Core Courses
[To find Beyond Boundaries courses in Workday, search “Beyond Boundaries”]
Beyond Boundaries Seminar (3 credits total)
The Beyond Boundaries Seminar is designed to support student’s development in interdisciplinary thinking and collaborative problem solving. Over the course of two semesters, students will engage in discussions, workshops, skill building exercises and panel presentations to grow their skills and knowledge in these areas. Over the course of the academic year we will ask the following questions:
1. What role(s) do I want to play on collaborative problem-solving teams?
2. What skills and knowledge are necessary for interdisciplinary work?
3. How can I use my time at Washington University to grow these skills?
The knowledge gained is designed to contribute to academic success, personal development, and a more rewarding social and academic experience over the course of the college experience. This is a 3 credit class (total) offered both Fall & Spring semesters during the first year. The fall includes a 1 credit (1 hour) class, and the spring offers a 1 credit (1 hour) class and a separate 1 credit (1 hour) discussion section.
Beyond Boundaries Courses (3 credits each, open to all first year students)
In addition to the classes mentioned above, first year students in the Beyond Boundaries Program will be required to complete one Beyond Boundaries course (during their first year), for which they will have priority enrollment.
Beyond Boundaries courses, which are funded by the Office of the Provost and offered to first year students only, are designed to prepare students for a rapidly evolving world characterized by social, political, scientific, and economic challenges that cannot be solved using knowledge from a single discipline. Team-taught by faculty from different schools across Washington University, Beyond Boundaries courses offer a window into how scholars from different disciplines approach big, critical topics such as our aging population, the nature of creativity, the phenomenon of climate change, and the art of medicine.
Bear Bridge Courses (3 credits): Spring Semester
In the Spring semester, first year students in the Beyond Boundaries have an opportunity to apply their interdisciplinary knowledge to important social and intellectual questions via a ‘Bear Bridge’ course.
Bear Bridge courses are intended to:
- Apply knowledge and experience from team-taught Beyond Boundaries courses in a project-based, applied context.
- Reinforce cohort experience within the Beyond Boundaries program. Students enrolled in the Beyond Boundaries program will have additional curricular and co-curricular cohort-building, and Bear Bridge courses will reinforce these connections.
- Prepare students for on-going interdisciplinary approaches in their following three years on campus. Bear Bridge courses will give students a set of tools to apply interdisciplinary approaches, including informing their choice of major, their approach to capstone, and their self-identity as a scholar.
Supporting Courses
College Writing (3 credits)
Analytical, communication, and research skills are critical to interdisciplinary practice. Through College Writing students will have the opportunity to practice these skills in skills through a variety texts, contexts, and approaches they can carry with them in the Beyond Boundaries Program.
Offered Spring 2026:
BEYOND BOUNDARIES 1005 – Beyond Boundaries: The Endgame of Entrepreneurship: Leveraging Capitalism for Good (Professors II Luscri & Joe Steensma)
Historically, profit has been a key driver of human behavior. In this class, students will learn to take advantage of the profit-seeking motive of capitalism while also learning from mistakes and unintended consequences capitalism has caused throughout history. Students will apply these learnings toward profit-seeking solutions for the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals — which are global challenges that call us to work together with boldness and urgency. We will explore how skills from entrepreneurship and venture creation can be used to improve water, climate, education and gender equality globally and here in St. Louis. In interdisciplinary teams, students will learn how to define a problem; listen to customers, competitors and collaborators; create value; measure impact; and communicate their vision. Bold entrepreneurial spirit and skills learned in this class will guide students in their further WashU studies and beyond.
BEYOND BOUNDARIES 1007 – Beyond Boundaries: Designing Creativity: Innovation across disciplines (Professors Bruce Lindsey & Rob Morgan)
From “Ah-ha” epiphanies to slow-developing discoveries, the creative process has been employed by innovators and artists in virtually every corner of the globe for centuries. Designing Creativity is a course that will explore the study and practice of the creative process across many disciplines with input from prominent thinkers and practitioners in the areas of medicine, neuroscience, law, engineering, architecture, human-centered design, business, stage design, and the performing arts. The class will also incorporate practice of design thinking and creativity techniques in a LAB component that will allow students to explore the development of innovative ideas in collaborative teams followed by project presentations to core faculty and classmates.
ENST 1540 – Beyond Boundaries: Environmental Racism and the Health of Everyone (Professors Angela Hobson & Scott Krummenacher)
Environmental inequalities threaten the health and well-being of low-income communities and communities of color who are increasingly on the frontlines in the fight against climate change, air and water pollution, food security, and many other urgent environmental problems. Like many urban areas, the St. Louis region faces egregious social, environmental and health disparities. In this course, we critically examine the role of racism and other structural policy inequalities that produce unequal environments and how those unequal environments contribute to public health disparities in St. Louis and beyond. We explore the use of public health data, policy options, and case studies that allow for evidence-based solutions to environmental racism and improved population health. This course that combines small group sessions, case studies and speakers working on environmental justice in the St. Louis region. We provide students with interdisciplinary perspectives and methods, challenging them to address racism and environmental policy through a population health lens. Student learning will be assessed through case studies, reflections, online assignments, and exams.
Offered Fall 2026:
[To find Beyond Boundaries courses in Workday, search “Beyond Boundaries”]
BEYOND BOUNDARIES 1002 – Beyond Boundaries: The Business of Elections (Professors Steve Malter & Andrew Reeves)
This course will focus on understanding the primary and general elections, particularly the 2026 mid-term election through a multi-disciplinary approach, primarily political science and business. Campaigns are start-ups that rely on strategy, branding, influencing consumers (voters), financing and other concepts to achieve the elections of their candidate. At the same time, American politics is highly polarized with voters who are increasingly hostile to listening to the other side. Given this context, how does a campaign succeed as an entrepreneurial venture? The course will allow students to compare and contrast how different candidate’s policies/platforms may impact different constituencies/sectors of the business/labor world as well as the economy and how the media portrays them and what role they will play in the general election.
BEYOND BOUNDARIES 1003 – Beyond Boundaries: When I’m 64: Preparing Ourselves and Society for a Good Long Life (Professors Nancy Morrow-Howell, Brian Carpenter, & Susy Stark)
Whether you know it or not, you’re living in the midst of a revolution – a revolution that is going to change your personal and professional lives. Although old age may seem a long way off, you’ll likely live to age 80 or beyond, with a 50% chance of seeing your 100th birthday. The demographic revolution you’re going to live through will change the health care you receive, the house you live in, the car you drive, the jobs you do, and the relationships you have. This class will give you a competitive edge in understanding how you can harness what’s happening to shape your career and lifestyle. In class you’ll be introduced to leaders and ideas from many fields – medicine, engineering, architecture, public health, social work, law, business, art, and psychology – focused on the issues of our aging society. There will also be opportunities to tailor the class to your interests through events on and off campus, including movies, lectures, performances, field trips, and community projects. Each week, we’ll gather for lectures and also break into small groups for discussion. This course will set you on a path to lead the aging revolution and transform the society of tomorrow.
BEYOND BOUNDARIES 1004 – Beyond Boundaries: Beyond Sustainability: Planet, People, Prosperity (Professors Ian Trivers & Froggi VanRiper)
Building a sustainable future requires informed critical thinkers who can collaborate across disciplines to redesign cities, transportation, agriculture, conservation, decarbonized energy grids, manufacturing, and more. This team-taught course integrates principles from engineering, policy, design, economics, and natural and social science necessary to build a more sustainable world. Through simulations, guest speakers, group workshops, and discussions, students develop the analytical and problem-solving skills needed to evaluate and critique solutions for “planet, people, and prosperity”. This course empowers students with the interdisciplinary knowledge and communication tools needed to become sustainability leaders in their communities and careers.
BEYOND BOUNDARIES 1005 – Beyond Boundaries: The Endgame of Entrepreneurship: Leveraging Capitalism for Good (Professors II Luscri & Joe Steensma)
Historically, profit has been a key driver of human behavior. In this class, students will learn to take advantage of the profit-seeking motive of capitalism while also learning from mistakes and unintended consequences capitalism has caused throughout history. Students will apply these learnings toward profit-seeking solutions for the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals — which are global challenges that call us to work together with boldness and urgency. We will explore how skills from entrepreneurship and venture creation can be used to improve water, climate, education and gender equality globally and here in St. Louis. In interdisciplinary teams, students will learn how to define a problem; listen to customers, competitors and collaborators; create value; measure impact; and communicate their vision. Bold entrepreneurial spirit and skills learned in this class will guide students in their further WashU studies and beyond.
BEYOND BOUNDARIES 1009 – Beyond Boundaries: The Art of Medicine (Professors Rebecca Messbarger & Patricia Olynyk)
This interdisciplinary, cross-school course illuminates the crucial intersection of the history and practice of medicine, and the visual culture of the body and its myriad representations. The encounter between medicine and art has been cooperative, leading to numerous innovations such as the microscope and genetic sequencing, and fiercely antagonistic, as witnessed during the HIV AIDS pandemic in the 1980s and in our current Covid Era. Together with distinguished guest speakers–artists, humanists, and medical professionals–we will break down simplistic distinctions between the cultures of art and medicine and explore past and present bodily representations of health, illness, race, gender, disability, experimental surgeries, and diverse medical cultures. The course will begin with historical artworks, illustrations, and écorchés that have both represented and advanced the history of medicine and the history of art equally, and later examine artworks, which lay bare contemporaneous social, political, and ethical dimensions of wellness, treatment and care, core principles embedded in medicine and select artistic practices. Evolving technologies and their impact on both fields will also be interrogated, using case studies that include: Ercole Lelli’s ecorchés from the University of Bologna, Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp , Kader Attia’s Repair , Simone Leigh’s Free People ’s Medical Clinic, and Stelarc’s Ear on Arm. The class will meet each week, in-person, for both lectures and small group discussions. In their final project at the intersection of art and medicine, students will delve creatively into a topic in which they are particularly interested. Faculty from the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts and the School of Arts and Sciences will collaborate with visiting artists, curators, and faculty from biomedical ethics, the Medical School, and the Institute of Public Health. There are no prerequisites or co-requisites for this course; it is open to all first-year students regardless of prior background.
BEYOND BOUNDARIES 1015 – Beyond Boundaries: Earth’s Future: Causes and Consequences of Global Climate Change (Professors T.R. Kidder)
This course examines 1) the physical basis for climate change; 2) how climates are changing and how we know and assess that climates are changing; and 3) the effects of climate change on natural and human systems. The course is team-taught and will involve participation by scholars across the university with expertise in specific subjects. This is a broad introductory course for first-year students, and it presumes no special subject matter knowledge on the part of the student. This course is only offered for credit to first year (non-transfer) students only. Climate change is one of the most important issues of our time. The ten warmest years on record have all occurred within the last decade. While there is much still to learn, the science is largely settled; consequently, major debates on the subject emphasize mitigating and adapting to the effects of human-driven climate change.