Iowa State University is a particularly collaborative university, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences continues that collaborative tradition. LAS collaborates with virtually every College on campus for degree programs including biological sciences (College of Agriculture), biological/pre-medical illustration (College of Design), secondary education majors (College of Education), Languages and Cultures for Professions in the Department of Foreign Languages (Colleges of Business and Engineering) and Pre-Vet Studies (College of Veterinary Medicine). On the graduate level, LAS collaborates with other colleges on interdisciplinary majors such as HCI (Human and Computer Interfaces), Information Assurance, and Bioinformatics. Bioinformatics was a faculty initiative producing collaborative work. Scientists doing genome sequencing realized they needed more tools to handle the huge amounts of data, and professors from computer science, statistic, mathematics, and biological sciences joined forces to produce the first federally funded graduate bioinformatics major in the nation. Now almost all the plant genome databases in the country are housed here.

The college also takes seriously the university's land grant mission and emphasis on science and technology. The mission and emphasis are seen in programs such as the History Department's Ph.D. programs in Agricultural History and Rural Studies, or the History of Science and Technology; institutes such as the one for Social and Behavioral Research, which studies rural families and mental health; and collaborations such as the one between Foreign Languages and Engineering, producing Languages and Cultures for Professions.