There's No "I" In Team, But There Is In "iCons"

I begin with an apocryphal story about Michael Jordan, the Hall-of-Fame basketball player, when Phil Jackson became his coach in 1989. Coach Jackson called MJ in for a chat, saying: "Michael, you gotta pass the ball more. You know, there is no 'I' in team," to which MJ said: "Yeah, but there is in wIn!" Gotta love MJ!

So why is there an "i" in iCons if it is all about team, you ask? Great question. The answer is, in contrast to the "i" in iPod, iPad, iPhone, and iTouch, for which i = individual, the "i" in iCons is all about integration, which requires teamwork. Actually, in the early days of iCons, the "i" stood for interdisciplinary, but we realized that integration is a higher-order level of knowledge and action. To whit, there is a course at Harvard called "Life and the Physical Sciences -- A Foundational Chemistry and Biology," [1] which involves ~7 weeks of Chemistry and ~7 weeks of Biology. This is interdisciplinary, but it is not integrated. We thus realized that interdisciplinarity is necessary but not sufficient to solve big problems, while integration is the way to go.

A quick Google Search on "integrative learning" reveals a diagram that could serve as a map of iCons -- truly amazing! [2] This picture was published in 2005, just 3 years before we started thinking about our own integrative curriculum at UMass Amherst. I find it astonishing that all the elements we hold dear in iCons are in this figure. This could be an argument for Carl Jung's and later Joseph Campbell's theories of collective consciousness and archetypes, namely, that there are a limited number of myths and models that are flowing through human consciousness, manifested in different ways, in different times and places, but inherently telling the same fundamental stories.

I believe that integrative education like that in iCons is a model flowing through the collective human consciousness, trying to find its voice at the right place, and at the right time. I also believe that UMass Amherst is the right place, and now is the right time.

That is why there is an "i" in iCons. And that's how students and society both WIN.

[1] http://webdocs.registrar.fas.harvard.edu/courses/ChemistryandChemicalBio...

[2] Huber, M. T., Hutchings, P., & Gale, R. (2005). Integrative Learning for Liberal Education (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrative_learning).