“Addressing Climate Change from an Ignatian-Inspired Perspective”

Marquette University currently requires all undergraduate students to complete a Methods of Inquiry course in which three disciplines address a topic from their varied perspectives. In response to a 2019 call to faculty to develop these courses, a physicist, theologian, and sociologist collaborated in proposing energy use and human-induced climate change as their focus for offering during the Spring 2020 semester. This topic warranted a deviation from the two prescribed multi-disciplinary formats to an interdisciplinary approach aimed at yielding an integrated outcome. The three disciplines contributed to this outcome following the SEE--REFLECT/JUDGE–ACT method demonstrated in Catholic Social Teaching and Society of Jesus documents. Eighty-seven students joined three professors in two introductory sessions that set the stage for successive units within which the data, methods, and scopes of Physics, Theology, and Sociology were explored. Teams of students were established to research a variety of topics and recommend how Marquette can minimize its reliance on fossil fuels. Though the outbreak of COVID 19 forced moving from teams on campus to individual student research on their residences, the students demonstrated in their final submissions their ability to integrate the three disciplines.