The Independent Scholar Mariam Elassal, Editor-in-Chief

What is an Independent Scholar?

The purpose of The Independent Scholar is to encourage the intellectual and creative efforts of college students who have varied and extraordinary interests. The e-zine is especially directed to those who seek broad-based and connected understandings of the world, and wish to develop complementary skill sets to meet new challenges. The Independent Scholar is organized around general concepts, the building blocks of thinking, which gives authors the freedom to engage in thought experiments and follow intuitions. This organization also gives authors an opportunity to contribute specific examples of their work to a more encompassing "ontological database," a resource showing the relations between concepts and categories in a domain or subject area. The Independent Scholar intends to encompass the complexities of the real world and offer both positive and normative guidance to readers.

Individual contributions to the e-zine demonstrate the authors' deep-seated commitments to promote sustainability, creativity, justice, arts and humanities, human diversity, global cultures, interdependence, and science, society, and technology; intellectual and practical skills, especially evidence-based reasoning and innovation, fluency with principles of analysis and communication, critical and creative thinking, quantification, and information literacy; integrative and adaptive learning, including ethical reasoning, civic knowledge and engagement, global acumen, and the capacity to work productively with diverse people and perspectives; and diversity, inclusion, and engagement in a democratic society.

Faculty Advisor: Philip L. Frana, Ph.D. (franapl@jmu.edu)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Transformations

Social Good

Thinking Beyond the Horizon

Integration

Interdependence

Intersubjectivity

Empathy

Liberty, Independence, and Self-Reliance

Competency

Solutions

Security and Privacy

Intertextuality

Information Literacy

Stimulation

Creativity

Visualization and Auralization

Podcast Episodes and StoryMaps

Independent Scholars is an academic major at James Madison University that provides motivated students with the flexibility to pursue academic pathways tailored to their interests. Each student in the Independent Scholars program identifies an area of inquiry, and creates a plan for coursework, independent research, and experiential learning. They enjoy the freedom to explore ideas across disciplinary boundaries and acquire special expertise in evaluating and integrating knowledge from different fields of study. They also cultivate creativity, independence, and problem-solving qualities in high demand by employers and post-baccalaureate programs. Read their individual stories here.

The Independent Scholar was founded in 2020, the year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Opportunities to attend in-person conferences and symposia, engage in study abroad trips, or take internships evaporated in that year. But the human spirit endured. Students founded this magazine, which publishes interdisciplinary essays and other digital media related to their individualized majors and humankind's enduring problems.

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