Interdisciplinary research and teaching go hand-in-hand. At the University of Birmingham, our pioneering research helps students reach their full potential across a broad range of cross-cutting themes – as demonstrated by our Liberal Arts and Natural Sciences Unit (LANS)
In Autumn 2023, LANS will welcome its tenth cohort of undergraduate students to Birmingham.
Professor Spencer recalls the early conversations that began to frame the introduction of a truly interdisciplinary degree offering. “It was quite an exciting moment in global higher education. The North American Liberal Arts model had been around for a long time, but institutions like Melbourne were starting to explore further structural approaches to breaking down the traditional norms for a degree and modelling their student experience on more thematic areas at the point of entry.”
The University of Birmingham, along with some other leading UK institutions, began to develop their own interdisciplinary offers in what was at the time considered quite a radical departure from the prevalent degree model.
“We knew what we were doing was different, and we wanted to be unique within the UK through the sheer breadth of subjects in which our students can study. We also didn’t want to be overly prescriptive about having students commit to a particular thematic area at point of entry. We can offer something very rare through our comprehensive excellence at Birmingham, and so we want our students to feel empowered to draw on that in full in their time here.”
At the heart of LANS is a cluster of passionate academics who relish the challenge of developing a tailored four-year degree programme for each individual (each year’s student intake is between 90 and 100). That flexibility is only possible thanks to cross-disciplinary excellence across the University, but it also requires a commitment to a different approach to the student journey.
“Our team here think about education as a series of deliberate choices,” explains Professor Spencer. “We expect our students to be thoughtful about their choices and the implications of each step they take for their capstone research project in their final year. Even in their first year we ask students to deliberate on the challenges and themes they want to explore in the future, and to understand what skills and knowledge they’ll need to develop. Seeing that come to fruition over time is deeply rewarding part of teaching here. Because of the unique process, our students can craft something brand new and personally meaningful.”
Though every student forges their own journey, there are broad themes that are increasingly common for final-year projects – sustainability (mapped across the humanities and sciences), ecology and climate change are especially prevalent cross-cutting themes.
It’s another area that Professor Spencer believes highlights the value of an interdisciplinary approach to education. “We’re fortunate at Birmingham to have exceptional agility in our degree offering. We keep our eyes on the horizon to see what the trends are across higher education and think often about the sorts of projects we’re likely to see more demand for –knowing that we can set up thematic strengths by drawing on expertise from across the University very swiftly. It feels very much like we’re at the cutting edge of learning and it allows us to reward pioneering thinking.”
Staying true to the ethos
There is no one description of the ‘LANS student’. But, says Professor Spencer, they tend to share certain values that are embedded in the department’s guiding ethos – curiosity, open-mindedness and resilience. Despite having myriad academic interests, the students are bound by certain principles that underpin the LANS approach.
The idea of deliberate reflection and, in particular, learning through trying, failing, evaluating, and moving forward through these cycles, is central to the LANS educational philosophy.
Professor Spencer also points to a commitment to ‘multi-perspectival’ thinking and peer-to-peer collaboration. “We encourage people to talk a lot, in the best possible sense! We work hard to create an environment in which staff and students can engage in meaningful conversations without always having to have that specific focus. It helps us to be more connected to an individual student’s aspirations and anxieties, and really strengthens intellectual conversations. So often it’s those serendipitous conversations that spark the most interesting research ideas and introduce us to different perspectives.”
We also want our students to be comfortable with – and perhaps even excited by – uncertainty. That’s not necessarily normal for most people, but it helps to prepare our students for the perspectival differences they’ll need to consider in tackling complex problems. We train them to find the points of divergence and being comfortable with that, while helping them understand how to bring those disparate threads together towards a solution.”
As a result of this approach, graduates leave with the toolkit to handle complex, multi-modal projects with competing priorities and needs, a key asset for prospective employers.
A number of graduates have gone on to work in organisations with vast structural complexity, such as the civil service or police forces, to consultancy work in sustainable energy technology, to knowledge-exchange organisations, or into projects that look to address tricky intersectional challenges.
Professor Diana Spencer
Dean of LANS
“I think part of the attraction for employers is that our students are so good at working towards medium or long-term strategic goals – it’s embedded in the very structure of their degree," says Professor Spencer. "But they’re also coming from an environment in which they’re regularly making choices about their own learning, and that translates well into the world beyond education. They see learning as something iterative, that their journey is never complete. Forward-thinking organisations see how important that quality is in an employee.”
A new approach to learning
A decade into the LANS journey, the impact of their approach is being felt across the University.
“Having developed LANS to where we are now with strong recruitment, stellar results, and excellent employability – we want to think beyond that. We see ourselves as playing a vital role in championing interdisciplinary education in Birmingham and across UK higher education more broadly.”
The evolution of the LANS unit took another step with the creation of a ‘Year in Civic Leadership’ – a one-year programme that sees students align their learning with the University’s commitment to civic society. While continuing standard modules at the University, students receive expert teaching from the Birmingham Leadership Institute and work alongside a local organisation working for the betterment of civic society – often in the third sector.
The programme was developed during the Covid-19 pandemic (accelerated in part to mitigate for the infeasibility of an overseas year) and piloted within LANS in September 2021. It has since been expanded to students at Birmingham Business School, and will be available to an even wider number of Birmingham students from 2023.
Professor Spencer explains how the course is just one example of the LANS team’s ambition to reimagine what a student journey can be.
“We can certainly build on the successes of the model of interdisciplinary and integrative education we have pioneered in LANS. I hope to see the next generation of innovation at Birmingham flowing from our expertise in student-led interdisciplinary enquiry, enquiry which we are already plugging into priority research areas. This will mean that the intellectual excitement and curiosity of our student powerhouse will be increasingly integrated into the University’s research breakthroughs, and that the University will deliver a more coherent sense of community between academics and students as life-long explorers of complex and intractable cross-cutting challenges at every level.”
“One of my own driving forces is to challenge how we, beyond Birmingham and in the UK higher education sector more widely, think about an undergraduate curriculum. Yes, to do this requires confidence in our ability to deliver excellence across a breadth of subjects – as we do here. But our approach also requires a bit of ‘letting go’ and places a lot of trust in our students. What I see, though, is young people who have a desire to lead positive change, and they are absolutely deserving of our trust in their ownership of greater complexity their learning. After all, complexity is not something to fear – embracing it will be for the betterment of all.”