Interdisciplinary Summer Institutes on Puget Sound The proposed project focuses on Puget Sound, a 200 mile waterway extending from Vancouver Island and the Canadian border to Olympia, Washington. This waterway has a rich history and provides an ideal environment for studying a variety of interdisciplinary topics and issues. The purpose of the project is to upgrade the technical content of faculty from two- and four- year colleges in Washington State relative to the cultural history, current environmental issues, and the ecology of Puget Sound; to provide the opportunity to learn about new interdisciplinary curricular designs, and to learn and try out new field techniques and new pedagogical approaches. Three six- or seven-day interdisciplinary summer institutes focusing on Puget Sound will be offered over the two-year period of the grant. The three institutes will have a total of 75 faculty participants from two- and four-year colleges. Follow-up activities after the institutes include a small seed grant program, follow-up sessions, an end-of-project symposium on Puget Sound, and communication among the participants via Internet and a newsletter. Various end products include a slide set, an annotated bibliography and a resource guide. The Summer Institutes, which are the core of the project design, are miniature versions of some of the most successful interdisciplinary programs in the state. They provide a "high challenge" curriculum and are based upon pedagogical principles that are recommended by an increasingly convergent literature on improving education in the sciences.
