A research university is a university that expects all its tenured and tenure-track faculty to continuously engage in research, as opposed to merely requiring it as a condition of an initial appointment or tenure.

Such universities can be recognized by their strong focus on innovative research and the prestige of their brand names.

On the one hand, research universities strive to recruit faculty who are the most brilliant minds in their disciplines in the world, and their students enjoy the opportunity to learn from such experts.

On the other hand, new students are often disappointed to realize their undergraduate courses at research universities are overly academic and fail to provide vocational training with immediate "real world" applications; but many employers value degrees from research universities because they know that such coursework develops fundamental skills like critical thinking.

Carnegie Mellon University (Carnegie Mellon or CMU; or) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human culture.

In the Middle Ages, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the time.

Today, the humanities are more frequently contrasted with natural, and sometimes social, sciences as well as professional training.

Engineering is the application of mathematics and scientific, economic, social, and practical knowledge in order to invent, innovate, design, build, maintain, research, and improve structures, machines, tools, systems, components, materials, processes, solutions, and organizations.

Interdisciplinarity involves the combining of two or more academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project).

It is about creating something new by crossing boundaries, and thinking across them.

It is related to an interdiscipline or an interdisciplinary field, which is an organizational unit that crosses traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought, as new needs and professions emerge.