Cornerstone: An Experiment in Interdisciplinarity and Community

April Chatham-Carpenter, University of Northern IowaFollow
Deirdre Bucher Heistad, University of Northern Iowa

Document Type

Forum Theme 1

Abstract

This forum, on the First-Year Cornerstone course at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI), tells the story of the creation, collaboration, community, and cultivation of learning that has developed as a result of teaching a course across various disciplines and divisions, with a longevity different from anything else that has been tried at UNI in such a vein. It focuses on the work taken to effectively cross multiple disciplinary and divisional boundaries in order to create an interdisciplinary academic course community for first-year students.

Prior to 2008, UNI had virtually no courses reserved exclusively for first-year students, and those initiatives that had been attempted were mostly co-curricular in nature. Then, in Fall 2011, 243 students, across 10 sections, became the first Cornerstone cohort. Since then, First-Year Cornerstone has increased its offerings dramatically, and in Fall 2014 saw an enrollment of 609 students across 25 sections, a feat accomplished via an intensely collaborative project in which students, faculty, and staff worked as one, towards the goal of helping first-year students succeed in college.

Publication Date

2014-2015

Journal Title

UNIversitas

Volume

Issue

First Page

Last Page

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Cornerstone Contributions

“How Cornerstone Changed My Teaching, Story 1,” by Susan Hill
“To Build a Foundation,” by Nichole Zumbach Harken and Rachel Morgan
“Cornerstone Commitment to Collaboration,” by Debra Young
“How Cornerstone Changed My Teaching, Story 2,” by Susan Roberts-Dobie
“Merging Parallels: Libraries in the Classroom,” by Gretchen Gould
“Exploring Ideas Onstage: A Creative Connection,” by Richard Glockner and Eric Lange
“Another Cornerstone Collaboration: The Common Read and the ‘Not Jut Any Book!’ Club,” by Emily Borcherding and Ellen Neuhaus
“How Cornerstone Changed My Teaching, Story 3,” by Doug Shaw
“Course-Embedded Peer Mentor Program,” by Kristin Woods
“Peer Mentors in the Religions of the World Classroom,” by Martha J. Reineke
“Using Data to Expand Programming on Campus: Data Driven Decision-Making and Institutional Collaboration in First-Year Only Courses at UNI,” by David Marchesani and Kristin Moser

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Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

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application/pdf

Recommended Citation

Chatham-Carpenter, April and Heistad, Deirdre Bucher (2015) "Cornerstone: An Experiment in Interdisciplinarity and Community," UNIversitas: Journal of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity: Vol. 10: No. 1, Article 2.
Available at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/universitas/vol10/iss1/2

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