing Cluster)  for scientific research which has demonstrated the need for more such resources. The science faculty funded the purchase of a more powerful HPC that is being installed and supported by us and we plan to submit grant proposals to acquire more. HPCs were available to a handful of faculty in research institutions and their graduate students and postdocs not so long ago. However, now, increasing number of small liberal arts colleges are making these available to their faculty and students. The fact that as an undergraduate you get trained in these advanced computing techniques is fantastic and prepares the students for a career in research very early. We need to shift our own focus on going beyond supporting just the systems and upgrades, but have our staff also assist in ways that extends way beyond this.

Today, we have librarians who assist the students and faculty in their research by helping find relevant and accurate information. In the future, we need a similar model whereby our staff should become knowledgeable about the computational aspect of the research and offer support. Just the same way that we have GIS and Digital Media experts in our staff today who provide valuable support for faculty and students on how to use systems and software, we need a similar support system for the sciences. Perhaps, in the future, we should have programmers on staff who help write software for research and analysis of huge amounts of data or more importantly, help students learn how to write these.

We also should learn from what we heard – interdisciplinary research is where the action is. We need to spread our wings beyond our normal comfort levels and collaborate more. Also there is much to learn from the Human Computer Interaction lab of Orit where the members develop the systems the right way – They observe the users, talk to them, develop frameworks, and refine. What a great idea! If you simply ask a user what do you want, you will not get much. Instead if you make it collaborative, observe what they do from your vantage point and offer a pallet of options, now you are talking. I am glad to report that we have begun doing some of this on the administrative and it is paying huge dividends.

Flick Coleman asked a very thoughtful question about how do we enrich the Wellesley curriculum through interdisciplinary problem solving approach. I am sure that there will be serious discussions around this, because it is a great point. The presentations last week at the PLTC Talk About Teaching session on Flipping the Classroom highlighted some of the teaching innovations that are taking place in the College which is a step in the right direction that Flick is referring to. Faculty are recording their lectures and making them available to students ahead of time and using the classroom time for problem solving. Students in general come better prepared and informed to the class and by collaborative problem solving, they are learning the concepts in very different ways.

I cannot thank the LTS staff who worked tirelessly to make this a success. Now, the pressure is on us to keep the momentum going. The next event is on Digital Humanities on March 6th. Really looking forward to it.