Integrative Professional Studies Major

This course introduces students to the central concepts of a Champlain College education: inquiry, integrative thinking and learning, and interdisciplinarity. Students will learn how to explore and create knowledge using a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives and methodologies, including the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Through this integrative, interdisciplinary framework, students will learn how to critically assess the strengths and weaknesses of each academic field of knowledge and recognize the interplay of multiple perspectives, including their own.

This course serves as the starting point for students who wish to pursue an individualized degree program through the Degree Innovation Design Lab. Faculty mentors will help you design a personalized learning plan based on your prior experiences and future goals. You will also consider each of the Champlain College Competencies, and begin to reflect on how proficiency might be achieved and demonstrated throughout your educational journey at Champlain. An introduction to thinking about professionalism in context will establish the critical habits of mind necessary for success in the program. Finally, you will create your reflective competency portfolio and begin to build your capacity for self-directed learning.

This course provides a project design space for students enrolled in the Degree Design Lab Program to develop and explore a sustained interdisciplinary question through a collaborative problem or project. While the collective project may be pre-determined, students will be challenged to identify how their multiple professional foci OR other compelling passions might contribute. Faculty will help students to identify the project, facilitate implementation, ensure appropriate breadth and depth of subject matter, and encourage awareness of how the experience can be used to build and demonstrate competency. Students will develop their own questions and determine their own research path for the liberal learning that will help them achieve their goals. Students will actively share ideas, engage in ongoing discussions, provide feedback, and refine work accordingly. This course is designed with an eye towards increasing independence and sophistication, and will allow students at different points in their process and with different perspectives to contribute to each other’s work.

This hybrid course introduces the wide variety of methods and applied skills required for social science and humanities fieldwork. Students will develop practical skills in grounded theory, analog/digital tools for ethnography, data analysis, and mapping. The complementarities of quantitative and qualitative methods will be explored via naturalistic research design. Class members will develop and carry out a set of mini-research projects related to one of the specific locations of Champlain College (on or near the Burlington, Montreal, or Dublin campuses).

This project sandbox space is for DDL students to explore an interdisciplinary question, problem or project. Students can either identify a project that connects their multiple professional foci OR one that incorporates other passions and interests. With faculty mentorship, students will develop their question and determine their research path. This course is designed with an eye towards increasing independence and sophistication, and allows students at different points in their process with different perspectives to contribute to each other’s work. Students may enroll more than once.

Work experiences often compel the inquiry-driven learner to ask, why are things done this way? This course will help you answer that question. We will examine professionalism as a concept theoretically and historically. Then, you’ll build connections between your DDL academic work and internship experiences by theorizing and contextualizing those experiences through frameworks from the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences.

Degree Design Lab students who enroll in this course will complete a pre-approved off-campus or on-campus internship or other work-based experience. Internships offer the opportunity to apply and develop skills and aptitudes developed in the classroom in professional settings while gaining other relevant skills and professional connections. Internships are completed under the guidance of an on-site supervisor and a faculty sponsor, who in combination with the student will create a framework for learning and reflection.

In this course students will apply various social science and humanities research methodologies to course projects that intersect with the Degree Design Lab and Champlain College competencies. In addition, students will create interdisciplinary knowledge around topics of their own choosing, particularly in areas of work and professional life that engage global institutions, cultures, and systems. Students will construct a full research proposal, including research questions, an annotated bibliography, a methodological approach, and a timeline for completion throughout the semester.