International Geobiology Summer Course: Providing Focus for an Emerging Field

该奖项是为了奖励一门针对早期研究生的暑期课程《地球生物学》。这门课程将在这一新兴领域的发展中发挥关键作用，培养新一代研究生的跨学科丰富性，并为该领域在学术部门和学者社区内的发展提供一个重点。这种类型的暑期课程将创建一个通过友谊和学术合作网络将不同学科的科学家联系起来的社区。这个网络将是这一新领域成功的关键。地球生物学是一门年轻的新兴科学，利用广泛的暑期课程作为这一领域的重点是有真正的优势。在过去的三年里，利用阿古隆研究所提供的种子资金，PI组织并开办了一个为期6周的暑期课程。他们开发这门课程的具体目标是建立一个杰出的、跨学科的和相互联系的地质生物学家领域，并为他们提供一个共同的词汇来探索新的研究途径。杰出的地质学家、生物地球化学家、微生物学家、生物化学家和分子生物学家被招募来教授这门课程的各个部分。最先进的分子、微生物学和地球化学实验室建在位于卡塔利纳岛的南加州大学箭牌研究所海洋实验室。然而，这门课程最特别的方面是鼓励这些科学家在成为朋友的同时一起学习的智力结构。这种共生结合提供了一种粘合剂，帮助这个领域变得更加强大。当这些学生不得不在获得终身教职的道路上做出艰难的研究决定时，这门课程的真正价值可能就会显现出来。跨学科研究的一个长期困难是它在学科部门的认知，特别是在终身教职评估期间。学科教师很难评估学科之外的研究部分，也很难找出写信的人。通过创建地球生物学这一领域，这种身份可以更快地显现出来，也可以产生一代导师，他们认识这些学生，了解这一领域，并倡导这种做科学的方式。这应该会为这些学生铺平道路，并更快地促进现代大学学科墙内跨学科的出现。通过这种方式，该课程有助于促进学术界内的全系统变革，并促进可与许多其他学术追求相关的跨学科活动的发展模式。

The award is for a summer course in "Geobiology" directed toward the early graduate student. This course will play a key role in the development of this emerging field, train a new generation of graduate students in its interdisciplinary richness and provide a focus for the development of this area within academic departments and within the community of scholars. This type of summer course will create a community of scientists linked across disciplines by a network of friendships and scholarly collaborations. This network will be key to the success of this new field. Geobiology is a young, emerging science and there is a real advantage to using a broad summer course as a focus for this field. With seed moneys from the Agouron Institute, the PIs have organized and run a 6-week summer course for the last three years. They developed this course with the specific objective to build a field of exceptional, interdisciplinary and interconnected geobiologists and to provide them with a common vocabulary with which to explore new research avenues. Exceptional geologists, biogeochemists, microbiologists, biochemists and molecular biologists were recruited to teach blocks of this course. State-of-the-art molecular, microbiology and geochemistry labs were built at the USC Wrigley Institute's marine lab on Catalina Island. However, the most special aspect of the course is the intellectual construct that encourages these scientists to learn together while they become friends. This collegial bonding provides a glue that helps the field grow strong. The real value of the course probably emerges when these students have to make the hard decisions about research on the path to tenure. A perennial difficulty with interdisciplinary research is its perception in disciplinary departments, particularly during the evaluations for tenure. Disciplinary faculty have trouble evaluating the parts of the research outside of the discipline and difficulty identifying people to write letters. By creating the "field" of Geobiology, this identity can be made to emerge sooner and also produce a generation of mentors who know these students, know the field, and are advocates for this way of doing science. This should ease the paths for these students and more rapidly promote the emergence of the interdiscipline within the disciplinary walls of modern universities. In this way, the course helps promote system-wide change within academia and promotes a model for the development of interdisciplinary activities that can be relevant in many other academic pursuits.