In March 2009, the president of Ithaca College issued a challenge to faculty and staff to step outside of their disciplinary expertise to create means for students to make connections across academic fields. The design team directly addressed this challenge by proposing four one-credit mini-courses, based on a series of learning activities that revolved around systems thinking and design. Our project was accepted and serves as an example of a formal design inquiry with a systems approach at multiple levels. In this design case, we describe the project history, the course designs, the many issues we have faced, and how we have made design decisions.