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Multiple barriers in the structure and function of American higher education conspire to impede the success of interdisciplinary programs in environmental studies. We present an amalgamated narrative case study to illustrate how barriers operate both independently and in concert to undermine individual and programmatic goals, innovation, and operations, resulting in lost opportunities for faculty, students, and curricula, and other program elements. Barriers are illustrated stemming from a variety of sources, including academic organizational culture, structure, and leadership. An analysis of three main barriers and strategies to address them led us to produce recommendations that foster new patterns of faculty interaction and leadership. These recommendations are based on a foundation of human dignity, shared respect, and common values. In turn, they require a clear conception of interdisciplinarity and integration, and practical means to achieve them in diverse contexts.

The contemporary fields of interdisciplinary studies and the policy sciences have evolved over similar intellectual paths and timelines, beginning in the early 20th century. Both have their roots in professional efforts--within and outside the academy--to address numerous, growing, and complex problems that face humanity. The policy sciences' approach to integration via interdisciplinarity serves the civic and public processes of community and decision making that address these problems, while at the same time respecting the individual human being. This goal explicitly seeks dignity for all individuals in healthy environments. The policy sciences offer a framework and an intellectual toolbox with a fundamental set of operations to achieve integration via interdisciplinarity in the interests of problem solving. This framework guides interdisciplinarity in practical, teachable, and learnable terms, the history of which mirrors the evolution of interdisciplinary studies. A review of the policy sciences in the context of interdisciplinary studies emphasizes their shared heritage and raises important questions about how isolated communities of scholars and practitioners with a convergent evolution might collaborate to promote greater achievement of their common goals.

Adequately responding to our deteriorating environmental and social situation is a matter of increasing urgency. An obstacle to achieving a concerted response is the way that we have normalized "convention," or as some authors claim "thoughtless convention." The author takes on this obstacle (i.e., convention, thoughtlessness) as the primary subject of this paper. We all live in the everyday, averaged-off way things are done, understood, and thought about in our respective cultures (this is convention). Problems are typically framed, embodied, and emplaced from within convention using a "metaphysics of control and mastery or dominance" over the biophysical world. Conventionally, this is the doctrine of scientific positivism mixed with neoliberal capitalistic economics. It plays out in complex ways with consequences. Too often, this approach blocks what should count as our appropriate relationship ("sustainability," coexistence) with the world, including non-human life. Accepting convention (status quo), which is very widely accepted, absolves us from thinking too deeply or looking at ourselves and our problems. This doctrine keeps us in a certain kind of dialectic of the "practical," concrete, and literal. In turn, this translates into the present social and political organization of our culture, problem solving heuristics, and academic curriculums. As a deeply rooted psychological mindset and way to frame problems, convention serves as an existential coping mechanism to avoid examination of self and culture, actual problems, and a way to reject promising alternatives, especially integrative functional approaches. Perhaps convention is so widespread because of these evolutionary/psychological dynamics and because there are so many problems--personal to global--that we do not understand or know how to address. Consequently, it is extremely hard to even question the pervasive conventional framing of our situation and current entrenched thought and operations. Fortunately, some people move beyond convention integrating conventional and functional understandings to address problems. An integrative standpoint looks for connections, relationships, and systems properties across social processes and decision making. It offers a way to orient to problems more reliably than convention allows. Frameworks exist for integration that have proven helpful. As an inquiry into convention, the author looks at our contemporary problems, our evolutionary history, problem solving, the academy and education, and offers a brief overview. Recommendations are about (1) helping people, leaders, and institutions, (2) learning integrative concepts and operations for effectively orienting to problems, functionally in realistic and pragmatic ways, and, (3) developing education in the academy to upskill students and address problems. The future, our global solidarity, and any global movements to address problems will depend on the learning and transformations we can bring about. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets up a scenario about Rebecca, a jobseeker, who is a fictitious composite, a "typical" candidate who wants a position at a college/university. A job description is provided. She interviews for the advertised position, and while doing so, she also interviews the university, school/department, and working environment to see if there is a match with her goals. She goes about her own interviewing using observational, interactive, and analytic approaches, which are described. Rebecca had to clarify her goals in terms of interdisciplinarity, collegiality, and the kind of community that she ideally wants. She found shortfalls between what was advertised and the actual program and also the setting in which she ideally would like to work. This is problematic for her, but she is pragmatic and knows she needs a job. The scenario ends with Rebecca exploring her options. This paper will be of interest to anyone seeking an environmental job in academia.

This case addresses the events that unfolded after a high school teacher displayed a Confederate flag in the classroom as a visual aid to instruction on the causes and effects of the Civil War. Although the curriculum specifically required students to learn the meaning and use of symbols and provided for the use of the flag, and the principals authorized its use, the teacher was subject to disciplinary action for the disruption that its display caused in the community at large. The situation implicates the First Amendment, collective bargaining, employment law, and raises important perspectives on professional leadership competencies as identified by the Interstate Leaders' Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) standards for administrative practice. The case is designed for use by principals and superintendents and can be used in courses addressing politics, policy, school-community relations, curriculum, and law.