Academic Leadership
Emergent Studies
In 2019/2020, I led an interdisciplinary initiative at the University of New Haven to form a new self-designed major. The program, Emergent Studies, will form an interdisciplinary community of students and faculty. The program focuses on student-led projects that don’t fit easily into single majors. Students work with peers, senior students, and multiple faculty advisers to develop their own major courses of study. A distinguishing feature of this program is a focus on guiding students who enter the university as "undeclared." Emergent Studies acknowledges this undecided moment in a student's college trajectory as a space of personal discovery and opportunity. In my role as head of this initiative, I recruited faculty affiliates from across all colleges at the University of New Haven, led brainstorming meetings, designed the first three years of the program, wrote grants, and met with administration.