The Interdisciplinary Studies Program (IDS) is unlike any other department at Appalachian State University.  Students majoring in IDS have the option of designing a major or choosing a pre-designed concentration (eg. Internet Studies, Environmental Policy & Planning, etc.). 

IDS offers a B.A. degree with six different interdisciplinary major concentrations and four interdisciplinary minors.

To learn more about what the IDS Program strives to achieve, please read our Mission and Vision statements.

Concentrations in Interdisciplinary Studies

• Internet Studies
• Labor Studies
• Environmental Policy & Planning
• American Studies
• Liberal Studies: Modern
• Individually-Designed

Mission Statement

The mission of the Interdisciplinary Studies Program is to foster, for ourselves, our students and others, the recognition of interrelationships among existing knowledges and the generation of interrelated knowledges while displaying the contingent character of knowledge formation.

We pursue this mission by encouraging creative practices in teaching, learning, service, and theoretical and applied research that involve multiple experiences of disciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary skills, methods and information. The Program currently engages its mission by: helping to provide integrated general education; offering linked interdisciplinary major concentrations; cultivating interaction among colleges and departments and their faculty and students by connecting them with interdisciplinary majors; creating an associated faculty composed of members from many disciplines; supporting collaborative and interdisciplinary activities within and among academic units; engaging in co-curricular programs, governance activities, and other endeavors that bring together disparate campus units with common objectives; collaborating with various elements of Appalachian State University and diverse constituencies in the larger community; and advancing the research and artistic activity of its faculty and students.

Vision Statement

Knowledge is partial and apparently internally incompatible. It is also marked by history, social location and culture.  Yet the world in which we live and which we seek to know is inextricably interrelated. Our desire for knowledge respects the tension between the power of specialization to generate knowledges and the potency of synthesis to reveal patterns and guide behavior. The Interdisciplinary Studies Program supports synthesis in the context of specializations, recognizing the contingent and contextual character of the syntheses we produce.

To forge appropriate responses to contemporary issues, we and our students will need to interrelate knowledge from many sources. Such issues might include: discovering personally meaningful and socially restorative patterns in contemporary life; generating economic wealth coherent with ecological well-being; guiding the use and cultural impact of new technologies; engaging creatively in increasingly complex cultural interactions; responding to challenges to public health; creating artifacts and events that unite significance and beauty in personal, social and cultural contexts; and developing appropriate theories and structures for new economic, social and political forms such as virtual communities and multi-national corporations. These and other issues will affect Appalachian State University students, alumnae, faculty, and their communities in the 21st century.