At Vanderbilt, students often find themselves siloed within their own schools and departments, rarely crossing paths with peers from other disciplines. As a student at Blair School of Music, I’ve noticed this phenomenon firsthand. Blair students mostly stick with other Blair students, and it’s the same in the School of Engineering and Peabody College. While there’s a sense of camaraderie within these tight-knit groups, this separation also means that opportunities to connect and collaborate across schools are often limited.
In theory, the interdisciplinary nature of a university should foster cross-school relationships. According to the National Academy of Sciences, interdisciplinary approaches in higher education equip students with the ability to tackle complex real-world challenges, enhancing skills like collaboration, adaptability and critical thinking. When students integrate perspectives from multiple disciplines, they build a broader toolkit for addressing complex issues that don’t fit neatly within one field. However, in practice, students are more likely to interact with those in the same department or school. In interviews with over 10 students from various grade levels across campus, each expressed a common theme: Most of their friendships were formed through shared classes, projects or activities — often within their own major.
Blair, for instance, has a unique culture where the small student body and highly specialized curriculum create both a sense of isolation and a tightly-knit community. The school’s curriculum emphasizes a music core distinct from Vanderbilt’s other schools. The niche, music-focused classes, such as “Aural Skills and Advanced Music Technology,” are rigorous and highly specific. These courses are both unfamiliar to students outside of Blair and distinctive in coursework, meaning that Blair students frequently encounter the same classmates in multiple classes.
In the College of Arts and Science or the School of Engineering, shared academic struggles often become the basis for friendships and connections. For instance, “trauma bonding” over notoriously tough courses like General Chemistry is a common experience among pre-med students. The shared intensity of long hours spent studying, late nights in the library and the collective anxiety over exams naturally bring students together in solidarity. Research from UC Berkeley’s Blum Center found that interdisciplinary and project-based learning especially helps STEM students strengthen problem-solving abilities and solidify their knowledge. This approach prepares them to be active participants in both professional and democratic spheres, where multifaceted solutions are often required. However, this type of bonding over demanding STEM courses is largely irrelevant to students in the humanities, who may never have to take such classes.
This dynamic reinforces divisions as students become deeply absorbed in the unique demands of their programs. Those in rigorous pre-professional or STEM tracks often lack time to participate in events or activities outside their majors, while humanities students are focused on their own intensive reading and research requirements. This academic separation makes it difficult for students to find common ground or jointly engage in university-wide events and leads to a sense of disconnection between different schools at Vanderbilt.
Vanderbilt attempts to address this issue through events like Founder’s Walk and the Commons Cup for first-year students, as well as university-wide initiatives like Rites of Spring for the entire student body. However, these efforts often fall short of fostering meaningful connections across schools. Founder’s Walk, while exciting, is a fleeting experience where students briefly interact before retreating into their respective academic bubbles. Similarly, the Commons Cup, though competitive, largely remains confined to first-year students, with few mechanisms to sustain cross-school connections beyond the freshman year. While recent attempts, such as the introduction of an upperclass housing cup, aim to expand opportunities for broader engagement, these initiatives are still evolving. Furthermore, the connections formed during these events often involve individuals who students are already exposed to, such as roommates or classmates from the same residence hall, limiting the chance to build a more diverse network across campus.
Even when students attend large, university-wide events, they tend to stick with the people they already know. This trend reinforces the idea that the real connections are forming within individual schools. For example, Blair students are often so focused on practicing or preparing for performances that, even if they do attend broader university events, they tend to gravitate toward other musicians. It’s not that students from different schools don’t want to interact; it’s that the opportunities to do so in meaningful and sustained ways are lacking.
Vanderbilt could take a page from other universities that have successfully bridged the gap between academic silos. At Stanford, for instance, there are interdisciplinary dorms where students from various departments are encouraged to live and study together. Duke University regularly hosts inter-school case competitions and hackathons that are specifically designed to bring students from different disciplines together to solve real-world problems. These initiatives aren’t just social; they’re designed to highlight the value of interdisciplinary collaboration, something that is critical in today’s world.
Hosting more inter-school events specifically designed for students to get to know one another and collaborate on shared interests could make a significant difference. Events like pitch competitions where students from A&S, Blair, Peabody and the School of Engineering work together to propose solutions to problems, or cross-school mentorship programs where upperclassmen from different schools mentor first-years from other disciplines could foster deeper connections. We could also offer fellowships or grants for research projects that require students from multiple disciplines to collaborate. This initiative could support, for instance, a team of music, neuroscience, and engineering students researching the impact of music on cognitive function, fostering sustained academic collaboration that enriches each student’s understanding of the topic.
In a world that increasingly values interdisciplinary skills, Vanderbilt has an opportunity to better prepare its students by creating more avenues for interaction across academic lines. Students come to Vanderbilt with diverse interests and talents — we should be more intentional about giving them opportunities to share those talents with students outside of their immediate academic bubble. After all, true innovation happens when different perspectives collide, and Vanderbilt is uniquely positioned to foster those collisions.