Lafayette College announced the creation of a new endowed professorship for interdisciplinary studies in a news release on Feb. 20.
The Birle Family Endowed Professorship in Interdisciplinary Scholarship and Research aims to “strengthen the College’s already robust interdisciplinary opportunities” through endowing a specific interdisciplinary faculty position, according to the release.
“Our hope is that this professorship will create opportunities for faculty and students to collaborate in new ways, explore research between disciplines, and create solutions for our communities,” Jim Birle Jr. ’83, a member of the college’s Board of Trustees, said in the release. “We are inspired by the vision in the strategic plan that builds on and elevates this distinctive strength of the College.”
Birle could not be reached for further comment by The Lafayette.
The position will be available for a faculty member in any department or program on campus. It will expand student opportunities for hands-on and collaborative learning experiences across academic fields.
The endowment aligns with the college’s recently-passed strategic plan, which heavily emphasizes the concept of “and,” the promotion of the overlap of liberal arts and engineering, as well as the emphasis on interdisciplinary programs, according to the first priority of the plan.
College President Nicole Hurd said that the college was “very grateful to the Birle family, their passion for that power of ‘and.'”
A specific goal of the strategic plan’s first tenet is to “increase resources and endowed funding in the Office of the Provost to encourage the scholarship, research, mentorship, and travel crucial to recruiting and retaining a world-class faculty,” of which the new Birle Professorship contributes.
“One of the things Lafayette does particularly well is interdisciplinary work, and that gift is really going to allow us to go deeper and amplify work that I think is critical to the college and what makes us distinct,” Hurd said.
Provost Laura McGrane wrote in an email that “we are especially interested in realizing the full range of possibilities that curricular and co-curricular explorations across the liberal arts, including engineering, afford Lafayette students and faculty alike.”