Making Interdisciplinary Education Work

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Making Interdisciplinary Education Work
Chronicle 2005
Takes Students, Faculty and Institutional
Commitment

• Stephanie Pfirman Barnard College

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Exciting thinking often lies at the borders of
academic disciplines, and neither scholarship nor
teaching should be constrained by the boundaries
of disciplinary training.Citizenship with its
challenge of solving complex problems, and
scholarship as an intellectual pursuit, cannot be
limited by these departmental distinctions.
UNC website
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• If you think of disciplines as organs,
• true interdisciplinarity is something like blood.
  
• It flows. It is a liquid. It is not contained.
• There is no inside and outside.
• Alice Gottlieb, Robert Wood Johnson, Medical
  School
• from Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research,
  2004, Committee on Science, Engineering, and
  Public Policy (COSEPUP) Convocation

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• Part I Environmental Program Analysis
• Based on site visits to Environmental Programs at
  Liberal Arts Colleges for the Andrew W. Mellon
  Foundation
• EST May 2005 Pfirman, Hall, Tietenberg, and
  PKAL Resource Hall, Tietenberg and Pfirman
• Part II Interdisciplinary and Academia
• Based on 2004 survey of CEDD representatives
• Chronicle of Higher Education, February 2005
  Pfirman, Collins, Lowes, and Michaels, and PKAL
  Resource
• NSF-supported ADVANCE at the Columbia Earth
  Institute
• Women in Interdisciplinary Science Intellectual
  Preferences and Professional Consequences, Rhoten
  and Pfirman, submitted to Research Policy

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Part I Environmental Program AnalysisBarnard,
Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Colgate, Colorado College,
Hobart William Smith, Lewis Clark,
Middlebury, Mount Holyoke, Whitman

• Common Directions
• Local environmental engagement and service
  learning
• Interdisciplinary student research
• Building community
• Common spaces and resources connecting via GIS
• Campus programming

Jill Bubier (Mt. Holyoke) and students at a
wetland research site in New Hampshire Photo by
Ralph Morang
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Common Challenges

• Staffing courses
• Cross-departmental commitments
• Team teaching
• Staffing activities
• Balancing education and scholarship
• Program management

• Diversity
• Faculty
• Students
• Junior people (women) in difficult positions

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Service Learning and Local Environmental
Engagement

• Stimulates meaningful learning, as well as
  intellectual and social maturity (Baxter Magolda,
  1999) by having students
• Learn in connection with others
• Actively build their own knowledge
• Apply their knowledge and share it with others
• Encounter diverse perspectives that challenge
  their assumptions
• Negotiate and build consensus
• Reflect on implications
• Engages students intellectually and socially in
  tangible issues
• Experience the complexity and pride in making a
  difference (Ward, 1999)
• Connects campuses with their surroundings
• A sense of place, town/gown relations
• Analogous to investments in dance, theatre, music
  performances

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Team Teaching

• High overhead
• No established textbooks, problem sets, slides
  and other teaching resources
• Communication, pre-planning, double participation
• Factoring into teaching load
• Pro-rate or double count?
• Continuity and sustainability
• Cross-department commitments

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Need Time Resources/Staff

• Assisting students
• Internships, service learning
• Careers
• Field activities
• Campus programming
• Campus greening
• Interdepartmental seminars

Earth Pledge

• Community interactions
• Sustaining involvement in local issues
• Promoting meaningful civic engagement

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Recommendations from Mellon Review

• Institutions should take responsibility for
  interdisciplinary programs and faculty
• Invest in community building (on campus and off)
• Incentives and rewards for cross-departmental
  contributions
• Staff programs
• Institutionalize faculty career path

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Part IIInterdisciplinary and Academia

• Interdisciplinary mechanisms and characteristics
• Challenges
• Recommendations
• Inter-institutional Opportunities River Summer

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Interdisciplinary Mechanisms

• Cross-fertilization
• Borrow tools, concepts, data, methods, or results
  from different fields and/or disciplines via
  cognitive connections
• Team-collaboration
• Teams or networks that seek to exchange and/or
  create new tools, concepts, data, methods, or
  results across different fields and/or
  disciplines through broader collegial
  connections.
• Field-creation
• Research in domains that sit at the intersection
  of or the edges of multiple fields and/or
  disciplines, thus creating alternative epistemic
  connections
• Problem-orientation
• Topics that not only draw on multiple fields
  and/or disciplines but also directly serve
  multiple stakeholder groups outside of academe
  via novel societal connections

Rhoten and Pfirman, submitted
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Characteristics for Interdisciplinary Success

• Common complex problem
• Culture of bringing disciplines together to solve
  it
• Often place based
• Logistics
• Common access to data, resources, language,
  methodology
• Frequent face-to-face interaction
• Shared experiences
• Learning to trust each other through reliable
  participation

• Individual characteristics
• Appreciation for value of other fields -- open to
  new ideas
• Able to transfer from one context to another
• Collaborative
• Exploratory
• Institutional characteristics
• Reward and promotion structure
• Career trajectory
• Peer and top down support

e.g. Rhoten 2004
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PKAL Madison What is the biggest obstacle at
your institution in building an interdisciplinary
faculty?
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Institutional FrameworkIncreasing
Interdisciplinary
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Students

• Best served by department or program with own
  space, control over staffing and resources
• Balanced, sustainable curriculum
• Continuity in academic and career advising
• Up-to-date facilities
• Sense of community
• Opportunities for research

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Reasons for Making a Joint Hire
Center for Applied Probability
An interdisciplinary center concerned with
uncertainty in all areas of human endeavor

• An experimental entry into new area,
  bridge-building between departments
• Funding windfall or grant
• Compromise deal in the face of financial or
  political constraints
• Shadow joint appointment where a center without
  hiring authority helps fund hire into
  disciplinary department
• Courtesy appointment so weighted towards one of
  the partners that it functions more like a solo
  hire

Art Small, III
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Problems with Joint-Appointment, Junior,
Tenure-Track Hires

• Even if the chairs are committed and all
  agreements are put in writing, what happens to
  the junior hire when the chairs rotate off?
• Burden on junior hire to figure out how the units
  will get along
• Department does not feel as responsible for hires
  sponsored by another source as they do when they
  invest their own resources at the outset
• If they were really good enough, they would have
  been hired the regular way

You dont adopt a child to sort through whether
or not you want a marriage
Art Small, III
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But Junior, Joint Hires Are Not The Only Ones
With Concerns

• Graduate Students
• Reported that interdisciplinary activities have
  adverse effects on their careers, but they are
  convinced of its value
• Interdisciplinary Researchers Biocomplexity
  Awardees
• About 30 percent reported that their
  interdisciplinary affiliations had not helped or
  had hindered their careers

Research by Rhoten on Biocomplexity Awardees
Rhoten , D. and A. Parker. 2004. Risks and
Rewards of an Interdisciplinary Path. Science.
Vol. 306 2046 (December 17).
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Are there impediments to interdisciplinary
research at your current institution?
Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research, 2004,
Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public
Policy (COSEPUP) Convocation
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Interdisciplinarity and Academia
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What Can We Do?Change the Institutional
Framework
Pfirman et al., Chronicle 2005

• Align rewards, evaluation promotion with
  interdisciplinary goals
• Make departmental and review structures more
  fluid, less dependent on disciplinary approval
• Where necessary, develop new procedures for
  handling interdisciplinary scholars

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Hiring Interdisciplinary Scholars

• Search and pre-tenure review committees and
  procedures should replicate what will be used for
  tenure
• When CEDD was asked Do you have the process for
  interdisciplinary hires and promotion codified?
• 16 said yes, and another 21 said that
  codification is underway (out of only 19
  responses)

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Once Hired, Individuals Should Consider Their
Career Strategically

• You could be in academia/ research perhaps at
  the same institution for 35 years
• Coming up for tenure in your 7th year, your
  postdoc and the first 6 years of your academic
  lifecycle are special
• Performance at this time sets the stage for the
  rest of your career

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Pre Tenure Strategy

• Move away from the research of your PhD mentor
• Become known for something -- dont distribute
  yourself and your research over many communities
• Orient effort towards products
• Get grant support
• Contribute to the research of others -- they can
  carry you sometimes
• Work with colleagues who hold up their end -- nix
  the high-maintenance ones

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Tenuring Interdisciplinary Scholars

• Recognize and confront systemic issues so that
  the review committee does not see this particular
  candidate as weak, just because these issues are
  raised
• Add to the dossier, guidelines documenting FAQ
• Letters from External Evaluators
• In half of the 12 cases reported in our CEDD
  survey, when letters were sent to external
  evaluators, they were specifically asked to
  comment on interdisciplinary contributions and
  impact
• Scholarship
• Honors
• Grant Support
• Teaching
• Advising
• National/International Committees/Leadership
• On Campus Participation/Community Interactions

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Fostering Interdisciplinary Scholars

• Facilitate productivity
• Presentations
• Co-teaching
• Grant support
• Staffing
• Facilitate visibility and networking
• Travel
• Special sessions/workshops
• Publish in peer reviewed, full-text, on-line
  journals

• Document contributions and impact
• Informal advising
• Individual contribution to multi-authored
  products
• Journal standing
• Citation analysis
• Promote interdisciplinary faculty development
• Inter institutional ?

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River Summer 2005

• Stephanie Pfirman, Tim Kenna, Lisa Son
• John Cronin, Michelle Land
• Environmental Consortium of
• Hudson Valley
• Colleges and Universities

At the heart of interdisciplinarity is
communicationthe conversations, connections, and
combinations that bring new insights to virtually
every kind of scientist and engineer. COSEPUP
(NAS 2004)
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Participation

• 40 Individuals
• 24 Institutions
• FM ratio 1
• 60 Natural Scientists or Engineers
• 40 Social Scientists or Humanities

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Content

• Watershed Development Framework
• Four 3 ½ day modules (Albany to Manhattan)
• One 6 ½ day module (Adirondacks)
• 57 Natural Science or Engineering
• 43 Social Science or Humanities

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Module Schedule

• First evening
• Orientation, safety, survey, local hero
• Next 3 days
• Field program on board and on shore, led by
  whole-day guest and shipboard teachers
• Evening program, evaluation, discussion
• Final, fourth evening
• Evaluation and discussion
• Final morning
• Depart

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Module 1Upper Hudson

• Seeing the Catskills through the Hudson River
  School Elizabeth Hutchinson, Barnard College
• Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Lee
  Paddock, Pace University
• Contaminants, Riverscope Suspended Sediment
  Monitoring Damon Chaky, Lamont/RPI
• Zebra Mussels Sandra Neirzwicki-Bauer, RPI
• Writing the Hudson Susan Fox-Rogers, Bard
• Fisheries Biology Brian Jenson, The College of
  Saint Rose
• The New Political Economy of the Hudson River
  Valley Ted Eismeier, Hamilton College
• Estuarine Circulation and CTD Sampling Tim
  Kenna, LDEO

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What Did We Accomplish?

• Significant faculty interest
• Handled complex logistics
• Explored numerous topics using hands-on
  pedagogical strategies
• Hudson River provides rich subject matter that is
  ideal for developing a hands-on interdisciplinary
  program

• Created links among faculty from different
  institutions
• Galvanized the Consortium
• Generated public interest
• May have discovered a unique faculty
  development/teacher training program

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What were some of the best aspects of learning
on River Summer?

• Getting a big picture of the Hudson
• Variety of teaching styles
• Investigative approach
• Large amounts of hands-on activities
• Fieldwork
• Teamwork

• Being on a research ship
• Being outdoors
• Team teaching
• Meeting interdisciplinary faculty
• Meeting and getting to know other faculty

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What did you learn about your learning/teaching
strategies?

• Learning by doing
• Learning better when I am doing rather than
  hearing
• Reinforced learning by doing works for me
• To incorporate less lecture and have more
  hands-on experiences
• I liked having the info (lecture) with the
  hands-on activity as much as possible
• I learned not to be afraid of new tasks
• Alternative approaches
• Writing really helped me crystallize my thoughts
• Data fascinate me there are no data in my
  field
• Challenges for students are motivators
  (competitions)
• I need quiet time to process information
• At first, I had just planned to do a lecture
• After the first day, I changed my plans to start
  with a question, asking the students to develop a
  strategy for_____, and posed the question
  throughout. I think that the reverse strategy
  worked well

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What are some of the River Summer strategies
that you would like to incorporate into your
classroom teaching practices and why?

• Fieldwork
• Fieldwork with students where they do a project
  individually that ties to a group project
• Bringing students to field sites with well
  thought out activities
• Problem solving in real settings
• Pedagogical strategies
• Local hero idea -- a great way to engage students
• Multiple discipline classes
• More collaborative work
• Ungraded quizzes
• Ive never done that and it makes sense to help
  students remember and also to help them see what
  might be asked on exams
• More writing assignments
• Incorporating more data into writing
• Assignments that require students to synthesize
  information in new ways

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New Objectives for River Summer 2006

• Participants
• Teachers/Professors levels 4-16
• Take time for preparation
• Content
• Major themes
• Continuity among modules
• From multi- to interdisciplinary
• Pedagogy
• Co-teaching
• Work product
• Repeat approaches writing, drawing, sampling

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River Summer as a Unique Opportunity

• Foster an inter-institutional and
  interdisciplinary cadre with knowledge of the
  Hudson and each other
• Leveraging and sustained impact of teaching the
  professors and the teachers

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Conclusion
Exciting thinking often lies at the borders of
academic disciplines, and neither scholarship nor
teaching should be constrained by the boundaries
of disciplinary training.Citizenship with its
challenge of solving complex problems, and
scholarship as an intellectual pursuit, cannot be
limited by these departmental distinctions.
UNC website
Institutions serious about interdisciplinary
scholarship and education need to recognize the
inherent institutional and personnel development
challenges, and then create a culture, implement
procedures, and allocate resources that will
allow interdisciplinary scholars and students to
thrive and prosper