Integrated Studies Special Major, B.A. ~ Faculty and Student QuotesThere is perhaps no truer intellectual experience than the infusement of ideas that are at first glance quite distant. We call Einstein a genius because he said e=mc2. That is, he could see one thing in terms of another. He could see that things that look and seem different are profoundly interconnected. It is a relational and integrative knowledge. Poets have it, too. And so do people who seek to know how things work in the real world. If we listen to the meaning contained in the riddle of the Sphinx, or emerging science, or reports from organizations, business, or any problem-solving entity, the message is clear: academe needs to find more and better ways to enable students to gain a vision of the earth and social systems as one interdependent whole. Ways of knowing are traditionally separated out so that a student studies only aspects of things that are in fact related. We need to provide students the opportunity to link, join, compare, and integrate diverse kinds of knowledge from across the curriculum. We need to provide students a way to see the whole. We need to provide students a way to put Humpty Dumpty together again. This is the education of genius. As a teenage woman and president of a nonprofit organization-the Cloud Forest Institute-my goals made me resist conforming to any of the traditional programs of study offered by public universities. However, after researching further, I found that I could get the support and resources I needed at CSUMB in the highly individualized Integrated Studies Program. I would recommend the CSUMB Integrated Studies Program to other independent thinkers with a high degree of self-motivation. Revised 5/25/05 |