Last Wednesday, two of the GW’s community’s new members joined the Presidential Administrative Fellows during our weekly cohort meeting. Vice Provost Geneva Henry, Vice Provost for Libraries, and Dr. Keith Crandall, professor and director of the Computation Biology Institute, participated in a discussion with the PAFs about our current studies and how we can improve the overall GW community. As newer member of the GW community, I found their insight into GW very valuable.
During the course of our conversation, I transitioned to a theme related to interdisciplinary research and the importance of such research to the current environment here at GW. As PAFs, most of our cohort is studying in an interdisciplinary field for our Master’s degree, and many of us can relate to the theme of interdisciplinary research and how important it is to our respective fields.Since both Vice Provost Henry and Dr. Crandall have backgrounds in interdisciplinary fields, I found their insight into interdisciplinary study very thought provoking. Vice Provost Henry, who has experience in computer science as well as digital humanities, spoke to the evolution of her career and how her experiences lead her to where she is today. Dr. Crandall, though working in a different discipline, portrayed many of these themes in his discussion as well. I valued their advice in pursuing interdisciplinary research and thought that their reflections on this type of research was very uplifting (especially when both described the mere idea of interdisciplinary study as “fun!”).Overall, our cohort developed many themes from the conversation.
First, our conversation reflected many ideas of working from the ground and building up when piloting new ideas. Both Vice Provost Henry and Dr. Crandall spoke about the importance of trying out new ideas at the grassroots level while also finding support at the senior level to accomplish goals. We also noticed a trend in discussing barriers at a cultural level; that is, the barriers of each professional setting are derived specifically from the cultural context in that we are work in.Overall, our conversation was very productive and I very much enjoyed building bridges with new, exciting aspects of GW!