Innovation occurs when students discover connections between different disciplines. MUIDS has created a culture of collaboration that empowers students to discover connections between different subjects. They learn to see the Sciences and Humanities not as separate subjects, but as complements of each other. Knowledge is no longer seen as the province of one subject, but rather as a set of ideas frequently shared and built upon by different people who work in different fields. Students find new life in ideas they once saw as old and irrelevant.

These discoveries are the product of frequent collaboration between MUIDS’ faculty. Teachers from different subjects plan lessons together and draw inspiration from one another. They share not only best-practices, but also knowledge from their own disciplines in an effort to help students explicitly draw connections between different subjects.

Students gain proficiency in a topic in one class, share their understanding with a class from another subject, and take ideas they’ve learned back to their fellow students. This process breaks down barriers between subjects and helps students understand the benefits of open-ended inquiry and intellectual curiosity, two skills that are vital for success in the 21st century.

Empathy, or the ability to imagine someone else’s perspective, is the the main building block for creating a morally intelligent person. Students at MUIDS are frequently asked to empathize with different figures from history and literature in their classes, with people from backgrounds different from their own, and with each other.

They are required to earn at least twenty community service hours per year and spend considerable time working with non-government organizations as well as with people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Serving others in this manner teaches them the value of compassion and cultivates a deeper awareness of challenges facing their communities.

MUIDS’ counselors help students become morally intelligent with classroom presentations about interpersonal communication, personal safety, and ethical decision making. These presentations give students opportunities to discuss issues they’re facing in a safe and supportive environment as well as how to set appropriate boundaries in their relationships, how to respond in situations where they feel unsafe, and how to make the right choices in difficult situations.

Students at MUIDS develop leadership skills by learning how to set manageable goals, listening to members of their group in order to build consensus, motivating them to take action, and setting examples worth following. In order to practice these skills, students are given a considerable degree of autonomy to craft their educational goals and create extracurricular activities for the student body.

Counselors, teachers, and administrators provide necessary support for them throughout their high school career. However, students are quickly expected to make decisions for themselves so that may learn how to manage their own affairs as well as the affairs of others.

Outside the classroom, students learn how to lead through a variety of activities. They participate in MUIDS’ annual Week Without Walls, a weeklong field trip that forces students to apply what they’ve learned in the classroom to solve real world problems. The school’s ROTC program not only lets them fulfill their military service requirement; it lets them experience the difficult choices leaders have to make when choosing between the needs of an important objective and the welfare of the people they have to lead. Extracurricular activities such as Junior Achievement and Model United Nations offer similar opportunities as well.