Welcome to the Interdisciplinary Studies Program
Hello, and welcome to the Interdisciplinary Studies Program at Appalachian State University.
The program offers the bachelor of arts in Interdisciplinary Studies, that includes six concentrations united by a common core of courses. Our most popular concentration is the one individually designed by the student and an IDS advisor.
Students and parents often ask us, "What is Interdisciplinary Studies?" I like to use the analogy of vision. If you think about how a lizard sees, even though it has two eyes, it does not experience depth. Because the eyes are separated on its head and it cannot compare the information it gets from two eyes, a lizard lives in a flat world.
But human beings' eyes are in the front of our heads, and our brains get information about the same object from both eyes. By comparing that different information, our brain allows us to live in a world with depth.
Interdisciplinary Studies works like that. It allows students to get more than one point of view on the same topic, and by comparing and contrasting, connecting and separating the information provided by separate disciplines, new dimensions of information appear, analogous to the dimension of depth that appears when the eyes become binocular.
Please enjoy your visit to our website, explore our pages, feel free to call us or email us if you have additional questions, and think about whether you would like to add to your life, those additional levels of experience and information that can be provided by Interdisciplinary Studies.
