Historically, each design discipline at Philadelphia University staged its own senior show event.  This year’s senior show, on campus May 15-17, will be the first show in which design disciplines in three of our schools will be presenting together. The potential for creating a wider community of ideas and interdependencies is momentous.

The decision earlier this year to present together and the planning that ensued unleashed exciting connections between disciplines.  The mingling of faculty, students and guests created community. This community invested in a shared set of ideas. It led to collaborations between those faculty and students. The most fertile territory for discovery is between disciplines, not within one’s own discipline.

While the original thinking focused on the year-end senior show, we have seen the results of this discovery in so many of the shows on campus. Upcoming events include design/business this Wednesday April 15, then our famous fashion show on April 30 (at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music) and the Digital/Industrial Design show in the Kanbar Campus Center at 2 p.m. on May 1.

Eventually all disciplines on campus might be displaying together, showing the full potential of interdisciplinary, experiential education; showing innovation in the “middle ground” between disciplines.

It is worth traveling the extra mile for a show like that. Where else can employers meet many multidimensional graduates showing off their innovative interdisciplinary work? Where else will one find an engineer with design understanding, a young entrepreneur who is a design champion or a designer who understands what it means to design furniture for a new kind of architecture?