Program Overview

The Beyond Boundaries Program is a two- or four-year program that allows students to be a part of an ecosystem of interdisciplinary scholars intent on problem solving through cross-discipline collaboration.

The Beyond Boundaries Program will prepare student scholars to engage in interdisciplinary teams and will center around three pillars:

1. Academic preparation for interdisciplinary work
2. Ecosystem of scholars intent on problem solving through cross-discipline collaboration
3. Ongoing support across four years at Washington University

Throughout their time in the program, students will focus on three questions:

1. What role(s) do I want to play on collaborative problem-solving teams?
2. What skills, knowledge, and partnerships are necessary for interdisciplinary work?
3. How can I use my time at Washington University to grow these skills?

Learning Objectives

Students participating in the Beyond Boundaries Program will be able to do the following:

• Describe the value of interdisciplinary approaches to problem solving.
• Apply disciplinary perspectives to interdisciplinary problem solving.
• Assemble interdisciplinary teams around a problem or subject.
• Design interventions/solutions based on interdisciplinary perspectives.
• Facilitate and organize collaborative teams.

Program Completion

Students who participate in and complete the program requirements for their first two years will receive a milestone notation on their official transcript. A description of specific program requirements can be found on the Curriculum tab of this page.

Program students then have the option to leave the program after year two or continue to participate for years three and four. Those who complete years three and four will received an additional milestone notation on their official transcript.

The minimum grade point average requirements needed to maintain eligibility for Satisfactory Academic Progress are dictated by the specific program of study. In each case, per the requirements of 34 C.F.R. 668.34(a)(4(ii), the federal student aid program requires a minimum of a C average to maintain eligibility for aid, but an individual degree or certificate program may have a higher minimum GPA for federal Satisfactory Academic Progress. Beyond Boundaries Program students are required to maintain a 2.0 cumulative GPA. To be in good academic standing in the program on a semesterly basis, students are expected to complete a minimum of 12 units per semester with a minimum 2.0 semester GPA.

Phase 1: Foundation (Years 1 and 2)

Year 1 (6 required credits)

Year 1 requirements include an introductory curricular sequence that teaches writing, the framework of interdisciplinary study, and collaborative problem solving, as well as one Beyond Boundaries course:

• Beyond Boundaries Seminar (3 credits total, 1 credit in fall and 2 credits in spring)
• Beyond Boundaries Courses (3 credits, 1 course in fall or spring)

College Writing (a supporting course): Analytical, communication, and research skills are critical to interdisciplinary practice. Through College Writing, students will have the opportunity to practice these skills in skills through a variety texts, contexts, and approaches they can carry with them in the Beyond Boundaries Program.

Fall Semester

• Beyond Boundaries Seminar (1 credit, Beyond Boundaries Program students only)
• One Beyond Boundaries Course (3 credits, either fall or spring)

Spring Semester

• Beyond Boundaries Seminar (2 credits, Beyond Boundaries Program students only)
• One Beyond Boundaries Course (3 credits, either fall or spring)

Year 2: Beyond Boundaries programming and self-directed interdisciplinary learning

In Year 2 of the program, students will shift to self-directed learning. Components of this year include the following:

• Participation in Beyond Boundaries peer mentoring
• Beyond Boundaries workshops and events
• Engagement in on-/off-campus activities, such as these:
  • Speakers or exhibits
  • Networking events or workshops
  • Community service/volunteering events
  • Seminars or conferences
  • Internships/fellowships
  • Interdisciplinary courses/projects/programs

These various opportunities are designed to allow students the flexibility to achieve their academic and cocurricular goals beyond the Beyond Boundaries Program, while keeping them connected to the program community.

Students who complete Years 1 and 2 of the Beyond Boundaries Program receive a milestone notation on their transcript. Students may opt to continue this program into their third and fourth years.

For more information, please review the Beyond Boundaries Program's detailed description of self-directed learning.

Note: Students need to complete all of the requirements for Phase 1 of the Beyond Boundaries Program in order to continue on to Phase 2.

Phase 2: Focus (Years 3 and 4)

Year 3: Beyond Boundaries programming and self-directed interdisciplinary learning

The components mentioned above in Year 2 will also be applicable in Years 3 and 4. In addition, students in this second phase of the program will begin receiving support as they start working on their interdisciplinary capstone projects and thesis papers.

Year 4

This final year will culminate in the completion of the above-mentioned program requirements, including the incorporation of a capstone project or thesis paper.

Students who meet the program requirements of this second phase of the program will receive an additional milestone notation on their official transcript.

Year 1 Courses for Beyond Boundaries Students

Core Courses

To find Beyond Boundaries courses in Workday, search “Beyond Boundaries.”

Beyond Boundaries Seminar (3 credits total)

The knowledge gained in the Beyond Boundaries Seminar is designed to contribute to academic success, personal development, and a more rewarding social and academic experience over the course of the college experience. This is a 3-credit course (total) offered during both the fall and spring semesters during the first year. The fall includes a 1-credit (1 hour) class, and the spring offers a 1-credit (1 hour) class and a separate 1-credit (1 hour) discussion section.

BEYOND 1000: Beyond Boundaries Seminar

The Beyond Boundaries Seminar is designed to support students' development in interdisciplinary thinking and collaborative problem solving. Over the course of two semesters, students will engage in discussions, workshops, skill-building exercises, and panel presentations to grow their skills and knowledge in these areas. Over the course of the academic year, we will ask the following questions:

1. What role(s) do I want to play on collaborative problem-solving teams?
2. What skills and knowledge are necessary for interdisciplinary work?
3. How can I use my time at Washington University to grow these skills?

This course (for credit only) is required for all first-year students in the Beyond Boundaries Program and open only to first-year students in the Beyond Boundaries Program.

Beyond Boundaries Courses (3 credits each, open to all first-year students)

In addition to the course mentioned above, first-year students in the Beyond Boundaries Program will be required to complete one Beyond Boundaries course (during their first year), for which they will have priority enrollment.

Beyond Boundaries courses, which are funded by the Office of the Provost and offered to first-year students only, are designed to prepare students for a rapidly evolving world characterized by social, political, scientific, and economic challenges that cannot be solved using knowledge from a single discipline. Team-taught by faculty from different schools across Washington University, Beyond Boundaries courses offer a window into how scholars from different disciplines approach big, critical topics such as our aging population, the nature of creativity, the phenomenon of climate change, and the art of medicine.

Not all courses are offered every year.

BEYOND 1001: Beyond Boundaries: Earth's Future: Causes and Consequences of Global Climate Change

Climate change is said by many to be one of the most important issues of our time. This course examines 1) the physical basis for climate change; 2) how climates are changing and how we know and assess that climates are changing; and 3) the effects of climate change on natural and human systems. The course is team-taught and will involve participation by scholars across the university with expertise in specific subjects. Earth’s Future is a broad, introductory course for first-year students. While this course presumes no special subject matter knowledge on the part of the student you will be exposed to a broad array of scholarship across the sciences, social sciences, engineering, and humanities.

BEYOND 1002: Beyond Boundaries: The Business of Elections

BEYOND 1003: Beyond Boundaries: When I'm 64: Preparing Ourselves and Society for a Good Long Life

Whether you know it or not, you’re living in the midst of a revolution — a revolution that is going to change your personal and professional lives. Although old age may seem a long way off, you’ll likely live to age 80 or beyond, with a 50% chance of seeing your 100th birthday. The demographic revolution you’re going to live through will change the health care you receive, the house you live in, the car you drive, the jobs you do, and the relationships you have. This class will give you a competitive edge in understanding how you can harness what’s happening to shape your career and lifestyle. In class you’ll be introduced to leaders and ideas from many fields — medicine, engineering, architecture, public health, social work, law, business, art, and psychology — focused on the issues of our aging society. There will also be opportunities to tailor the class to your interests through events on and off campus, including movies, lectures, performances, field trips, and community projects. Each week, we’ll gather for lectures and also break into small groups for discussion. This course will set you on a path to lead the aging revolution and transform the society of tomorrow.

BEYOND 1004: Beyond Boundaries: To Sustainability and Beyond: People, Planet, Prosperity (P3)

This class examines the subject of sustainability from multiple perspectives to gain an appreciation for its interconnected environmental, social, and economic dimensions. We explore foundational concepts and principles through a variety of activities and assignments, including readings, discussions, group work, case studies, presentations, and projects. The goal is to integrate knowledge and methods from different disciplines to achieve a holistic understanding of sustainability problems and solutions.

BEYOND 1005: Beyond Boundaries: The Endgame of Entrepreneurship: Leveraging Capitalism for Good

Historically, profit has been a key driver of human behavior. In this class, students will learn to take advantage of the profit-seeking motive of capitalism while also learning from mistakes and unintended consequences capitalism has caused throughout history. Students will apply these learnings toward profit-seeking solutions for the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals — which are global challenges that call us to work together with boldness and urgency. We will explore how skills from entrepreneurship and venture creation can be used to improve water, climate, education and gender equality globally and here in St. Louis. In interdisciplinary teams, students will learn how to define a problem; listen to customers, competitors and collaborators; create value; measure impact; and communicate their vision. Bold entrepreneurial spirit and skills learned in this class will guide students in their further WashU studies and beyond.

BEYOND 1006: Beyond Boundaries: Gender, Youth, and Global Health

Through in-depth case studies, this course provides an introduction to gender-specific issues in the context of childhood and adolescence, poverty, and global health. Students will learn to identify how gender and gender differences affect conditions of life in the areas of reproductive health, nutrition, conflict, access to healthcare, and the social determinants of health, especially for young people. Students will learn to analyze health conditions and disparities in relation to both the micro dynamics of local worlds and the macro dynamics of large-scale social forces in the postcolonial global field. In addition, students will come to understand the current challenges that global health practitioners and institutions confront in achieving gender equity and the current efforts toward closing the gap. These learning objectives will be achieved using lectures as well as discussion-based sessions and Skype-based interactions with NGOs and experts who are currently working in the field.

BEYOND 1007: Beyond Boundaries: Designing Creativity: Innovation Across Disciplines

From “Ah-ha” epiphanies to slow-developing discoveries, the creative process has been employed by innovators and artists in virtually every corner of the globe for centuries. Designing Creativity is a course that will explore the study and practice of the creative process across many disciplines with input from prominent thinkers and practitioners in the areas of medicine, neuroscience, law, engineering, architecture, human-centered design, business, stage design, and the performing arts. The class will also incorporate practice of design thinking and creativity techniques in a LAB component that will allow students to explore the development of innovative ideas in collaborative teams followed by project presentations to core faculty and classmates.

BEYOND 1008: Beyond Boundaries: Religious Freedom in America

The intersection of religion and law in American society has sparked some of the fiercest cultural engagements in recent memory: Should a for-profit religious corporation have a right not to fund birth control for its employees? Can a public college expel campus religious groups whose membership is not open to all students? May a Muslim grow a beard for religious reasons in prison? Should a cake baker or a florist be permitted to refuse services for a gay wedding? Can a church hire and fire its ministers for any reason? These current debates and the issues that frame them are interwoven in the American story. This course introduces students to the major texts and historical arguments underlying that story. Drawing from the respective expertise of the instructors, it exposes students to a variety of scholarly methods related to the issue: legal history and case law, intellectual history and canonical texts, social history and narrative accounts, and political philosophy and contemporary analyses. For more from these professors, listen to their podcast episode.

BEYOND 1009: Beyond Boundaries: The Art of Medicine

This interdisciplinary, cross-school course at the intersection of history, visual culture and the visual arts includes a roster of notable speakers and offers students a singular encounter with western medicine from ancient times to the present day. In tandem with the history of medicine, the course examines the capacity of the arts to frame medical practice and to raise questions and influence perceptions, both positively and negatively, of medical advancements.

BEYOND 1012: Beyond Boundaries: St. Louis and the Documentary Image

From magazines to maps to documentary movies and TV, we look to pictures to tell us the truth. But no image is ever completely objective; every visual reflection of the real world is mediated by technology, culture, politics, and memory. How do we — as viewers, as creators, as people — sort out the complicated claims pictures make on the world around us? Drawing on collaborations between four areas in two schools — Visual Arts, English, American Culture Studies, and Film and Media Studies — this course will introduce students to theories and practices of visual nonfiction within the city of Saint Louis. Through immersive, site-specific course units focused on a variety of approaches to visual nonfiction in different media, students will engage with the tumultuous history, material culture, and landscapes of St. Louis. The course will introduce first-year students both to their city and their university, preparing them to explore existing coursework in Arts & Sciences and the Sam Fox School.

BEYOND 1013: Beyond Boundaries: Morality and Markets

What does it look like to live a moral life in today’s market system? We know all too well what it does not look like. The news is filled with moral failures of leaders and executives at top firms. We like to believe that we would behave differently, but what kinds of pressures inform our moral choices? What pulls us, what pushes us, and what persuades us to act one way rather than another? These are the questions that a course combining business and literature can address in unique ways; the world of fiction helps us to examine the ethical dilemmas of the market we inhabit every day. In this course, we use great books, classics of film and modern television, and the tools of modern psychology and business strategy to think critically about what is entailed in living a moral life in the midst of the modern market.

BEYOND 1014: Beyond Boundaries: Environmental Racism and the Health of Everyone

Environmental inequalities threaten the health and well-being of low-income communities and communities of color who are increasingly on the front lines in the fight against climate change, air and water pollution, food security, and many other urgent environmental problems. Like many urban areas, the St. Louis region faces egregious social, environmental and health disparities. In this course, we critically examine the role of racism and other structural policy inequalities that produce unequal environments and how those unequal environments contribute to public health disparities in St. Louis and beyond. We explore the use of public health data, policy options, and case studies that allow for evidence-based solutions to environmental racism and improved population health. This course that combines small group sessions, case studies and speakers working on environmental justice in the St. Louis region. We provide students with interdisciplinary perspectives and methods, challenging them to address racism and environmental policy through a population health lens. Student learning will be assessed through case studies, reflections, online assignments, and exams.

Bear Bridge Courses (3 credits): Spring Semester

In the spring semester, first-year students in the Beyond Boundaries Program have an opportunity to apply their interdisciplinary knowledge to important social and intellectual questions via a Bear Bridge course.

Bear Bridge courses are intended to do the following:

• Apply knowledge and experience from team-taught Beyond Boundaries courses in a project-based, applied context.
• Reinforce cohort experience within the Beyond Boundaries Program. Students enrolled in the Beyond Boundaries Program will have additional curricular and cocurricular cohort-building experiences, and Bear Bridge courses will reinforce these connections.
• Prepare students for ongoing interdisciplinary approaches in their following three years on campus. Bear Bridge courses will give students a set of tools to apply interdisciplinary approaches, including informing their choice of major, their approach to their capstone project, and their self-identity as a scholar.

BEYOND 1010: Beyond Boundaries: Empathy First: Creating Solutions with Heart

Decisions that impact the daily lives of people are often made without consideration of the lived experience of those impacted, resulting in harm and eroded trust. Empathy is a critical tool for understanding the lived experience of others and creating better quality of life for all people. This course will introduce the integration of empathy into decisions through the methods, processes, and approaches used in design and social work. Students will examine how empathy is incorporated into the development and implementation of new solutions to wicked problems through conversations with experts in health, law, and business; community-based team projects; and reflection and discussion.

BEYOND 1011: Beyond Boundaries: Law, Race, and Design: Examining the St. Louis Story

This interdisciplinary course focuses on the intersection of law, race, and design in St. Louis. From Dred Scott to Ferguson, St. Louis has served as a focal point for some of the most important issues in our country’s long and still unfinished work toward racial equality. The law has played an important role in these developments; judicial opinions, city ordinances, and commission reports have shaped how we understand questions of race and equality. But the law is not simply the written word: it involves people, practices, places, and the stories we tell about them. How we communicate our stories ultimately affects how we understand those stories and how we understand ourselves. This course situates law within stories and equips students to communicate those stories in ways that draw from a range of communication design methodological tools. Using design research, thinking, and a human-centered design approach, this course will challenge students to connect the words of legal documents with the experiences of those whose lives are situated by them. There will be two required self-guided visits outside of normal class time, each of which should take 2.5 to 3 hours, including travel to and from the site. Accommodations for normal class sessions (either ending early or canceling class) will take place to offset some of this time commitment.

Supporting Courses

College Writing (3 credits)

Analytical, communication, and research skills are critical to interdisciplinary practice. Through College Writing, students will have the opportunity to practice these skills through a variety texts, contexts, and approaches that they can carry with them in the Beyond Boundaries Program.