Fostering a strong sense of community in a university is essential for enhancing overall satisfaction and addressing feelings of disconnection, especially in interdisciplinary courses. To achieve this, instructors need support in implementing cross-disciplinary teaching methods, especially when transferring best practices between academic disciplines. Our research investigates the potential of team-based learning to create a classroom community among students from diverse academic backgrounds, focusing on STEM and non-STEM courses. Using mixed methods, we analyze how students perceive the university community and faculty connections across different disciplines, with a specific emphasis on marketing and kinesiology. We also explore knowledge acquisition within both intra-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary contexts in these fields. Our findings reveal the strength of student connections within their respective domains and across different disciplines. Additionally, the research highlights students' ability to acquire knowledge in various fields, contributing to our understanding of cross-disciplinary education and emphasizing the importance of building academic communities in diverse university settings.

This collaborative presentation features students and faculty from a graduate level pedagogy course and explores the possibilities of an engaged pedagogy. Specifically, we highlight the need for humanization in the college classroom in order to create more equitable and just spaces in higher education. Embracing the 10 commitments of critical communication pedagogy (Fassett & Warren, 2007) as foundational to our praxis, this interactive presentation will highlight the place of vulnerability, cultura, silence, critical reflexivity, and failure in the classroom. Refusing the logics of punishment and revenge in the classroom, we aim to offer a different vision of higher education, one built on an ethic of critical love.