Climate change. Social inequality. Civic responsibility. The major concerns of our time are “wicked problems”—complex challenges that lack clear disciplinary boundaries and that require unique, transdisciplinary perspectives to both meaningfully frame and address.
Solving them may require training young scholars to be “wicked students,” to use a phrase from Paul Hanstedt, director of the Washington & Lee University teaching and learning center. Graduate education—with its specialization, close access to faculty members, and opportunities for deep learning—ought to help with this kind of interdisciplinary training.
