I once read an article that classified people into two categories: spaghetti thinkers and waffle thinkers.
Waffle thinkers organize and categorize ideas; spaghetti thinkers are always seeing connections among ideas. I remember being at a deans meeting many years ago where this was clearly on display. Our boss had asked us to think about a particular initiative for the campus, and I brought a mindmap to the meeting, filled with bubbles and lines interconnecting them. One of my colleagues brought a spreadsheet to the next meeting, rows and columns that were his way of interpreting my ideas.
Aside from the great amusement that this created in the group, the situation made clear that both are needed to have an effective team. Thus, I have learned as a spaghetti thinker that I need waffles around me to help me implement the sometimes tangled vision I have, for spaghetti is tasty but often gets tangled around the fork!
Universities are typically organized in a format that speaks to the waffle thinkers. We have general education and majors that fall into categories that make sense to the academics who design them but often befuddle students. The division of academic and student affairs, representing inside of class and outside of class divisions of the university, also does not make a whole lot of sense to those outside our structure. More and more over the last 30 years, however, we are looking at the intersections to find meaning in what we do and to create a better environment for students.
One of those areas of intersection we call interdisciplinarity. Of course, universities being what they are, we also use the terms cross-disciplinary, multi-disciplinary, and even trans-disciplinary. All of these terms relate to applying the concepts of one field of study to another or looking at an issue from the perspective of different fields of study. If we look at climate change, for example, we consider multiple environmental concerns, the impact on humanity, and the engineering of solutions. We agree that having all those perspectives “in the room” makes for a better solution.
The challenge that we confront in teaching students to work in this space is figuring out how much of each of these different fields they need to understand and be able to use. If people lose deep learning in one area, can they still make meaningful contributions to solving the broader issue? The intersection is an exciting place in which many students want to be, but they do not always know how to get there. The challenge is to apply some waffle structure to the spaghetti mixing of ideas.
Hawaii provides a rich supply of intersections in which to do this work. Hawaii Island has nearly all of the world’s climate types, leading us to think differently about the way we live and how it affects our environments. The cultural diversity in which we live leads us to think differently, for just being aware that there are other perspectives leads us to consider those perspectives differently than we would were we not aware of them. The number of people here who speak in multiple languages also creates an environment of creativity. Languages are not just means of communication, but windows into the way people think, and those differences in thought processes, much like the spaghetti and waffle thought differences, can lead us to better solutions when we come together as a team.
Our local economy exists in the intersections; different sectors of our economy thrive when they are connected to one another. For example, the pandemic has moved us more rapidly toward considering tourism in a different light. We look at specific subcategories of tourism now, such as eco-tourism, agri-tourism, medical tourism. We talk about regenerative tourism, how we can use this major industry to help us maintain and improve our environment. The connections create opportunity for change.
All of Hawaii’s intersections are profoundly important to our future. Hawaii is uniquely positioned in the midst of diverse environments, cultures and ways of thinking all packed in our relatively small space. Finding the connections among all these elements and then making sense of them will require both good waffle and good spaghetti thinking.
Bonnie D. Irwin is chancellor of the University of Hawaii at Hilo. Her column appears monthly in the Tribune-Herald.
