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by Daniel Bartlett
March 27,
2017
from
Concordia Website
This summer,
20 grad students look for
solutions
during a week-long
interdisciplinary
intensive course.
This May and June,
20 graduate students from across all disciplines will take part in
the Concordia University Interdisciplinary Summer Institute (CUISI).
The intensive
week-long course will explore ideas for a more sustainable future.
Interdisciplinary
research is growing in popularity on most university campuses.
But just what is it
exactly?
"In my view,
interdisciplinarity is an attempt to use methods from one
discipline in another to get a deeper understanding of a
problem," says
Paul Shrivastava, professor of management in the
John Molson School
of Business.
Interdisciplinary
approaches to sustainability
Shrivastava's CUISI
seminar during this year's summer institute will approach the notion
of culture as leverage for urban resiliency.
He hopes the
session will challenge students to think more broadly by integrating
knowledge from various sources.
"My portion is
on
Future Earth, an international research platform for
sustainability sciences," he says, adding that there is a need
to understand sustainability as a truly planetary problem.
The session is
shared with
Carmela Cucuzzella, Concordia University Research Chair in Integrated
Design, Ecology and Sustainability for the Built Environment.
Cucuzzella, who is
also an associate professor of design and computational arts in the
Faculty of Fine Arts, recalls meeting Shrivastava and being
taken aback by the similarities in their research paradigms.
Their relationship
eventually spawned one of her current projects,
Collaboratoire.
"The aim of
Collaboratoire is to design and implement a series of public
space installations along Sherbrooke Street that provide the
community with knowledge about climate change issues or
solutions in an interactive or playful manner."
Cucuzzella wants
students to walk away from the seminar with an appreciation for
using the city as a lab to conduct research and as a space to
disseminate scientific knowledge.
Sustainable solutions
Ketra Schmitt,
an associate professor with the Centre
for Engineering in Society, is another CUISI guest lecturer.
Her portion of the
course will discuss modeling sustainable systems.
"My focus has
always been on the connections between people, their
environment, science and policy," says Schmitt, who is also the
program director for Concordia's
Individualized Program.
"When students
are given the opportunity to make connections and collaborate
across disciplines, they can develop innovative solutions to our
toughest problems."
Cucuzzella agrees.
"The
interdisciplinary nature of our studies - especially at the
graduate level - is inevitable when we talk about
sustainability," she says.
"Understanding
how solar technology can be even smaller and more efficient is
important, but that alone is not going to get us to a
sustainable future."
Just 20 applicants will be selected to attend the
Concordia University Interdisciplinary Summer Institute, which
runs from May 29 to June 2.
Apply today...!
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