Dr. Ronald A. Styron, Jr. is currently the Quality Enhancement Plan Director and Professor of Leadership and Teacher Education at the University of South Alabama.  He has received numerous awards including Principal of the Year, Louisiana PTA Educator of Distinction and several outstanding conference research paper awards.  He has received over $3 million in grant awards and has a proven record of publications with 35 refereed articles, a book chapter, and a series of administrator-training manuals. He has also conducted over 90 professional research presentations and 50 speaking engagements.

Encouraging students to reach beyond the typical constraints of a single content area and engage in interdisciplinary learning fosters critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication skills.  In The Logic of Interdisciplinary Studies, Mathison and Freeman wrote interdisciplinary studies represent an opportunity for instructors to have more authentic relations with their students and teach cognitive skills (e.g., cooperation and problem solving) that are connected to relevant 'real life' learning scenarios.  Moreover, interdisciplinary education helps to increase student achievement by promoting positive attitudes toward the subject matter, create curricular flexibility and integrate rapidly changing information with increased efficiency.
 
Through the use of interdisciplinary education, critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication skills are disbursed within and across the curriculum.  This increases the ability of students to make decisions and synthesize knowledge beyond single disciplines, increase the ability to identify, assess, and transfer significant information needed for problem solving, gain a better overall comprehension of global interdependencies, and develop multiple perspectives, points of view, and values.  From an instructor point of view, interdisciplinary education is a way to share pedagogical ideas with colleagues and to be energized by seeing one’s own discipline from a fresh new perspective.  Instructors also have a chance to model collaboration, problem solving, creativity and flexibility. Advantages and disadvantages of interdisciplinary education, examples, pedagogies that support interdisciplinary education and lessons learned will be discussed during this presentation.