This presentation will discuss an applied learning project that was conducted as a collaboration between physics and art disciplines at SUNY Cortland* and share reflections on the process and pedagogy. Students of the courses, Principles of Physics III and Graphic Design II, were tasked with researching, modeling, and finally creating visual representations of social or environmental issues. Through student work the presenters will demonstrate how this project gave students a learning opportunity to strengthen interdisciplinary communication skills, gain experience in translation and interpretation of data, and realize the interconnected nature of systems. The instructors organized the students into eight groups, each composed of one physics student and two art students. Communication between students took place in Blackboard discussion groups, which also served as a platform for sharing documents. The project began with the students individually identifying areas of environmental and social concern. Four topical areas were selected for this project: forest management, endangered species, air/water pollution, and world population. Each group researched issues in their topical area and then formed a specific and quantifiable question. The main work of the physics students began in the next phase, where they transformed the questions into sets of equations. These equations were then developed into numerical simulations in custom Python scripts. Each physics student then wrote a technical report that defined the specific problem and described the data from the simulation. The second phase of the project began with the art students reading and discussing the technical reports. The art students employed a three-step process in their creation of infographics, first transforming the data into socially-relevant information, and then creating a story around the information that could be relayed in a visual format. The final product of each collaboration was an infographic poster of size 17”x23”. This project concluded with an exhibition held at the end of the semester, titled Connections, where the process work and posters from this collaboration were displayed in the physical science building at SUNY Cortland.

*This project was a part of the Common Problem Pedagogy (CPP) program during the Spring 2019 semester. The CPP program is an NSF-funded, multi-institutional program that seeks to foster interdisciplinary education through applied learning projects.