NRT-IGE: Crossroads: Integrating Interdisciplinary Research and Teaching in Graduate Education

University Of California-Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara CA

Investigators

Abstract

Interdisciplinary approaches will be key to solving societal challenges. Although university faculty often collaborate across disciplines, most PhD students are still trained in single departments and have little opportunity to work in interdisciplinary teams. Moreover, interdisciplinary courses for undergraduates are not common, so undergraduates are rarely exposed to the power of interdisciplinary problem-solving before entering a graduate program. A lack of interdisciplinary undergraduate courses also creates few opportunities for graduate students to teach in interdisciplinary settings, even though one of the best ways to learn a topic is to teach it. This National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) award in the Innovations of Graduate Education (IGE) Track to the University of California, Santa Barbara, will address these challenges by developing, enhancing, and assessing a recently developed model of interdisciplinary graduate education (Crossroads). The model will engage faculty and graduate students from multiple disciplines in a yearlong research project that is transferred into the undergraduate classroom. This project will train undergraduate and graduate students to apply multiple disciplines in problem solving, and will be especially attractive to students from under-represented communities who are eager for tools, such as interdisciplinary research, for solving the world's grand challenges. This project will result in the creation and dissemination of a suite of effective, transferable, and scalable professional development activities addressing interdisciplinary teaching and research, which have been evaluated, refined, and tested in a variety of STEM areas. This project will supplement the existing Crossroads program with a suite of new activities (open to all graduate students) that will provide explicit training in interdisciplinary scholarship and communicating that scholarship to broad audiences. For example, the project will develop workshops that help students articulate and discuss what it means to conduct research "in a discipline", to productively collaborate within an interdisciplinary research group, and to effectively communicate science to diverse groups. In addition, Crossroads students will complete a graduate pedagogy course with modules on teaching in an interdisciplinary classroom and on including authentic research in the classroom. The core Crossroads model and the new enhancements will be tested through the in-depth analysis of five Crossroads group projects (two in the area of sustainability and three across all STEM areas). An evaluator will conduct interviews, focus groups and surveys of students and faculty to assess whether participation in Crossroads improved the students' ability to apply approaches and tools from multiple disciplines to solve research problems, work in interdisciplinary teams, and communicate research to individuals outside the discipline. These assessments will be used to refine the approach as subsequent projects are developed. The Crossroads program will be thoroughly documented and the elements that are most effective, scalable and transferrable across STEM fields will be widely disseminated across the University of California and national education networks. The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new, potentially transformative models for STEM graduate education training. The Innovations in Graduate Education Track is dedicated solely to piloting, testing, and evaluating novel, innovative, and potentially transformative approaches to graduate education. This work is supported, in part, by the Division of Undergraduate Education.