CONCEPT FOR AN INTERDISCIPLINARY SEMINAR ADDED VALUE BY MULTIFORMITY AND BRIDGING THE GAP OF ENGINEERING AND HUMANITIES AT THE RWTH AACHEN UNIVERSITY

For many students of the Institute of Sociology of the RWTH Aachen University, the combination of Technology and humanities still is incredible. Exactly to educate this delusion, the Institute of Textile Technology (ITA) and the Institute of Sociology (IfS) are trying to help. Both institutions offer in cooperation budding sociologists the opportunity to work closely together with engineers of the ITA. Technical problems of the textile industry are considered from a sociological perspective, concepts and approaches are developed in diverse project groups.
The seminar is primarily an interdisciplinary approach, hitting a bridge between students of the humanities and topics of engineering. Budding humanities scholars in each discipline will be shown already during the early phase of their studies that their future career is not limited to the classical liberal arts areas, but their skills and knowledge is also used in areas of engineering and the natural sciences. Two statements of the Philosophical Faculty of the RWTH underline this assumption:
"The global challenges of the 21st Century require interdisciplinary collaboration between the natural sciences, engineering and the humanities and social sciences. "
"The Technical University in Aachen is used to find Partners in the fields of the Faculty of Arts for the increasingly central issues related to the acceptance of technology and technology assessment and to work together with partners to identify future research challenges on a global scale. Natural sciences, medicine and engineering at the RWTH-Aachen put increasing emphasis on the monitoring of their research by social sciences and humanities "(source: Http://www.philosophische-fakultaet.rwth-aachen.de/go/id/ hql, 28/06/2012)
The earlier sensitization to technical issues occurring within the study, the more open and interested the students deal with lesser-used edge disciplines of social sciences and humanities. Consequently whom individual study focus is made possible by an increased level of interesting dimensions of their field of study and insight into subjects unrelated topics at the beginning of the study.
Students of sociology or other human sciences are given the opportunity to get to know the Institute of Textile Technology (ITA), to take part on corporate excursions to companies of the textile industry and to attend in lectures of "Textile Engineering 2". For their grading the students can write interesting practical papers in collaboration with scientific staff of the ITA.
The seminar "Interdisciplinarity of Sociology in Organizations" wants to form an interdisciplinary interface to expand.
The concept opens up both, the students and the scientific staff of the ITA, new perspectives and viewpoints on current issues and shows that engineering and humanities even may very well be reconciled and even must. - Technology is a social phenomenon and as the company starts the technical developments of our engineers and scientists, decides on the research agendas of tomorrow.