IDS brings leadership seminar to tech-voc HS

Senior high school students from San Rafael Technological and Vocational High School accomplish the interactive activities prepared by FEU’s Department of Interdisciplinary Studies. From FEU-IDS

Far Eastern University’s (FEU) Department of Interdisciplinary Studies (IDS) held an interactive workshop for senior high school (SHS) students from San Rafael Technological and Vocational High School last October where they gained new perspectives on leadership and decision-making. The session, “Lead with Perspective: The Interdisciplinarity of Leadership and Decion Making,” was led by IDS faculty member Shiela May Julianda as part of the department’s Project CHANCE: Creating, Helping, and Achieving New Cordial Experiences.

Using the Activity-Discussion Input-Deepening Synthesis methodology, students participated in activities that challenged them to identify leadership qualities and analyze poverty through interdisciplinary lenses, combining perspectives from history, demography, economics, anthropology, psychology, sociology, political science, and geography.

“The students were delighted that they could actually combine disciplines to better explain and understand the issue of poverty in the country,” said Julianda in Filipino.

Julianda said she chose interdisciplinary thinking as the seminar’s focus because society often overlooks the value of examining issues through different perspectives.

“To have a more holistic understanding of what’s happening and offer possible explanations to problems, we need to learn not to rely on just a single discipline,” she explained.

“Whenever we do this, we become blind to aspects that aren’t the focus of the discipline we’re using. Our analysis becomes limited and we develop blind spots,” Julianda elaborated. She explained how real world problems do not always fit neatly into separate subjects.

Climate change involves scientific, economic, political, and ethical dimensions, for instance, she said. Mental health spans biology, politics, science, sociology-cultural factors, psychology, and technology, she added.

According to Julianda, interdisciplinary thinking offers crucial benefits for SHS students: it allows them to make intelligent decisions as citizens, identify and minimize personal biases, and think more objectively and critically about information they see on social media. For aspiring leaders, this capability becomes essential.

“Leaders aim to solve problems that are made up of many dimensions, so its better if future leaders have interdisciplinary knowledge and capabilities so they can create decisions, actions, and solutions that are genuinely inclusive and humane,” she explained in Filipino.

The seminar emphasized four essential leadership qualities: the ability to analyze problems through interdisciplinary methods, national consciousness, critical thinking, and effective communication skills.

Julianda asserted that the seminar embodied core principles of FEU and the IDS department, which are holistic and integrative learning, ethical and compassionate engagement, critical and creative thinking, and social responsibility.

“The seminar taught that leadership doesn’t just end with the decision to make someone a leader, but in developing that person’s ability to faithfully and properly fulfill the responsibilities given to them as a leader,” said Julianda, adding that this aligns with FEU’s core values of Fortitude, Excellence, and Uprightness.

Julianda highlighted the importance of FEU partnering with schools like San Rafael and other senior high schools. Such partnerships introduce FEU’s course offerings, share quality education, and prepare students for university while demonstration FEU’s commitment in giving back to the community. Julianda expressed confidence in the capability of FEU faculty to shape the youth’s minds.

“[Our] FEU teachers, especially those from [IDS], have sufficient capability and knowledge that can greatly help in developing students’ social skills and knowledge using an interdisciplinary approach,” she said.

“Above all, initiatives like interdisciplinary leadership seminars strengthen both FEU and San Rafael in their goal to develop young people with critical thinking, humane leadership, and readiness for the real world,” said Julianda in Filipino.