Talk touts benefits of interdisciplinary approach, as well as some of its pitfalls
BY RAHUL KANAKIA
Donald Barr
Sociology Associate Professor Donald Barr has found that his students really enjoy interdisciplinary research and the opportunity it gives them to apply theoretical knowledge to real-world problems.
But in academia, he said, interdisciplinary studies are not an assured path to success. Barr, who is the director of the Program in Human Biology's health policy concentration, focused on these observations in his Feb. 1 presentation, "Standing at the Abyss: Teaching in an Interdisciplinary Context." The talk was part of the Award-Winning Teachers on Teaching series, which is sponsored by the Center for Teaching and Learning.
Barr attributes the success of interdisciplinary programs to their focus on practical applications. Students want to know how their knowledge can help people. In interdisciplinary programs, they not only gain knowledge, they also learn how to apply it to their own research and to policy work. For instance, the Program in Human Biology allows students to apply biology and behavioral science to policy topics such as the environment and health care.
But the academic establishment is not as enthusiastic about interdisciplinary work, Barr said. "Sociologist Edward Abbott talked about the way the professions, such as the profession of academics, divide themselves up into status hierarchies," he explained. "They do it by tending to withdraw into themselves. Those professionals who receive the highest status from their professional peers work in the most purely professional environment."
According to Barr, professors who focus on interdisciplinary studies isolate themselves from the core of their field, where an academic generally makes a name for himself by publishing in select journals on key topics that are of interest to academic colleagues. In contrast, interdisciplinary studies focus on the fringes of a field, which lowers an academic's reputation in the eyes of his peers and hurts his chances for tenure.
Barr recommended that a newly minted PhD interested in interdisciplinary topics should either focus on the core of his field for a few years and earn tenure before pursuing those interests, or he should try to work at a small liberal arts college or state university that encourages interdisciplinary studies.
Barr earned a bachelor's degree in biology from Oberlin College in 1968 and a medical degree from University of California-San Francisco in 1973. He returned to school in 1988, receiving a doctorate in sociology from Stanford in 1994. After refusing a tenure-track position at the University of Washington because he did not want to uproot his son, he went back to practicing medicine and worked in Stanford's Human Biology Program as a lecturer.
Barr's first course focused on the American health-care system. "They told me there would be only 25 to 30 students," he said. "Guess what? Eighty students showed up. And over the next few years that course grew to 200 students. They found it really exciting to be in this course and talk about health care and HMOs from a sociological and cultural perspective. And they said, 'Can't we do more?'"
In response, Barr added classes on health-care reform and inequalities within the health-care system, which became the foundation of the Human Biology Program's concentration in health policy. Eventually, after the City University of New York offered him a professorship, Stanford made him a teaching professor. In 2003, Barr was awarded the Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for Distinctive and Exceptional Contributions to Undergraduate Education, Stanford's highest award for excellence in teaching.
Rahul Kanakia is a science-writing intern at Stanford News Service.
