Vassar Today

Following Their Curiosity Led to Flexible Futures, Say Alums.

Why Multidisciplinary Studies Matter

Professor Marc Michael Epstein, Director of Jewish Studies, laughing with students as he teaches.

Professor Marc Michael Epstein, Director of Jewish Studies, teaches the multidisciplinary course Jesus: A Radical Life.

Karl Rabe

At Vassar, curiosity rarely stays within a single discipline. For more than 50 years, the multidisciplinary programs have encouraged students to connect ideas across fields and tackle complex questions from multiple perspectives.

This approach to learning continues to shape lives long after graduation. Alums across the generations say the programs have helped them discover not only meaningful work but lasting purpose. Whether in public service, science, activism, entrepreneurship, or the arts, they credit the multidisciplinary programs with giving them the confidence to build careers driven by passion, flexibility, and a deep understanding of the world.

Rising to the Challenge

Since graduating with an STS degree and later earning her MBA from Wharton, Beth Burnam ’77 has built a multifaceted career. She began as a financial analyst at Hughes Aircraft Company, moved into IT and management consulting with a Big Eight firm, and then joined her family’s business. She later focused on volunteering, first at her children’s school and then as a founding member of Vassar’s President’s Advisory Board and as a member of its Board of Trustees. Today, she focuses on environmental work as a community organizer for wildlife preparedness in California (See more here.)

Beth Burnam ’77.

Karl Rabe

My advice? Do it.”

—Beth Burnam ’77

“Vassar in the ’70s was a very different place than it is today,” Burnam said. “There were absolutely no required classes, nor distribution requirements. There were not even first-year required classes.”

When Burnam was at Vassar, STS was split into two concentrations: critical thinking and urban studies. She took a lot of sociology, political science, history, and philosophy classes and chose the critical-thinking path. Her professors challenged her, which was a reason she went into the department in the first place.

The STS seminar course grade was based on participation and a single paper on a technological innovation and its social implications. While many classmates chose to write their papers on major items like cars and phones, Burnam wrote about disposable diapers because of the convenience they offered and the unintended consequence of groundwater pollution by E. coli.

The Multidisciplinary Programs

Today, Vassar’s multidisciplinary programs have grown to include 14 fields:

Africana Studies

American Studies

Asian Studies

Environmental Studies

Global Nineteenth-Century Studies

International Studies

Jewish Studies

Latin American and Latinx Studies

Media Studies

Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Neuroscience and Behavior

Science, Technology, and Society (STS)
(the first official multidisciplinary program)

Urban Studies

Women, Feminist, and Queer Studies

“I sat down and said, ‘Wow, I want to choose a technological innovation that wasn’t a biggie, but was something that had huge implications,’” Burnam shared. “Disposable diapers were pretty new in the ’70s. I had to go down to West Point to see the wood industry trade journals … That assignment stuck with me. You don’t have to take on the biggies to get the nuances and the problems associated with something. Today, our society is totally convenience-oriented, and disposable diapers clearly fit into that space; however, they are the cause of the pollution of our groundwater.”

Her experiences at Vassar and later at Wharton, where she helped create her own major in management and innovation, contributed to the broad perspective she values in today’s ever-changing world.

“I’m a big believer in the multidisciplinary programs because I don’t think the world is defined in these clear boundaries of a department,” she said. “The multidisciplinary perspective is just the way I see the world. It’s in my thought process all the time. I’m such a believer in the programs that I managed to have both my kids drink the Kool-Aid, and they both majored in multidisciplinary programs.”

Choose Your Own Adventure

As a “young and sheltered” first-year, Meg Stone ’95 was fortunate to land a spot in an oversubscribed Introduction to Women’s Studies class. The course set her on her life’s path, leading her to declare her major in Women’s Studies (now Women, Feminist, and Queer Studies).

“It moved me, opened my mind, and showed me a path to my purpose in life that I will forever be grateful for,” Stone said.

While at the College, Stone interned five times for the Poughkeepsie YWCA’s battered women’s service, answering crisis calls, and going to court as part of her fieldwork assignment. She kept a journal and wrote papers about what was happening in her field placement and earned credit for her fieldwork while getting to know survivors.

Because of the way the multidisciplinary and fieldwork programs were integrated, Stone was “able to sit and analyze all of the realities because I was in the courthouse with survivors and then I came back to campus and did research papers about domestic violence and family law. I was better able to support survivors because of all the rigorous thinking my professors inspired me to do, and my papers were more grounded in reality because of my fieldwork.

“I think that people in more traditional majors had more of a path, and we had more of a ‘choose your own adventure,’” Stone said. “Having had that issue- or problem-focused—but very methodologically broad—lens to my education made it possible for me to follow both the problems and solutions to this work. I got to see gender-based violence the way sociology sees it in one class, the way political science sees it in another class, and the way it shows up in literature in a third. This helped me identify creative solutions that were informed by many academic disciplines but not wedded to any one.”

Meg Stone ’95.

courtesy of the subject

“If you want to look at a problem from several perspectives and move toward a concrete action that you can take to make it better or to support people who don’t have the resources they need, [the multidisciplinary programs] are the best majors.”

—Meg Stone ’95

Since graduating from Vassar, Stone has dedicated her career to helping others affected by gender-based violence. She currently serves as Executive Director of IMPACT Boston, an abuse and violence prevention and empowerment self-defense program. Stone is also a public speaker and the author of two books on personal safety and gender-based violence.

The combination of hands-on fieldwork and the broad, multidisciplinary study Stone experienced at Vassar shaped how she approaches gender-based violence to this day.

Infinite Ways to Solve a Problem

Vassar didn’t just give Carlisle Schaeffer ’14 a degree; he also met his friend and future business partner, Sam Wagner ’13. The two bonded over their shared love of running on the cross-country team and of good brews. In 2018, they opened Little House Brewing Company.

Schaeffer bounced between several different majors, including history and studio art, before deciding to major in STS.

Sam Wagner ’13 and Carlisle Schaeffer ’14.

Karl Rabe

“Professor James Challey (now retired) taught the first STS course I ever took, and I was hooked,” Schaeffer said. “I prioritized taking his classes, regardless of how interested I was in the subject, as I knew he would have a fascinating approach to it.”

Challey became Schaeffer’s advisor and, later, a supporter of Little House Brewing Company. Schaeffer completed an independent study on Matthew Vassar’s brewing career and wrote his thesis on the rise of craft beer in the U.S., examining it through the lens of beer as a socially constructed technology.

“STS taught me that there are a near infinite number of ways to solve a problem, and that it can be very valuable to know not only how something happens, but why it does,” he said. “This has been very useful in commercial brewing, where something is always bound to go wrong, be it an electrical issue, a failing pump, inconsistent raw materials, or uncooperative yeast.”

A Calling

Christopher Unruh ’23 grew up in the highly dynamic multicultural setting of Honolulu, HI, where his passion for politics, history, sociology, and geography took shape. He knew he wanted a career that would let him weave those interests together, but the path wasn’t immediately clear. That changed when he discovered Vassar’s International Studies Program, where he focused on environmental issues, including climate change, displacement, and environmental injustice.

“It felt like a calling and a program that fit my interests well,” Unruh said. “My entire degree was looking at different ways of thinking and viewing the world and its issues. It gave me the flexibility that I felt I really needed and allowed me to create a college experience that worked best for me.”

After graduating, Unruh traveled to Malaysia to participate in the Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement, and Education, a Mellon Foundation–supported collaboration between Vassar, Bard, Bennington, and Sarah Lawrence colleges and The New School. There, he and other students studied migration issues and worked directly with Southeast Asian migrant communities.

Back in the U.S., Unruh moved to Washington, DC, to pursue a dual master’s in international affairs and sustainable development through American University and the U.N. University for Peace in Costa Rica. The program took him from classrooms in DC to working with farmers and environmental defenders in Costa Rica. He has interned for his home-state senator and the Environmental Protection Agency. Today, he is the Western Regional Organizer for the Climate Reality Project, former Vice President Al Gore’s nonprofit focused on climate education and advocacy.

Through it all, International Studies Professor Timothy Koechlin’s words have remained with him: “International doesn’t necessarily mean the other side of the world. International can be the state over from you or even down the street.” —Heather Mattioli

Chase Engel ‘23 and Christopher Unruh ’23 in Honolulu.

Christopher Unruh ’23 (right) with Chase Engel ’23 during a Projects for Peace stint in Honolulu

Courtesy of the subject

If you’re passionate about a wide variety of things and don’t want to pin yourself down but want to look into research and hit a lot of different topics, give the multidisciplinary programs some serious thought. You won’t regret it.”

—Christopher Unruh ’23

A Home for the Multidisciplinary Programs

Karl Rabe

These alums are in agreement about one missing piece: Vassar’s multidisciplinary programs have never had a proper home. While Old Laundry Building (OLB) is technically the home base for our multidisciplinary programs, faculty offices, classes, and collaborative spaces are spread out over the entire campus. The building is ill-suited for a learning environment.

To give the programs a more collaborative and central home base, the College is planning a total renovation of the building that will transform it into the Center for Multidisciplinary Study as a part of the Fearlessly Consequential campaign. The building will be designed with learning and creativity in mind, giving the multidisciplinary programs a home fit for their unique and cooperative learning mission.

To learn more about how you can support the Center for Multidisciplinary Study, visit go.vassar.edu/multisinfo25.

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