Big day at HESA Towers as it’s the return of our Academic Programs Team’s series Monitoring Trends in Academic Programming (MTAP), a project led by Jonathan McQuarrie.   This edition is about programs which focus on Water, and you can read it here. It’s also the first MTAP with a co-author, Tiffany MacLennan.  And if you like that, do read our previous issues on there are previous editions on programming in Health, programming in  Agriculture/ Aquaculture and in the Humanities. The keen eyed among you may see a preview of our new logo in the document.

As with most of the programs profiled in previous MTAPs, this issue focuses on programs being developed at the intersection of various disciplines.  In this case, we look at water sciences (programs at the intersection of disciplines within the physical sciences), water governance (programs overlapping between water sciences, law and political science) and water management (programs combining science and engineering with practical management of water facilities and resources).  This isn’t just an editorial choice to focus on interdisciplinarity – it’s a genuine reflection of where academic programming is moving, right across academia.

Interdisciplinarity is nothing new in research.  The complex problems which are at the forefront of research efforts require multiple disciplinary perspectives, and research teams which can effectively put these kinds of talents to common purpose are the gold standard.  But what is new-ish (at least from the perspective of the millennium-long history of universities and academia) is the extent to which those principles of interdisciplinarity are moving from the research enterprise to programming at the Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree level.  It may not be quite the shift from organizing institutions around disciplines to organizing them around domains or research problems that I described around this time last year, but there is a definite trend in that direction.  Whether it is driven by research faculty who want to teach in programs that reflect their own interdisciplinary interests or by market demand for programs that focus on real-life problems (which almost by definition are untethered to any individual discipline) – and I’m a bit agnostic on that one – it’s a real trend, and one that we at HESA plan to keep tracking and documenting.

(As an aside: one of the other things which the authors consider in this piece is how Indigenous perspectives are being included into programs which focus on water governance and management.  It’s not exactly a full-on indigenization of curriculum, but it is interesting to see how – in new programs at least – some part of the process of incorporating indigenous perspectives is occurring).

In any case: look through this new document and please tell us what you like and do not like about it.  We’re committed to putting this out on a more regular schedule (October, February and June), and on keeping a good rotation of subject matters (the next issue will focus on Engineering), but we’re interested in your ideas for the kinds of thematic areas we should cover.   And if you’re a Dean or a Department Chair interested in talking to us about trends in your own field, please check out an invitation to participate in future consultations around academic trends in the report (or just click the sign up link here, if you’re especially eager).

Good reading, and good weekend.