What I learned in IS 2222

I started out my junior year of college with an understanding that I would just finish my college career in the major I had been pursuing because I had already completed so much of it.  It seemed like it wasn’t really worth trying to figure out a new one.  Then one day, a friend said to me, “Hey Brandon, have you heard of the Interdisciplinary Studies Program?”  No, I hadn’t.  And had I heard of it sooner, I probably would’ve switched into it sooner.  But that day I did some research.  The next day I emailed Robin DeRosa, and within a week I was on my way to a new degree.  All I had going for me was over 100 credits in a program I wasn’t satisfied with an about a year and a half to figure out my life.

I walked into class on the first Monday of this semester thinking that the class was going to be a “Hey let’s build your new major and get you the hell out of here” deal.  Little did I know that I would be learning about the history or Interdisciplinary Studies and would be forced against my will into enjoying Twitter and writing things for a website.  I started out thinking that Interdisciplinary Studies was a way for me to take the different things I enjoy and combine them.

I was right, but only like 3/4 right.  It turns out that Interdisplinarity allows anyone to view things in a broader mindset to really fully understand what is happening around them.  Most people look at the world from one perspective, that perspective they learned when they were at college focusing on one discipline with one epistemology.  Interdisciplinarity says that you can take that epistemology and combine it with another and another and potentially any amount of others.

This mindset is exactly what allowed me to convince the school to allow me to combine music and business to create a really broad Music Management contract that will introduce me to the world of large scale Event Planning in the music field.  Besides real world experience, there isn’t really a place for someone to learn about event planning in degree form.  But I looked at the courses offered at Plymouth State University and thought “I can take these business courses that are defined as generic marketing courses and I can apply the knowledge of music I have to them and suddenly they will be useful as a music business course instead of straight business.”  That’s taking the interdisciplinary approach.  Take off one hat and put on another, apply some knowledge to places you wouldn’t expect.  Innovation at it’s greatest.

I honestly believe that some people aren’t meant to be interdisciplinary.  There are people that fall right in with the generic disciplines and there is nothing wrong with that.  But then there are people that need a broader option.  They don’t function in one box, they have their hands in several different pools of thought.  These people need the opportunity to grow in that, they need a chance to learn in different ways at the same time.  That is why interdisciplinarity is important to the university.  Not everyone will utilize it but it needs to be there for those that will.  I want you to think about the most important things in your life and try to tell me that none of it is interdisciplinary.  Tell me that modern robotics advancements haven’t affected the medical field.  Tell me that the iPhone isn’t the most popular example of several fields crossing over.  Entertainment and communication combined with top-of-the-line technological advancements?  That’s interdisciplinary.  If the entire world thrives off of it, shouldn’t our education embrace it?

I plan to take that approach in life.  Everything you could ever imagine is probably possible right now.  It’s just a matter of finding the right combination of things that already exist in the world to create new, better things.  Innovation instead of creation.  So, I plan to take the world of concert planning and revolutionize it. I want to reinvent the concert experience, make it something that everyone recognizes but is just different enough that everyone wants to experience it even more.  I’m not sure exactly where I’ll go but I know that I want to bring music to the people in the most exciting ways possible.

I’ve been very grateful that PSU has given me the opportunity to follow my dreams.  I’m excited that this opportunity seems be ever-growing and more people will be allowed to follow their dreams soon.  I think that the new “clusters” system that is being introduced is a smart and innovative approach at Interdisciplinary Studies in the school, I just hope that it is done right.  Right now, it could go in a number of directions and some of those will crush dreams rather than let them flourish. The school is at a turning point and I look forward to seeing the directions that it takes this new system.  Things are a-changin’.

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Interdisciplinary Music Research in Finland

Music is a complicated subject.  There is much more than meets the eye.  The Finnish Centre of Excellence has devoted their resources to explore these extraordinary tendencies.  Funded by the Academy of Finland, the Finnish Centre of Excellence is an interdisciplinary research consortium that “explores the relationships between physical, perceptual, emotional, and social aspects of musical engagement.”  They study emotion, rehabilitation, movement, and learning.  They hope to create new methods and approaches in the field of music when it comes to medical healing or mental growth.

Since they have been established, their most important discoveries are (quoted from the article):

1. regular music listening helps in stroke recovery
2. music therapy alleviates depression
3. infants naturally move to the rhythm of music
4. dance moves reveal personality traits, and
5. aptitude in music is linked to a better ability to learn a second language

The Finnish Centre of Excellence is made up of two teams of researchers, from the University of Jyväskylä and the University of Helsinki.  The University of Jyväskylä team is made up of researchers and grad students from the Department of Music, each of whom specializes in a range of fields, inclufing “musicology, psychology, movement science, music therapy, music technology, music information retrieval, and computational modeling.”

The team from the University of Helsinki “consists of about 20 researchers and graduate students at the Cognitive Brain Research Unit. Students have a diverse set of backgrounds, spanning psychology, biomedicine, engineering, musicology, and genetics.”  They are experienced in indisciplinary research methods, such as the combination of brain research with fields such as music rehabilitation and developmental psychology.

The Centre places a strong importance on interdisciplinary work, often imploring researchers to use more than on method in brain studying along with music and psychology studies to get a fuller picture of the problem at hand.  The two teams often use each other’s research and even work together to play off of each other’s specialties in hopes of truly seeing the bigger picture.

The Finnish Centre of Excellence is an important demonstration of interdisciplinarity because they truly make a difference in the medical and musical fields, creating new methods of rehabilitation and recovery that may help people who used to be considered “lost causes” recover from even the worst of injuries.  Further, they have already made huge advances by using the best and newest medical equipment, music recognition software, and psychological studies to keep their field of vision wide rather than getting sucked into the tunnel vision that many disciplines tend to view the world in.  It helps me remember that there is so much potential to incorporate everything around me into my problem-solving, instead of trying to keep my brain inside the box of my profession.  Sometimes, the problem will not be solved until you just ask for help.

Resources

Eerola, Tuomas. “Finnish Centre Of Excellence In Interdisciplinary Music Research, Finland.” Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, And Brain 22.2 (2012): 180-182. PsycARTICLES. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.

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Epistemological Pluralism

Hello class.  Today I would like to speak to you about a rather complicated topic.  You may know what the word “epistemology” means.  If not, here’s the dictionary definition.  It is the “study of the nature and basis of knowledge that answers questions including the following: What is the nature of knowledge? How can I know what I know? What is truth? How much can we know?”  (Repko 103)

Understand?  If yes, good on you.  If not, I understand.  It is complicated, as I said. Epistemology is basically the study of learning.  Really, it is the study that focuses on how people learn in a specific field.  Since every discipline is different, each discipline has a different view on what knowledge and truth is.  In math, truth is pretty clear.  1+1=2.  This is known to be true.  It is untrue that 1+1=3.  But in music, what is truly good music?  Well that’s up to the listener.  There are things that are understood as “rules to follow when writing music, but every one of those rules can be broken if the composer wants to break them.  The truth in music is a little more complicated.  That’s what epistemology aims to define.

So now that we have an understanding of epistemology, lets expand the spectrum a little.  Interdisciplinarity combines disciplines, right?  It only makes sense that there is a slightly combined epistemology in interdisciplinarity.  It tends to “embrace epistemological pluralism” (Repko 134).  This philosophy rejects the idea of absolute truths, instead “embraces the ambiguity that arises out of conflict and different” (Repko 134).

Imagine epistemological plurism like it’s a color wheel.  You have your primary colors, but when you start to combine them, suddenly your options become endless.

So, epistemology is the study of knowledge and truths.  The interdisciplinary epistemology is that there are no truths and instead the ideal way to seek knowledge is to see the world through the perspectives of several different epistemologies.  This allows interdisciplinarians to truly “make sense of this fractious, dynamically changing world, and apply that sense to problem solving, decision making, and progress” (Repko 32).

 

 

 

Resources:

Repko, Allen F., Rick Szostak, Michelle Phillips Buchberger. Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies.California: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2014. Print.

Jason, colour-wheel, 2007

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Music Management at PSU

The program I have designed is known as Music Management.  It is a combination of Music and Business in a manner that prepares me for concert-sized Event Planning.  With an advanced knowledge of music theory and an intermediate knowledge music history combined with Marketing, Information Technology, and other important business courses, I will be well equipped for the field of Event Planning.  I designed the major using knowledge I have from planning concerts for PSU’s programming boards, Spring Fling and PACE.  Having a knowledge of music, both fundamentally and historically, will provide knowledge that will be helpful for choosing and effectively communicating with musical artists.  The business courses I have chosen are marketing and communication courses that will be useful in planning the event on a logistical standpoint as well as delegating tasks effectively to get the most work done.  Currently, no program at PSU is built to teach about Event Planning.  There are business courses that are offered within the business program that are helpful but there isn’t a program that prepares students for the hectic Music Business world.    

I selected the courses I thought would best help me learn the behind-the-scenes work of Event Planning that most people overlook.  My QRCO course is Statistics 1.  A basic understanding of Statistics allows me to review data received from polls, surveys, reviews, and other forms of data collection and make sense of it in a way that allows me to make the best decisions for future events. This includes budget-based decisions as well as choices that attempt to please the most people.  My TECO course is Technology in Music Performance.  This class is designed around learning the most important computer programs used today by musicians.  With an understanding of these programs, I will be able to effectively communicate with artists about what they may need on a technology standpoint.  My WRCO is Organizational Communication.  Event Planning and Music Management is not a one-man job.  More than likely, I will always be working with a group of people.  This course will teach me the best ways to communicate with those people.  It is also designed to teach students how to write appropriate business letters and other forms of communication within a professional setting, which is very useful when hiring and communicating with artists. I have five other business courses.  Three of them are Marketing Courses.  Principles of Marketing, Global Marketing, and Event Marketing will give me insight into marketing in different environments.  One of the most important aspects of planning a concert is marketing it.  If no one knows about an event, no one shows up.  I have also included Information Technology and Organizational Behavior.  

For the music section of the major, I decided it was best to focus on growing my understanding of as much of the field of music as possible.  I have included Musicianship III and IV, which are advanced music theory and ear training courses.  An understanding of how music works fundamentally is, to me, an important part of being in the Music business.  For this reason, as well as to fit more closely to the general requirements of a Music major at PSU, I required a semester of Performance Study, specifically on Bass.  I have also included two semesters of Composition.  That is music composition, for the same reason as the Musicianship courses.  The final two music courses are Introduction to Hard Disk and Multitrack Recording as well as Seminar in the Music Business.  The Intro to Hard Disk and Multitrack Recording course focuses on the technology and methods involved in both studio production and live sound recording.  The Seminar in Music Business is just what it seems.  It is a course that focuses on the Music Business and how to succeed in it.  These two courses wrap up my idea of required Music courses.  The final course, bringing the credit count to 51 credits, is Sound Design.  This course is a Theatre course that focuses entirely on Sound Boards and running live sound.  I believe that in order to run an event, it is best to understand each part of that event.  When planning concerts and other large scale music events, there is going to be sound production present.  It is important to know how this works in order to make sure that you rent to correct equipment.  

This program is interdisciplinary because it combines Music and Business in a way that is not done in any program here at PSU.  My course selection is split evenly between Music courses and Business courses.  As I have mentioned previously, each of them has a district benefit within the program I wish to pursue.  Each course in this program has been selected carefully.  I have ensured that each of the prerequisites required for upper-level courses have been fulfilled and that all of these courses are being offered before my graduation in 2017.  

I have a passion for Event Planning in the Music Business.  I have experience in planning concerts and I wish to continue to plan concerts and music events after I graduate.  I can only grow bigger from here and I feel that this program will allow me to do so at the fastest pace possible.  

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Taxonomy: Education’s Method of Profiling

Throughout my years of school, I’ve always taken it for granted.  It has always been there, seemingly obvious in reason.  I never questioned it.  Schools profile.  You’ve heard the term if you’ve watched CBS’s Criminal Minds.  Profiling is, in short, examining someone’s or something’s traits in order to fit them into a particular subgroup.  Well, think about it.  This is everywhere!  I never thought about it, but even the school systems do it.  Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Geology.  Drawing, Painting, Music, Sculpting.  Ancient History,  U.S. History, World History,  European History.  British Literature, American Literature, Grammar.  French, Spanish, German, Latin.  These all feel normal when grouped together, right?  Well I just profiled those classes.  Or, I made a Taxonomy of Disciplines.

“Taxonomy groups things according to their common characteristics” (Repko, pg. 93).  Natural Sciences, Arts, History, Language Arts, Foreign Language.  You could call these the subgroups that these groups of classes would fit into.  The disciplinary way of schooling often uses this method of classification.  They classify everything into disciplinary categories.  There are common disciplinary categories that you will see at colleges and other academic establishments.  Repko lists the following: Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Humanities, Fine and Performing Arts, Applied Fields (communications and business), Professions (architecture, nursing, education).

Many schools offer multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary programs that combine these disciplinary categories.  Programs like Environmental Science, for example, could be comprised of several courses under the “Natural Sciences” category.  The tricky thing about Taxonomy, as with any profiling, is that it is very subjective.  One school may consider a class to be part of one category, when another school considers it part of a different category.  This can cause some confusion for anybody who may transfer from one school to another and find that something they were studying may not be offered even if the overarching category that they consider their subject to be part of is offered.

In the end, Taxonomy is just another classification of a world full of classifications.  Our system is built on classification, therefore you can forever classify everything into smaller and smaller categories.  I imagine the only foreseeable end would be the study of a single letter in a single alphabet.

Resources:

Repko, Allen F., Rick Szostak, Michelle Phillips Buchberger. Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies.California: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2014. Print.

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There is Such a Thing as Overspecialization

One key thing to note about the popular education and working structure of the world is specialization.  In a sense, it is important to a functioning system.  If you think about it in comparison to how a car work, each part of the car is specialized in one thing and it must do that one thing perfectly in order for the entire tar to work.  If one part starts to fail, the rest stops working correctly.  Specialization is important, but it is also limiting.  That door will only ever be a door.  The brakes aren’t cleaning the windows and the motor isn’t what holds the gasoline.  And the same goes for people.  Specialization causes the number of opportunities to get smaller and smaller, the more specialized you go.  Now, the term “discipline” comes from the Roman word “disciplina.”  It started being used as a term in education when education started to be related to economic and political manners.

“The production of knowledge and disciplinary specialization accelerated during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” (Repko, pg 65)  The Enlightenment, which was an intellectual movement throughout Europe that “emphasized the progress of human knowledge through the powers of reason and provided justification for the movement known as modernism” was the first of two movements that caused this acceleration.  The second was a scientific revolution that emphasized “reductionism” and “empiricism,” or greater specialization and research activity, respectively.  These two movements were the cause of people starting to divide sciences into different fields, specifically empirical versus natural sciences.

Over many years, the disciplines slowly grew more and more separate.  Eventually, what used to be just “science” was broken up into specific fields of study such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, economics, political science, psychology, sociology, history, philosophy and many, many more.  As is obvious, education went from “very broad” to “extremely specific.”  Today, you can further break down each of those categories into their own subcategories.

A late nineteenth-century philosopher by the name of Friedrich Nietsche was only one of several people who started to view these new disciplines as problems.  In his mind, they were symptoms of a larger, less-visible disease.  It was an interdependence of government, business and education.  The economic system started to rely on more and more specialization.  In order for the economy to keep growing, sciences needed to get more specific.

Boston, where the John Hancock Tower is much taller than the surrounding building, but stands out as different.  Photo Credit: Chris Devers, Mt Auburn Cemetery: View of Boston from Washington Tower, 2009

This is where we get to the overspecialization.  It is the concept that summarizes that new

disciplines are connected to power struggles or issues of self-interest in positions of power.  Members of the government and business sectors of the economy had their own agendas, pursuits that would further them rather than the general public.  They would require that more people study more specific things, continuing to specialize even when there may not have been a point.  This is still one of the problems with today’s higher-education system.  We push for that doctorate in that one field that we know more about than any other field.  But how many options does that leave us?  Suddenly our limited knowledge is overspecialized in a way that leaves us unable to grow in any other fields.  And that is where interdisciplinarity comes in handy.

 

Resources:

Repko, Allen F., Rick Szostak, Michelle Phillips Buchberger. Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies.California: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2014. Print.

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Make Some Noise for the Environment

Let’s help our ecosystem!  How? Well, with music.  That’s right.  Music.  At least, that’s how the Campus Consciousness Tour plans to do it.  Alright… let’s step back for a few minutes.  Have you ever heard of the band “Guster”?  They are an alternative rock band that formed in 1991 in Massachusetts.  Check out the title song to their first album, “Parachute,” along with the rest of the album here.

Anyway, Adam Gardner, who played guitar and sang for the band, and his wife, Lauren, saw what was left behind from one of their shows, how absolutely trashed it was, and decided to do something about it.  They started a non-profit organization called REVERB.  REVERB’s goal is to educate artists and their fans about environmental sustainability in order to keep our world from turning into a giant landfill.

“Engaging musicians and their fans to take action toward a more sustainable future.”  That comes straight from the REVERB “What We Do” page.  What they do is partner with bands that people know, musicians that the public follows, in order to promote a healthier way of living.  They believe that “a lot of people doing some things with have more impact than a few people doing everything.” Beyond just partnering with bands, they partner with brands and other non-profits that all share a similar message.   Nalgene, Clif, Stonyfield, UPS, L. L. Bean to name a few.

So now, we fast forward to what I mentioned at the beginning.  REVERB started the Campus Consciousness Tour, where they partnered with bands and brands and toured through college campuses in hopes to educate the college population, the new voters, the millennials.  The Fall 2015 Campus Consciousness Tour reached 16 college campuses with 8 different nationally touring artists, the headliner being Nate Reuss of FUN. They partnered with NextGen Climate, Ben and Jerry’s and Headcount.  They helped students register to vote.  They asked students to sign pledges that they would be more conscious about how they treat the environment.

Now, how does all of this have anything to do with interdisciplinarity?  Well, everything.  It’s a huge success for the interdisciplinary community.  A non-profit environmental sustainability organization started by a touring musician that partners with bands and brands and non-profits in order to raise awareness of the environment?  I’d challenge anyone to tell me how that fits into one discipline.  You have the famous musicians that use their power of communication to make people listen.  You have the behind-the-scenes planners, marketers, logistic coordinators, and everyone else that is involved in planning a giant tour.  You have the businesses like Ben and Jerry’s that promote a healthier business ethic.  There are the environmentalists that are searching for all the different ways to help the environment.  Each of these different people come from a different discipline but I can’t imagine this tour, or even this organization, would survive without each and every one of the people that is a part of it.  Please, go check out the REVERB website.  Learn more about them and their goals.   Make some noise in favor of the environment.

Resources

A Cromwell, One group trashed the park more than I’ve ever seen. 2009, https://www.flickr.com/photos/opossumqueen/3738821611/in/photolist-BtmmF9-avMwvi-6Gorpz-9E3DgQ-htaqdX-4ZLiEm-5dWAtM-e8MuNs-9fRs5u-e8FUJi-9KB1pT-d8UMj7-9KDPQU-5i9BQF-abcS4Y-9NqyU3-6HHPnt-6GotKv-6RUFsW-8X4hB3-nG3hWH-ehbVgU-4VPeyF-6RQCnV-6GsuHY-bArgHt-w4VBEe-7tXgRc-dnE2Bd-6HHPqZ-3XhUHE-7anEcH-6F68ka-8rB1J8-7ZgQ37-Axjy2k-ARagPz-9NqHpJ-9NnVU4-4EdAeR-bETktg-bETkpK-brYt3b-qmHT5o-q5ex4S-qmBaCr-qjvfbo-7TbBf3-8z2fCM-7jDznk

http://reverb.org/

http://reverb.org/cct/

 

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The Traits and Skills of your Interdisciplinary Toolbox

When you make the choice to pursue an Interdisciplinary studies career, you choose to take on some “ways of living” that will help further you in the field.  You could say you start to carry about a toolbox for life.  Among the tools in this toolbox are several personality traits and skills.

I would like to first discuss the personality traits.  There are three.  They are entrepreneurship, love of learning, and self-reflection. Entrepreneurship is important because it means taking risks in order to achieve a goal.  In a few ways, an interdisciplinarian is like an entrepreneur.  First, both are willing to step into unknown places and situations, whether it be a new market for product or a new field of study previously unexplored.  Both make connections between things that the average person does not notice.  The entrepreneur sees how to combine two completely different things to make a new, better thing and the interdiscplinarian sees how two separate fields can intermingle in order to solve a problem.  Lastly, both see possibilities that others do not.  They can see something that no one else looks at twice and they see all of the possibilities that could come from this one thing.

Love of learning is the drive to always discover more.  As an interdisciplinarian, you will find that you always want to know more about the world and how you can combine what you do with what someone else does in order to fix the world.  The last trait, self-reflection, allows to look back upon what you have achieved and assess what was a success and what could have been improved upon.  This goes hand-in-hand with the love of learning.  One who loves to learn should love to self-reflect because, as self-reflection results in learning from one’s mistakes.

Along with the traits in your toolbox, you will find a set of skills.  There are four skills in this set: communicative competence, abstract thinking, creative thinking, and metacognition.  Communicative competence is comprised of two main parts.  First, you will learn about what is being communicated.  When persuading, there are two approaches that are generally seen.  The first is persuasive disciplinary communication, which focuses on one position being right while the other is wrong.  The other is persuasive interdisciplinary communications, which considers the strengths and weaknesses of both positions without specifying which is better.

The second aspect of communicative competence is to consider the differences between who you are communicating with.  When communicating with different people, you will find that you will have to communicate an idea differently depending on who you are speaking to.  This skill of communicative competence in interdisciplinarity will allow you to discover the appropriate way to effectively communicate what you are saying across broad range of disciplines.

Abstract thinking is the ability to use concepts and make generalizations.  Abstract thinking, in short, allows the interdisciplinarian to look at what is right in front of him and think of the obscure and remarkable possibilities that could come of it.  Creative thinking works well with the skill of abstract thinking.  It allows the interdisciplinarian to see the potential in something and then actually create that something effectively.

The final skill is metacognition.  Meta, meaning “referring to itself,” and cognition, essentially “perception,” together means to have a perception of yourself, how you learn and think.  Repko references the common definition “thinking about your thinking.”  It brings to mind the thought that the brain is the only thing in our known existence that named itself.  Anyway, metacognition is a key skill for you to develop.  As you dive into interdisciplinarity in any form, you must step back during every step and think about how each discipline thinks about the problem you are trying to solve.  This way, you will be able to best apply each of the disciplines to the problem at hand.

These traits and tools are just a small part of your interdisciplinary toolbox, but they are important.  These are the pieces that reflect on you and how you will act and feel in your field.  Without these, you would be lost.

References

Repko, Allen F., Rick Szostak, Michelle Phillips Buchberger. Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies.California: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2014. Print.

Davis Poole, toolbox, 2007

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The Silent Star of Silver

Sometimes things just work out.  Have you ever thought “Where is my life headed?” and then suddenly the perfect opportunity arises?  That’s exactly what happened for Melissa Furbish.  She lived in New Orleans for years, singing in every location she could find.  New Orleans is an epicenter for music so she never really struggled to make a living that way.  But after Hurricane Katrina struck, she moved to New Hampshire and started a family.  Suddenly she wasn’t able to make a living singing anymore.

Melissa decided to enroll at Plymouth State University  as a Nursing major, as she had been working in the Nursing field since moving up North.  Quickly, she discovered that Nursing was not the path that she wanted to pursue.  Having a passion for music and theatre, Melissa decided to audition for the Music and Theatre department.  Dr. Kathleen Arecchi suggested the Interdisciplinary Studies program as a way to intermingle her interested in music and theatre with teaching and expression through the arts.  In December of 2013, Melissa graduated from Plymouth State University with an Interdisciplinary Studies degree that focused on Theatre and Education.

Melissa started her job search with no idea where to look.  At the same time, the Silver Center posted a job opportunity for Events Coordinator.  Melissa decided that this was exactly what she needed, so she went for it.  She started three months later, in March of 2014.  Since then, she has become and integral part of the inner workings of the Silver Center.  She is the middle man, in a sense.  She has a broad understanding of how a facility such as the Silver Center works and she can communicate between the different departments within the Silver Center to make sure everyone is on the same page.  She gets to work with people from all sorts of different disciplines on a daily basis, as well.  If you think about the average show in a theatre, there are a bunch of different angles to look at.  The Silver Center Staff has a weekly production meeting at which they discuss all of the different aspects of production that need to be considered.  The Audio Technician will consider what needs to be done for sound production during the show.  The House Manager will focus on what will please the audience during pre-show.   The Production Manager will make sure of any on-stage requirements.  The Business Manager considers what is manageable within the budget.  All of these people are specialized in one field and Melissa makes sure all of these different people get what they need.  You can learn more about the Silver Center Staff here.

I asked Melissa if she believed that interdisciplinarity was important for her career.  She referred again to all of the different people she has to work with to make sure a show is ready to go and couldn’t express enough how important it was.  Without each and every person that goes to those production meetings, Melissa wouldn’t be able to adequately do her job.

Without Melissa Furbish, the Silver Center for the Arts would be at a loss.  Melissa’s job is at the core of the functionality within the building that most of us take for granted on the daily.  After years as a performing musician in the capital of jazz music, she has the experience and ability to bring together each separate limb of the Silver Center to form a strong body with her as the mind.  And she doesn’t even ask for recognition.  Melissa Furbish is the Silent Star of Silver.

 

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Transdisciplinarity

I’ll start this in the most boring of ways.  With a definition.  Transdisciplinarity is, according to Repko, “the cooperation of academics, stakeholders, and practitioners to solver complex societal or environmental problems of common interest with the goal of resolving them by designing and implementing public policy.”  Does that sound complicated?  It is but it isn’t.  Basically, it is the use of both academics and non academics from multiple different disciplines in order to solve a problems.  

Imagine taking a mathematician who knows everything about math but nothing about the trades and a tradesman who knows little about advanced math as well as a woman who has a masters in physics with a focus in acoustics.  These people work together with students at a performance arts center in order to create the best auditorium for theatre.  Alone, none of these people would have been able to do this.  Academics alone wouldn’t know exactly what the people need without the peoples help.

These scholars, tradesman and students, each from different worlds when it comes to the understanding of an auditorium, would work together in an transdisciplinary way to create the best outcome.  Transdisciplinarity takes interdisciplinarity in an academic way and combines it with the consensus of the people that will be affected by the research at hand.  In this way, everyone’s voices gets heard and the academics in charge of doing the research know what the people want.

Resources

Repko, Allen F., Rick Szostak, Michelle Phillips Buchberger. Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies.California: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2014. Print.

DonkeyHotey, Yin Yang Symbol, 2011

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