Integrative Studies is an umbrella term and is the student requirement. Currently two types of Integrative Studies courses are approved by senate: Inter-domain courses or Linked courses. The student requirement can be satisfied by taking 6 credits of either category.

A good starting place is to consider abbreviations that you typically teach in or clearly aligns with the content and a disciplinary community in which you feel connected. It is important that the community of faculty that teach courses with the selected abbreviation are consulted in the curricular process.

The senate legislation is quite clear–GQ and GWS are not eligible to be part of the Integrative Studies courses (Inter-domain and Linked). The rationale is that the knowledge domains (GA, GH, GHW, GN, GS) are knowledge areas whereas GQ and GWS are foundational/tools. MATH for example could be a domain (even though it is not laid out that way in our requirements), but math and quantification are different. Similarly, writing and speaking as laid out in our General Education program are not knowledge areas, but tools important for communication.

It is not that integrating the use of quantification, writing and speaking with other areas isn’t important, but the goals of the integrative studies requirement is different. It is about internalizing that connectedness of the world and (what can sometimes seem like disparate) areas of study – connections between knowledge areas.