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Bass Connections Project Teams:
- Future Space Settlements: Lessons from History (2024-2025)
- World Building at Duke in an Emerging Durham: 1924-1932 (2023-2024)
- Mapping History: Seeing Premodern Cartography through GIS and Game Engines (2020-2021)
Since 2020, Philip Stern has led three Bass Connections projects, ranging from an exploration into early modern mapping to a deep dive into the possible futures of space settlement research. His approach emphasizes giving students ownership of their learning while creating fertile ground for both innovative research and unexpected career pathways.
Stern shared his perspective on leading teams with Kelly Harrison (Senior Academic Program Coordinator, Bass Connections) during an interview in Fall 2025.
What motivated you to propose a Bass Connections project?
The project-based learning and pedagogy that Bass Connections promotes was appealing. It inverts the traditional teaching approach by having students jump into projects and figure out what they need to know, which is more productive, efficient and real-world oriented.
Bass Connections also allows exploration of new research avenues. The projects I’ve co-led have included new approaches to cartography and early modern mapping, participation in a Centennial-themed pop-up team, and a project on space. What holds them together are different aspects of my research interests and opportunities for long-standing conversations about collaboration with colleagues.
The first project was in conjunction with an NEH grant, the second with Duke’s centennial celebrations, and the third has grown into part of the SPACE Initiative at Duke. Unlike some faculty who repeat projects in clear research lines, my approach has been more exploratory - using Bass Connections for preliminary research to see if there’s more research to be done.
What are some of the elements you consider as you lay out your project plan and organize your team?
First, it's important to realize the structure and nature of the collaboration and figure out what roles everyone can play. Having summer teams do preliminary work through Data+ or Bass Connections budgets helps lay groundwork by creating data, archives or brainstorming modules. Finding the right balance between directing students to do particular research and allowing them to find research questions on their own is crucial. This sometimes means the project doesn't get as far by April/May as predicted, requiring flexibility in goals and deliverables.
Another element we consider is how to bring together students from various disciplines who may not have the same tools and deciding whether to let students stay within their expertise or encourage them to push outside their comfort zones.
What specific moments or experiences from your projects stand out as particularly meaningful for student growth or research breakthrough?
In the Future Space Settlements project, students had breakthroughs in figuring out how to focus their research. After exploring different approaches, the history sub-team decided to look at company towns as models for space settlements. Students learned about the history of company towns created by private companies, from railway towns in the American West to modern examples like SpaceX's Starbase in Texas. This research revealed many dimensions they hadn’t initially considered.
Additionally, many students found career direction through the project and learned they don't need to tack their major to their career. A history major doesn’t mean you’re going to history as a career - you can do anything. What employers are looking for are people who can think, write and critically engage. Students realized they don’t have to be confined by their major, or they learned to understand their major in a more interdisciplinary way than when they started.
The team brought in speakers, including Provost Gallimore (a “literal rocket scientist”), Executive Vice Provost Mohamed Noor (who works in space-related areas and consults for Star Trek) and a curator from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, showing students various career paths in space-related fields beyond engineering.
How do you see Bass Connections contributing to advancing or reimagining work in the humanities or arts?
Bass Connections has untold and untapped potential to expand the reach of humanities, arts and interpretive social sciences in several ways. First, it expands constituencies and support for humanities research by advertising interesting projects to broader audiences who might not look in traditional departments. Many students don’t know what humanities research looks like - they understand science research with microscopes, but don’t know that literature professors do research.
Second, it opens space for interdisciplinary humanities research and partnerships with people outside humanities on big projects, such as AI initiatives.
Third, the project-based learning model resonates with what humanities researchers and teachers do - having students take charge of their own learning. Bass Connections also provides resources to support projects that might not otherwise have funding.
The main challenge is determining how much to define the project for students versus how much students define it themselves. Humanists are often uncomfortable with setting established parameters and protocols because it feels like students aren’t able to develop their own understanding and questions. Traditional humanities courses might start with prompts but end with student-developed questions, while Bass Connections inverts this approach. The solution is being less worried about the endpoint and being willing to change goals.
Another challenge is thinking about different ways of evaluating students beyond the traditional paper submission model. Team-based work also teaches students to work in teams, which isn’t always straightforward but is a useful skill for future careers, requiring compromise, negotiation and finding common ground.
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How do you measure or think about success for a Bass Connections project?
Success can be measured in multiple ways. One measure is achieving outputs and goals - having a successful deliverable or product that influences the world, engages with communities or answers questions. Success can also mean setting an agenda for future research or creating groundwork for more focused teams.
More difficult to measure are impacts on students’ trajectories - whether they’ve taken lessons learned into future courses or work. Students from all projects have gone on to write senior theses or get jobs based on their Bass Connections experience.
Success can also simply mean leaving with more ideas than you came in with. Some projects have real-world impact through publications, policy direction or informing new directions.
What advice would you give to colleagues about bringing together students and faculty from different disciplines?
For successful collaboration, one has to cede some of the control they’re used to having in research and classroom settings. This doesn’t mean anarchy, but true collaboration requires everyone to shift their interests and goals toward a common center. When bringing people from different disciplines together, you need to listen to what they want and realize everyone will have to sacrifice something to create a common language and product.
Also consider what students and faculty from different disciplines can and cannot do - is your approach truly interdisciplinary or just multiple disciplines working separately? Think about what methodological training might be needed. For example, is it fair to ask an engineering student to work with historical archives without support? Consider partnerships among students with different skill sets or with campus resources like librarians. Give space for trial-and-error learning, so people can start speaking a similar language rather than remaining siloed in their specialties.
What advice would you give faculty who are considering leading a Bass Connections team for the first time?
First, ask yourself what your goals are. Are you trying to bring students into your existing research, explore a new area, create an interesting teaching approach, impact policy or create foundations for more expansive research? Bass Connections accommodates all these different possible outcomes.
Second, get your team on the same page about whether your values for the project emphasize process or product (though both should always be in the picture).
Third, decide on the size of the team you’re trying to build rather than letting it develop by demand, as teams can become too big. Consider what areas of specialty you want represented. Don't be too worried about making mistakes the first time – there’s a lot of on-the-job learning, and setting the right tone helps everyone be part of the project together.
Learn More
- Read more advice from faculty who have led Bass Connections teams.
- Explore additional opportunities for faculty through Bass Connections.
- Browse faculty FAQs.