Julie M. Weise

The best part of the ER&M program was the small and dedicated community of majors and faculty.  Even though most of the classes we took were in other disciplines, the structure of the major and particularly the senior seminar allowed us to get to know each other, support each other’s growth, and encourage each other’s questioning.  ER&M was my most important intellectual community in college. The interdisciplinary approach also paid off later in my career: I ended up getting a Ph.D. in History, but was hired to teach in an interdisciplinary program.  In ER&M, I learned to ask big questions, appreciate the contributions of different disciplines, and have substantive conversations across different fields.  Those are skills I use in my job every day now.