Cross-disciplinary Collaboration:
Sharing Course Activities with the College Community
JuliaGrace Jester, Ph.D., Psychology, Harrisburg Area Community College
Judith Rosenstein, Ph.D., Sociology, United States Naval Academy
Collaboration performed while at Wells College, Aurora NY
Introduction
The Movies
This poster discusses the benefits and problems in creating
cross-disciplinary events that encompass both course
assignments and activities for the campus as a whole.
These observations are based upon the experiences of a
psychology professor and a sociology professor who, while
teaching a “stigmatization and stereotyping” class and a
“hate crimes” class respectively, decided to do joint
activities that were open to the college. The point was to
open up our in-class discussions on these topics to the
college community at large, with the intent being to build
towards a proactive event about encouraging positive
change.
The first 2 events were movies that were open to the whole
campus but were required for our students
The Courses
 Wells College, Spring 2008
 Stereotyping and Stigmatization-Jester
 Psychology class focusing on the development,
content, effects, and reduction techniques for
stereotyping and stigmatization
 Hate Crimes- Rosenstein
 Sociology course focusing on the social forces,
group differences, legality issues associated with,
and recognitions of forms of hate crimes
The Laramie Project
 Hate crimes and stigmatization
based on sexuality
 Open viewing, guided discussion
American History X
 Race discrimination
 Hate crimes
 White supremacy
 Open viewing, guided discussion
 More violent than previous, a building
process, set up for final event,
challenging the audience
Deconstructing Difference
The Preparation
Creating a course-linked cross-disciplinary project takes a
lot of preparation because a lot must be decided and
arranged long before the class begins:
 Intense collaboration between teachers
 Plan the events:
 Must be equally relevant for both classes
 When, where, and who:
 In class, out of class, open to whole campus?
 Include requirements in syllabus and advertising for the
courses:
 Balance the extra work with the “normal” work of
the class
 Policy Decisions:
 Can students be in both classes?
 Funding and logistics for events and food
 Permission for movies
 Scheduling spaces
 Final project presentations for both classes
 Students decided projects and advertised the event
 Goals:
 Education in a palatable format
 Addressing the many aspects of hatred and
discrimination
 Involving audience
 Creating change
Results
 Up to 10% of the campus in attendance
 High evaluations for classes
 Comments about long term responses, hope for
change
 Significant positive feedback from community and
administration
“I just wanted to say that ‘Deconstructing
Difference: an interactive fair on tolerance’ was
amazing. All the students did a great job and
were very passionate about what they had
learned. Kudos to you and to all of them! I
learned a lot in just the few minutes I was there
and really wish I could have spent more time.”
Suggestions
Suggestion for engaging in this type of work:
 Early planning to structure the multiple timelines
 Creating a joint vocabulary for ideas and disciplines
 Engaging students as collaborators in the course
design
 Connecting to campus groups that would benefit from
involvement in course-related events.
 Events should increase in complexity/intensity.
 Events need structure but also some freedom for
student- driven involvement
Suggestions for cross-disciplinary work
 Marketing and Environmental Studies
 Encouraging sustainability and garnering support
 Biology and Graphics Design
 Realistic biological displays (i.e. gaming)
 Film Studies and Psychology
 Representations of mental illness
 Psychology behind genre shifts
 Literature and Sociology
 Cultural representations in popular fiction
Sample Project:
Recognizing Stereotypes
Represented in Cartoon
Characters
The Events
Our events were open to the entire college community and
consisted of:
 2 movies followed by guided open discussion
 an event called “Deconstructing Difference” where the
students presented their final projects for each class
 Projects were developed through student
discussion and selection over the entire semester
 Final projects had to entertain and educate
Sample Project:
Exploring the Use of
Racial Stereotypes in
Humor: Is Chris Rock’s
comedy funny when read
by other races?
Image Sources:
All photos from the events taken by JuliaGrace Jester
Deconstructing Hate flyer by Steven Thomas
Other images from the following websites:
http://nottheonlyone.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/american-history-x.jpg
http://www.learningfromlyrics.org/the-laramie-project%5B1%5D.gif