Interdisciplinary

Experience Level - Bronze

For my interdisciplinarity experience, I completed the equivalent of Computer Science 201 at HCC while I was fulfilling my Spanish requirement. This class serves as an introductory course for programming, usually for computer science majors but, since it is an introductory course non-majors are allowed in if there are enough spots to go around. Basic programming techniques including modularity, abstraction, and debugging and testing are all covered in this course. We learned about data structures, functions, lists, and strings while primarily working in Python. I took this class in place of the Fundamentals of Astrophysics because astrophysics would have required me to take three additional classes, which would have been too large of a workload for my last year. I chose this in place of astrophysics because, during my previous two internships at GE and Garrett Containers, more and more work needed at least some aspect of it to be coded. And as the world becomes more digitalized, programming is only going to become more and more prominent. I felt that I was lacking in this area, so I decided to enroll in the Computer Science 201 equivalent while I was completing my internship at GE.

Although I felt very out of my element at the beginning of the course, I was very fulfilled by all of the work that I had completed by the end of the term. There were a few major projects that I worked on throughout the semester including several smaller projects within the term and then one large, final project at the end. Now, although I learned a significant amount, enough that I can complete some basic programming without much assistance, I still have an incredible amount of respect for people that have the patience to sit and try to debug code. There were times when I thought I was going to throw my laptop if I heard the error beep spit back at me one more time (I finally figured out that I worked better with my computer at 0 volume…). Even though it was difficult going through the class, I truly am very happy that I did it not only because I learned more from it but also because it put me way outside my comfort zone. Taking this class and Spanish at the same time (I am not the best in Spanish yet either. Yet of course.) was quite the experience. But it worked out very well because I was able to directly tie this knowledge into my Capstone project, which turned out to be significantly more coding-heavy than was initially expected.

I was enrolled in the Computer Science 201 class equivalent for a six week semester. I am unsure how much time I spent on it individually between it and Spanish but it was definitely in excess of 10 hours a week. This puts this experience at at least 60 hours in total.

The completion of the interdisciplinarity experience was evaluated on how it contributed to each of the three learning objectives.

1. Identify the different disciplines that contribute to the solution of a complex problem.

When looking at large problems, a variety of disciplines contribute to each and every problem. For example, a person on the manufacturing floor can’t work if the supply chain leader can’t get the materials and they can’ work if the sales representative is getting sales, but the sales representative can’t work if the person on the manufacturing floor isn’t doing a quality job. So every position is interrelated. More specific to this class, programming is often completed on the front-end of projects, while the mechanical engineering is usually completed further toward the back end, so being able to communicate the same end goal is an important skill to have.

2. Describe and apply strategies for creating common ground between different disciplinary perspectives.

From what I have found and experienced throughout my career so far, is that the easiest way to find common ground on a project is finding a similarity, or an area of knowledge where both people have some experience. This facilitates the ease of communication between two people and can act as a sort of bridge between two people.

3. Describe and apply bridging strategies that facilitate the conscious integration of different disciplines.

We are constantly told in engineering that a cross-functional team is more productive than a team of all engineers. Realizing that is important and is the first step, but it is a different story altogether to implement it. From my experience, one of the most important things to do while at work is simply to ask questions. People are usually more than willing to help and in the end both people usually end up gaining something. The most important way to bridge the gap, often, is simply initiating the conversation which is funny because it can often be the most intimidating.