Each semester of ISP will explore a fundamental topic from the perspective of two disciplines (or “streams”) chosen from the humanities, social sciences, and/or natural sciences. Such themes have included climate change, poverty, orthodoxies and disruptions, and even what it means to be human. See Courses and Themes for a fuller list.
All instruction is live and in-person. Stream lectures occur on Tuesday mornings and afternoons, followed by an integrative symposium on Thursday morning involving all members of the teaching team. The teaching week concludes with a Friday seminar that digs more deeply into areas of productive agreement or friction between streams in a smaller, more intimate, classroom setting.
ISP gives first-year students the opportunity to explore a variety of disciplines without requiring them to commit to any particular major or course of study. ISP students receive credit for 3 of the 7 sectors required by the college while they test their interests in various disciplinary approaches.
ISP students go on to major in every major Penn offers, pursuing pre-med and pre-law requirements, and in many cases winning the most vaunted fellowships and prizes Penn offers. BFS students report [See Student Profiles] that having been in ISP helped them find their path to their chosen major. And because ISP reaches across disciplines, students have been known to design their own novel and independent paths of study.