Q&A: How do interdisciplinary degree programmes equip students for the workplace?

The fundamental reason interdisciplinary learning is important is that many of the problems that we face in the world today demand interdisciplinary solutions. 

If you look at challenges like climate change and digital transformation, these things require ways of working and devising solutions that cut across traditional disciplines. We can't deal with complex problems like these with a single approach.  

For many years problem-solving has been approached through a single lens. Sometimes we get better solutions if we're able to solve problems through bringing together different lenses and different perspectives.  

Also, the world of work doesn't divide us into neat disciplines. For example, when I think back to my career in marketing in product management, I worked across different departments including finance, design engineering, industrial engineering, sales and operations.  

In many other work contexts including academia, the picture is the same. You have to work across departments to come up with a solution to problems. You must work in cross disciplinary way and understand the ways people from different disciplines work.  

Cross-functional, interdisciplinary work, very often across geographical boundaries, is a feature of the modern workplace. We're developing a set of skills for the students, which will set them up well for their lives. Students need to work across disciplines to do that successfully. 

According to a recent report by Mckinsey, employers are looking for portfolio of skills, including digital skills, cognitive skills (including both critical and creative thinking), self-leadership skills (self-awareness, entrepreneurship and goal achievement) and interpersonal working skills.  

Students can develop these skills by being asked to solve problems and explain and justify their solutions. Interpersonal skills will also be developed through teamwork activities. 

Technical skills are built into the programmes and the specialisms that we offer. For example, when studying business transformation, you can specialise in marketing or entrepreneurship, or you can specialise in accounting and finance.  

At Zayed University’s College of Interdisciplinary Studies, Partner Challenges are a mandatory part of the programme. Students will work with external partner organisations in teams to solve real-world interdisciplinary problems, applying the skills and knowledge from their programme. 

The problems that students are working on are intentionally interdisciplinary in nature. For example, a group of students might be looking at the application of artificial intelligence technology to recruitment and selection.. There are many ways to approach this. Coming at it from a technical point of view you can explore how to apply the technology. Or, from a psychological perspective, you can understand what the challenges are in getting people to adapt to this new technology. 

Zayed University has work placement coordinators in each of the colleges. The student life team looks at the welfare of students and helps them develop workplace-ready skills. 

We have the Partner Challenges which we’ve just discussed, which expose students to working with industry throughout the programme.  

Students will also complete a workplace internship, working in industry for a semester. Students also have a mentor who supports them during that process. We want students to directly apply what they learned at university. 

Fundamentally, it's about employability: we want students to be workplace ready. That's not just being close to the workplace and developing skills that are relevant to the workplace, it's also recognising that they're in an increasingly competitive market once they graduate.  

There'll be people at different stages of development who will have different levels of work experience, so it’s important to stand out as a candidate. 

Our programmes help students develop an interdisciplinary perspective which will help them solve problems in the real world from a different viewpoint.  

Zayed University is pioneering in this respect. We're one of the very few pioneering institutions worldwide that are offering intentionally interdisciplinary education. 

What sets us apart is that we've embedded a set of foundational, employability skills into our programmes to provide opportunities to consolidate and transfer these skills and the technical knowledge that students acquired through the partnership challenges. We're working with industry from day one, and that continues throughout the programme.