Breaking Down Silos:
Lamott Endowment for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Curricular Innovation Dr. Bruce Lamott in the late 80s
By Sarita Cannon ‘94 Book art by Jane Knoll ’14
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ne of my most vivid high school memories was taking the yearlong course Western Civilization: History of the Arts. In this uniquely UHS rite of passage, I learned about the connection between sonata form in Mozart symphonies and composition in neoclassical painting. Under the dynamic instruction of Dr. Bruce Lamott and Prudy Kohler, I understood how Picasso’s Cubist innovations and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring marked the rise of modernism. The interdisciplinary approach and broad historical sweep of the class challenged and engaged me in equal measure, and the imprint of Western Civ is evident in my own teaching practices in the literature classroom. The desire to provide more opportunities to engage in this kind of collaborative, multidisciplinary work has led to the creation of the Lamott Endowment for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Cirricular Innovation. Named after Dr.
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Bruce Lamott, who retired in 2016 after 36 years of teaching at University, this endowment will support the creation of interdisciplinary courses that facilitate dialogue between academic disciplines. This endowment was established to respond to a growing interest among UHS faculty to collaborate across departments. Dean of Faculty Nasif Iskander notes that the endowment provides the time and resources to “break down the silos of the program” through the creation of innovative courses that draw upon multiple methodologies. Interdisciplinarity already exists in the UHS curriculum; but the Lamott Fellowship gives instructors time to collaborate with their colleagues to generate courses that are grounded in interdisciplinary exploration. Students who take these classes also benefit. Iskander asserts that interdisciplinary learning gives students a “stronger sense of
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agency” because they are able to synthesize information in a more realistic way. Moreover, says Iskander, students witness the power of lifelong learning when they see their teachers “putting themselves in an explicit learning stance.” Indeed, watching teachers position themselves as learners has immense value for students. The History of Whiteness, the first class funded by the Lamott Fellowship, was offered in Fall 2017 and provided students with both Human Development and History credit. Taught by Human Development instructor Mollie Crittenden and history instructor Justin Morgan Johnson, this course “examined the origins and history of white as a racial category and whiteness as the mechanism to establish and perpetually assert imagined cultural norms.” Because of their shared interest in equity issues, Crittenden and Johnson developed this course to give students an intellectual
and affective understanding of whiteness. Says Crittenden, “We structured the course so that students were learning concepts and practices related to their way of being, which went beyond an intellectual framework.” Drawing upon readings about whiteness, mindfulness, and emotional intelligence as well as techniques that Crittenden has used in her work as a teacher with UNtraining of White
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F E AT U R E S
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Liberal Racism, the course allowed students to “make learning more relevant to their lived experiences.” Throughout the semester, students engaged in different forms of meditation to increase self-awareness about the “negative impacts of white conditioning (self-judgment, criticism, shame, guilt, anger, fear, doubt) on their internal states” and to cultivate compassion for others. Crittenden notes that “students also benefitted from the modeling of a white person and person of color working together and caring deeply about the impacts of whiteness on all of us.”
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The second course funded by the Lamott Endowment, the Art of the Book, will be offered in Spring 2018 after school for a half course credit. Taught by visual arts instructor Jenifer Kent and English Instructor Michael Holt, the Art of the Book will explore “the ways in which a literary text can be enhanced and informed by a visual dimension, and in turn, how visual art can inspire and transform a narrative or poetic creation.” By showing students books such as The Gorgeous Nothings, which features facsimiles of Emily Dickinson’s poems that were written on the backs of envelopes, and Renee Gladman’s Prose Architectures, in
which she uses letters to create drawings, and guiding them through a series of in-class exercises, Jenifer and Michael aim to encourage students to playfully engage with the intersection between verbal and visual narratives. They also plan to supplement instruction with field trips to Park Life, a local art and design gallery, and the San Francisco Center for the Book. Says Kent, “The meta question for the class is: ‘What is a book?’” The culminating project will be either a collection of books created by individual students or a single book collaboratively produced by the class. “We want to see what motivates and
inspires our students,” says Kent. A fitting tribute to an instructor beloved by many generations of UHS alumni, the Lamott Endowment will give faculty the opportunity to collaborate by teaching courses that allow students to experiment with different ways of synthesizing knowledge. The rigor and experimentation in these two inaugural classes represent the innovative learning environment that epitomizes a UHS education. n For more information on the Lamott Endowment, go to sfuhs.org/Lamott.