At a recent meeting I attended, the conversation turned to the skills that students need to be successful in the business world.

As a professor of English, I am well aware that students need strong writing skills and I believe that colleagues in other disciplines do a disservice to students if they take the position that because they are not professors of English they don’t worry about grammar and so forth; that all they care about is the idea. I hold that poor grammar and so forth gets in the way of the idea; that we need to promote writing across the curriculum if we are going to serve our students well. I mentally applauded a math colleague who asked for suggestions for how he could encourage/require students to write better.

Maybe I was a bit smug as I then reflected on ways in which I integrate math into my English and history classes. For example, I discuss “the problem of N=1” when explaining to students the need for broad based reading and the problems of relying on a single source. Graphing, statistics, sample size, and other math concepts are also covered while teaching research methodology and critical thinking. Several years ago, I even began teaching the history of zero in my ancient world history course; a lesson that has expanded to include the development of the numeral one.

Overall, I am pleased with how I embrace math across the curriculum. After the last time I taught the math history lesson, a student commented that math would be much more meaningful if his math professor would tell stories about the development of math concepts and mathematicians; that it made Pythagoras more interesting to know that he and his followers did not eat beans because they felt that part of their soul escaped each time they passed gas. Although he did not realize it, the student was advocating for history across the curriculum.

Then, as a professor of communication was talking about the importance of making a positive first impression, I began to feel less smug. Early that day, a team of students—wearing jeans, t-shirts, and other less than professional attire—had given a superb presentation. In the past, I had always made students dress professionally for presentations but a couple of years ago, that requirement had fallen from my courses. Although I still discuss writing, research, and worldview in terms of a basic communication model, I am no longer doing all I could to promote communication across the curriculum. To teach students the importance of non-verbal communication and then ask the students to dress professionally for a professional presentation would take very little effort on my part and would help them a great deal.

I can image that some faculty members might argue that we already have too much material to present and cannot incorporate information outside of our own disciplines. But how much class time does it actually take for a math professor to discuss the peculiar eating habits of the Pythagoreans? Or how much time would it take me to explain to students why it is important to know how to dress professionally? Considering the benefits of such short lessons, it is time well spent.

In promoting English, math, history, communication, and other disciplines across the curriculum, we need not become content experts in our colleagues’ disciples. Nor do we need to worry whether or not we are presenting a comprehensive understanding of those areas we are incorporating into our classes. However, by looking for small ways to integrate “[fill in the blank] across the curriculum,” we are reinforcing what students are learning from our colleagues and helping them prepare for their lives outside the classroom.

–Steven L. Berg, PhD