Advising and Resources

Subscribe to the Interdisciplinary Science Blog for department information and opportunities, including: 

• Alumni biographies
• Department news and events

Read biographies of alumni to understand how their career trajectories were influenced by their curricular or co-curricular choices.

Planning Your Course of Study

• Declaring a major or minor in Interdisciplinary Science 
  If you are interested in becoming an Interdisciplinary Science major or minor, visit IS Degree Requirements to:
  • Review the Program Requirements Worksheet (Check Sheet) and Suggested Four-Year Schedule of courses to meet the requirements
  • Complete the Major/Minor Declaration Statement 

Selecting Courses

Courses offered in this program incorporate science and math in the context of health, environment, and equity and use a planetary health framework. To see a list of courses offered in the major and minor, click on the appropriate section below; track your progress using the Interdisciplinary Science program requirement worksheet/checklist for the year in which you declare. NOTE: Not all courses are offered every semester or every year. We have indicated the course rotations (spring or fall semester, or alternate years) and which components of the major it satisfies.

Identifying Courses

During registration, use the University Course Catalog to identify Interdisciplinary Science courses. Students are strongly encouraged to supplement the IS curriculum with courses in other areas of study, depending on interest and in consultation with academic advisors. For example, students have completed courses offered by Anthropology, Environmental Studies, Integrated Arts, History, Psychology, and Urban Studies.

Students can search in the University Course Catalog for courses that address these topics by keyword in title, title and description, and/or subject code (LSCI = Lang Science, LMTH = Lang Math, NFDS = Food Studies, UENV = Environmental Studies, PSAM = Parsons Art, Media, and Technology, NINT = International Affairs, EPMS = Environmental Policy and Sustainable Management, LPSY/NPSY = Psychology, LANT/NANT/GANT = Anthropology, UURB = Urban Studies, UGLB = Global Studies, LCST = Culture and Media Studies).

Some courses are offered only in the fall or spring semesters, others in alternate years. Students interested in knowing the frequency of specific course offerings can review Interdisciplinary Science courses offered in various terms at the University Course Catalog. 

Courses in Related Programs That Connect to Science and Math
Majors and minors are encouraged to supplement the required curriculum with courses from other areas of study. Below are courses offered by other departments and schools that incorporate science, math, and technology in the context of culture, social justice, history, and sustainability. Courses numbered 4500 are open to undergraduate juniors and seniors. Courses numbered 5000 or higher are graduate-level and require permission of the instructor. Courses that have been popular in the past include the following:

• UENV 2000 Environment and Society
• LINA 2064 Pandemic Protocols
• UENV 2100 Environmental History, Race and Natural Resource Management
• UENV 2400 Urban Ecology
• LANT 2530 Introduction to Medical Anthropology
• LPHI 3052 Death of Nature
• LCST 3069 Sci Fiction Techno/Culture/Embodiment Power
• LHIS 3091 Science Technology, Medicine and Society
• UENV 3100 Black Geographies
• UENV 3200 Spatial Thinking with GIS
• LANT 3024 Politics of Health, Medicine, and the Body
• LANT 3201 Evolution, Culture, and the Mind
• UENV 3400 Urban Resilience
• UENV 3501 Economics of the Environment
• UENV 3601 Ecofeminism and Global Justice
• NFDS 3714 Food and the Environment
• UENV 3750 Green Roof Ecology
• UENV 4013 Renewable Energy Systems
• LSCT 4043 Reimagining the Human
• UGLB 4320 Indigenous Politics and Environmental Justice
• UENV 4714 Food and the Environment
• NEPS 5001 Climate Change: Systemic Crisis and Systemic Change
• NEPS 5020 Indigenous Ecologies
• NEPS 5022 Environmental Justice: Race, Class, and the Environment
• NINT 5155 Tools for Environmental Management
• UTNS 5210 Mindfulness and Sacred Ecologies
• UTNS 5465 Global Pandemics in an Unequal World

Courses in STEAMD (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math, and Design)
These courses are open to all students and can be found across many departments. Courses that have been popular in the past include the following:

• LNGC 1400 Bio, Art, and Social Justice
• PSDS 2640 Honeybee Colonies: Art, Design, Science, and Culture
• PUDM 2700 Information Visualization 
• PSAM 2890 Photography and Climate Change: Art in the Anthropocene
• LLSJ 3505 Visualizing Data
• LCST 3267 Art and the Politics of the Earth
• PSCE 4051 Build Your Own Factory
• PSCE 5181 Soft Fab
• PSAM5550 Communitology Collab

Fellowships and Funding

• Fellowships and Scholarships for IS majors and minors.
• Also visit the Eugene Lang College Science and Math Fellows Program to learn about on-campus opportunities.

Internships and Research Experiences

• Finding, applying for, and funding undergraduate internships for IS majors and minors 
• Interdisciplinary Science Internships & Research Experiences

Grants

• Writing Grant Proposals: The Foundation Center at 32 Old Slip, 24th Floor, is a wonderful resource open to New School students. The center has short course tutorials such as How to Write a Grant Proposal. 

• Pedagogies and Education Opportunities for IS Majors and Minors:
  • Extracurricular learning
  • Post-graduate options
  • Graduate-level courses at The New School
  • Professional health science programs

• Graduate School Opportunities and Resources:
  • Emerging PhD and graduate school options
  • Post-Bac Programs
  • Preparing Grad School applications
    • Components of a graduate school application
    • Guidelines to obtain letters of recommendation or support
    • Tips on writing your personal statement
    • National Institutes of Health video and Q&A: A video about choosing a graduate school, writing the personal statement, and developing your career path. The video on writing personal statements is long but has a helpful question-and-answer at the end, and although it is science-based, there are some takeaways for other interdisciplinary programs as well.

Creating a Mentor Network

Presenting Your Work

Learn how to showcase your work. Turn your semester project, paper, or research study into a poster presentation and gradually progress to a full-length publication or oral presentation.

Study Abroad

Opportunities specific to health and the environment

Summer Programs

Find programs that combine academic coursework with experiential learning. Themes include the environment, bioethics, biostats and big data, and stem cell research.

Opportunities to Expand Your Work 

Listed here are resources to connect your work to social justice. Some organizations, projects, and initiatives appear to only follow one thread but if you look deeper you will see that most are interdisciplinary to their core. Use these networks to develop the ideas seeded in course or in life, and look to collaborate and construct communities of practice that can nourish your curiosity and foster life-long learning and service. 

Social Justice at The New School: 

• Facebook group: A New School group in which students share space for communicating, organizing, and sharing ideas on how to critically address issues of social change. 
• The New School Office of Equity, Inclusion & Social Justice: This office is committed to collaboration and partnership to address and support the critical issues of equity, inclusion, and social justice throughout The New School Community.
• Database of resources: Library Thing list of resources.

Lang's Office of Civic Engagement and Social Justice. This office supports events, workshops, and community partnerships as well as awards for students who need financial support to carry out a project that serves the mission of social justice. The office also supports the Gural Scholars program and summer internship support grants. Each week a newsletter summarizes opportunities and highlights the work being done, so look out for your weekly email alert. Learn more about this office, and follow them on Facebook and Instagram. 

Mohn Family Science and Social Justice Fellows. An endowment provided by the parents of an alumna of the Interdisciplinary Science program provides merit-based fellowships to students and graduating seniors in need of financial support to carry out work that promotes environmental justice and health equity. A number of local organizations have partnered with the program to offer research experiences and internships that meet these goals. Contact: Katayoun Chamany chamanyk@newschool.edu.

New School Student Organizations. This list of student organizations spans Feminist Writers, Students for Social Justice, Sisters on the Runway, Recycled Runway, the BriColab Art Initiative, Musical Theater, Theater Collective, and Slow Food. Find organizations and discover opportunities at Narwhal Nation.

Impact Entrepeneurship Venture Lab. Launched as part of a broader university-wide Impact Entrepreneurship Initiative (IEI), the Venture Lab supports innovative student entrepreneurs who seek to develop and launch financially-sustainable ventures with the potential for scalable impact. Both graduate students and upper undergraduates (juniors and seniors) across The New School may apply to the Venture Lab. Visit the website for more information about the program, application process, and deadlines. 

Democracy and Diversity Fellows. With the conviction that adequate social and human capital is a crucial element in developing a culture of democratic governance, the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies (TCDS) creates unique study programs that bring together civic-minded students, junior scholars, and nonprofit professionals from around the world. Its flagship projects, the Democracy & Diversity Summer Institutes conducted in Poland and South Africa, are organized in partnership with key academic and civic actors in the region. Please take a look at the information about the most recent Democracy & Diversity Institutes in Wroclaw and in Johannesburg. Application deadlines are in the fall and spring, and a few undergraduates are selected to join a group of faculty and graduate students.

The Vera List New School Art Collection Awards are given out annually to New School students who write or create visual narratives in film and media inspired by works in the university's art collection. The awards were established in 1996 by the late Vera List, a life trustee of The New School, and are distributed by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics. Each year, a new theme is chosen to address multifaceted inquiry into the nature of the material world. The awards celebrate a range of media formats, with a first-place award of $400 and a second-place award of $200 in each category. Winners are selected by a jury of prominent faculty members and administrators. The prize-winning pieces are edited by professional art critics in collaboration with their authors and are published in the annual award poster/site, which is designed in collaboration with illustration faculty of Parsons School of Design. 

Student Leadership and Involvement. Discover many opportunities for making change on or beyond our campus.

Other organizations. In addition, the Interdisciplinary Science program seeks to support scientific innovation through responsible and ethical practices. The following organizations reflect our philosophy and mission. They stay up-to-date on the challenges facing scientists and the public, and they publish blogs and journals dedicated to this interface.

• The Center for Genetics and Society
• Center for Health, Environment, and Justice
• The Council for Responsible Genetics
• New York City Environmental Justice Alliance
• The People's Science
• RNA Lab (Race, Neighborhoods, and African American Health)
• Scidev.net
• Sustainable South Bronx
• Teaching Tolerance (science-specific story)
• UPROSE
• WeAct for Environmental Justice