Degree Requirements
Successful Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies (MAIS) candidates must complete 36 credit hours of academic
coursework, including a capstone research project. The MAIS program has the following core requirements:Two Interdisciplinary Seminars (12 hours)
The first two semesters of the program consist of team-taught, six-credit-hour core interdisciplinary seminars which are taken sequentially. The team-teaching approach to the interdisciplinary seminars represents a commitment to multiple disciplinary perspectives as an appropriate approach to questions or problems greater in scope than any single discipline could adequately address.
Elective courses, typically four at 4 hours each (16 hours)
The program also includes elective seminars with more narrow or specialized foci. The elective seminars will provide balance in the MAIS program by showing a contrast between a graduate-level, discipline-based approach to a defined problem, and the approach used in the interdisciplinary seminars to study big questions.
Proposal Development (1-4 hours)
In their penultimate term, students will register for the proposal development course. In this course the student will work with individual faculty to develop a capstone proposal, which must be submitted to and approved by the Graduate Studies Council before the student will be allowed to register for the capstone course.
Capstone Research Project (4 hours)
The capstone course creates opportunities for reflection, assessment, integration, and demonstration of competence to unify and support the individual’s experience in the MAIS program. Individuals must have the proposal for the capstone project approved by the Graduate Studies Council prior to enrolling in the capstone course.
The intended goals of the course are:
- To interpret individual experience in the MAIS program holistically and as it relates to individual goals.
- To examine and articulate the meaning of interdisciplinarity.
- To integrate coursework through the discovery of commonalities.
- To assess educational outcomes of interdisciplinary study.
- To demonstrate competence in the application of interdisciplinary analysis and significant research resulting in the capstone project.
- To reflect on the cognitive and affective experience of doing interdisciplinary work.