Over the past quarter-century, the traditional disciplinary boundaries among fields concerned with Culture, Mind, Brain, and Development (CBD) have been eroding. Long-standing barriers to interactions and integrations among the neural, psychological, and social sciences have begun to collapse. Disciplinary integration not only poses serious challenges in and of itself, but also promises to raise new questions that will drive the most innovative research of the future. Before these ends can be achieved, the challenges of developing and organizing integrative undergraduate curricula that will better both liberal education and the training of future researchers must be met. This workshop will focus on emerging trends in interdisciplinary research and the implications of these trends for undergraduate curriculum development. Leaders in both interdisciplinary research and undergraduate education will attend the workshop to engage in a productive engagement across fields that have traditionally emphasized different theoretical stances and methods. A special emphasis will be placed on developmental perspectives, which are a key to moving beyond traditional unresolved and oversimplified tensions, such as nature vs. nurture, universals vs. specificity, and brain vs. culture. Workshop activities will include talks on current research, small-group sessions devoted to community building and issue definition, presentations of model interdisciplinary courses and curricula, and final consolidating sessions for articulating an agenda for the future. The workshop will produce four objectives. First, a final report summarizing the intellectual substance of CBD intersections will be written, as will an agenda for changes in undergraduate teaching and fostering appreciation for interdisciplinary perspectives in future researchers. Second, a website comprising the results of the workshop and provisions for ongoing contributions from the CBD community will be created. Third, an edited volume containing papers from the workshop will be published. Fourth, workshop findings, recommendations, and models will be presented at national academic conferences and at the home institutions of workshop participants.
The workshop will promote the infusion into undergraduate education of new questions, interdisciplinary perspectives, theories, methods, and findings that are at one of the most critical frontiers of contemporary science. One workshop focus, on general education, will contribute to the education of a citizenry that can intelligently confront the profound moral and social issues that are arising from the convergence of biological and social science. The growing role of evolutionary theory, molecular biology, and neuroscience in the scientific understanding of mind and culture threatens traditional conceptions of free will, individual responsibility, values, life and death, permissible medical technologies, human origins, and the meaning of life itself. Changes that reduce the divisions among natural science, social science, and humanities curricula are required to prepare students to deal with these issues productively, rather than through avoidance or outright rejection of the relevant science. A second focus of the workshop, on upper-level undergraduate instruction, will enhance graduate training and scientific research by developing strategies to promote the interests and preparation of students at the intersections of culture, mind, brain, and development. New upper-level undergraduate courses and research experiences are needed to launch students on research careers armed with the cutting-edge knowledge.
