Understanding Interdisciplinarity Integrating Areas

“A Smoothie is integration at its finest”

Greetings Mentees! Have you ever ordered a smoothie from Smoothie King and watched the specific ingredients (strawberries, bananas, or maybe even protein) that they threw in the blender to make the whole delicious product of enjoyment. Well, mentees this process that you’ve witnessed is known as integration! If this example didn’t allow you to understand this term fully, then let’s jump right into blog below!


The formal definition of integration is: an act or instance of combining into an integral whole (Repko, 2008). You could simply think of chocolate milk (chocolate and milk) or your house (wood, cement, metal) as integrations. Or you could get more complex and look at, for example, a sales rep for Boeing. This job requires knowledge in the disciplines of marketing, communication, engineering, and of course sales. For the sake of interdisciplinary studies, integration is the process of taking various fields of study and utilizing information learned from these fields in order to augment your understanding or performance in another field. An example includes a medical doctor combining MRI scans and various cognitive psychological tests in order to determine a mental defect. Another example is a building contractor laying both the plumbing and electrical wiring during a project, integrating two separate fields to yield one result.

Cristina integrated her areas and both of her minors by taking behavioral theories and applying under social contexts, for example last spring she worked as a volunteer at a performing arts camp for under privileged kids. From a social theorist’s point of view she offered these kids an alternative to engaging in illegal street activities with their older siblings, friends or cousins. She applied the social theory of Differential Association, which states that through interaction with others; individuals learn the values, attitudes, techniques, and motives for criminal behavior, to removing the compulsion to commit crimes against society in urban youth.

Alexis believes that being able to understand integration is exactly what my IDS major has done for me. In all of the marketing classes she took, she explored mostly in the sales area. She enjoyed sales so much because of her theatrical background and her passion for entertaining and getting a crowd to enjoy her presence. Her communications concentration portrays how to communicate properly in the mass media which is another form of marketing. She has found ways to integrate all of my areas together and it has helped her excel during her last four years. As illustrated by the above example, integration of your areas/minor is important especially in the professional world. As far as academia is concerned, knowing how to integrate your studies will be a huge benefit while doing any kind of research and will even give you different ways of approaching research to get the most out of what you find.

I have chosen my areas of study to form a clearer understanding for the realm of healthcare. In my area of Life/Biomedical science, I learned about the human body, location of organs, and functions of those specific parts. However in my Behavioral/Social science area, I learned about the developmental stages and the many mental processes of cognitive psychology which would provide help when dealing with future patients. My minor health service administration pretty much speaks for itself. It covers everything from the day to day operations of a health care facility, the positions/staff pyramidal structure of a hospital, and how to bring more awareness to communities that are seeking efficient health practices.

Integration is important in all aspects of life because one specific field of study cannot accommodate every potential problem found in the work place, school, home or personal life. I do not think that my areas/minors can be better integrated because I chose them to directly cater to my future career goals of being on Broadway and/or becoming a co-op agent for the FBI and one day funding my own non-profit performing arts program. Think of combining your areas of studies/minor as combining the pieces of three different puzzles. It is often difficult to integrate your areas because they differ from one another so much. Although, it seems challenging it is NOT IMPOSSIBLE! There is a common ground that between the disciplines that must be assessed. Once this is achieved, you will arrive at a new understanding, which later creates the “functional whole”.

Breadth + depth + synthesis = integration

My areas/minor could be better integrated if I applied myself to three main concepts. The concept breadth would be use to assess disciplines that are distant from another (ex. Natural science and humanities) than disciplines that are relatively close (ex. Physics and chemistry) I would also use the concept depth which involves drawing sufficient insights from each discipline. The last concept that will be used is call synthesis, which involves finding a common ground between the insights to gain a better understanding.

This concludes our informative blog on integration but we would love to know how or why you haven’t integrated your areas and minor. We would also like to know how your areas/minor could be better integrated. Do you feel that integration is an important tool for being successful professionally or academically?