INTERDISCIPLINARY
Experience: UMBC Summer CoLab Internship
Level: Silver
Description and Reflection:
Last summer, I worked on the Carbon Zero project with an interdisciplinary team of faculty and students. The goal was to create a series of videos on UMBC's current Climate Action Plan. These videos centered on four major areas that UMBC is focusing on: Transportation, Waste, Research, and Energy. My team consisted of students studying English and Media and Communications Studies (MCS) as well as a faculty mentor in the MCS department and scientist that conducts research and the Joint Systems of Earth Technologies on campus. This was a valuable experience because I was able to learn how to communicate science through media. The videos featured interviews from multiple faculty and administrators on campus who are actively teaching about environment/sustainability or integrating sustainable technology projects on campus. The video that I primarily worked on focused on UMBC's energy projects on campus which include more efficient lighting as well as purchasing renewable energy credits from offshore solar and wind farms.
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This project required 40 hours a week for 4 weeks totaling to 160 hours.
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This project is directly related to my grand challenge of restoring and improving urban infrastructure. This is because this project aimed at raising awareness of how UMBC is currently improving its transportation and energy infrastructure to become more environmentally friendly and sustainable for future generations.
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Program Learning Objectives:
Perspectivism: The purpose of creating these videos was to give faculty, administrators, and students the space to express their views on UMBC’s action on energy, transportation, and waste initiatives at UMBC. For this reason, these videos match with the learning objective of perspectivism because it featured voices from a variety of departments at UMBC. Because climate change and action affects everyone, it is important to share as much perspective as possible in order to share the reality of its effects.
Teamwork: When producing the video and interviewing people, my teammates and I switched the roles of the recorder, sound monitor and notetaker so that we were able to develop all of our skillsets. In addition, some of us were less experiences in video editing so the people who were more advanced were able to share their skills.
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Interdisciplinary Learning Objectives:
Identify the different disciplines that contribute to the solution of a complex problem: In order to create this project, it required people from different disciplines. My team consisted of an English writing major, a Media and Communications major, and a Chemical Engineering major. This is because we were all aiming for the common goal of communicating a scientific problem and so this required people of different strengths and interests.
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Describe and apply strategies for creating common ground between different disciplinary perspectives: In order to create common ground, it is important to remain open-minded to learning about other people and their perspectives. Before we came up with our ideas for our videos, we came together with a common vision: to make UMBC’s climate initiatives more transparent to faculty and students.
Describe and apply bridging strategies that facilitate the conscious integration of different disciplines: Communication, listening, responding to feedback, conducting research are all ways to facilitate the conscious integration of different disciplines. When we were creating the videos on UMBC’s climate action initiatives, all of us came together with people and faculty we would interview and the types of questions we would ask.