Interdisciplinary programs combine majors in US Universities

Melanie Gagich, Director of a first-year writing course at Cleveland State University, with zero knowledge of computer science grabbed the opportunity to merge English with computer science when her university invited faculty to propose new interdisciplinary programs combining existing majors. “A lot of students worry, I think, about being an English major, because they’re always like, ‘Well, can I get a job with that?’ That was sort of our inspiration”, said Melanie Gagich.

Cleveland State University is unique in its approach and it offers computer science combinations with majors such as design, psychology, journalism and sociology. Cleveland State University’s Provost, Nigamanth Sridhar said, “As a regional public, as an institution that seeks to serve this community, we said, what do our employers need?”

This recognition was the spark for one of the first integrated majors established at the university, as part of a larger endeavor by 10 universities in designing combined majors in collaboration with Northeastern University's Center for Inclusive Computing (CIC). The program has been supported by the National Science Foundation. In 2001, Northeastern University initiated the notion of computer science combined with other disciplines in establishing the CS+X program. Today, it offers over 270 combined majors, with 8,401 students enrolled.

Carla Brodley, CIC director, identified two key ideas behind the program's success. Every field requires some understanding of technology at present. As she put it, “every field is a tech field,” with various roles that demand individuals to develop the software and tools essential for today’s digital world. Second, the program aims to attract underrepresented groups, especially women and Hispanic students to the computer science field.

Other Universities, such as the University of Illinois witnessed the success and commenced the CS+X programs. However, Stanford's pilot program didn’t work out since the students participating in it had intensive course loads.

The integrated program model aims to bring computing to students' existing interests, particularly encouraging more female students to pursue computer science. “My background is in software engineering and it’s well known that diverse development teams and organizations just perform better than a homogeneous, sort of bro-culture type of development team”, said Mats Heimdahl, Head of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota.