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

跨学科的方法将是解决社会挑战的关键。虽然大学教师经常跨学科合作，但大多数博士生仍然在单个院系接受培训，很少有机会在跨学科团队中工作。此外，本科生的跨学科课程并不常见，因此本科生在进入研究生课程之前很少接触到跨学科解决问题的力量。缺乏跨学科的本科课程也给研究生在跨学科的环境中教学创造了很少的机会，尽管学习一个主题的最好方法之一就是教它。加州大学圣巴巴拉分校研究生教育创新（IGE）项目的国家科学基金会研究培训（NRT）奖将通过开发、加强和评估最近开发的跨学科研究生教育模式（Crossroads）来应对这些挑战。该模式将让来自多个学科的教师和研究生参与一个为期一年的研究项目，该项目将转移到本科课堂。该项目将培养本科生和研究生运用多学科解决问题的能力，对来自代表性不足的社区的学生尤其有吸引力，这些学生渴望获得跨学科研究等工具来解决世界面临的重大挑战。该项目将创建和传播一套有效的、可转移的、可扩展的专业发展活动，解决跨学科的教学和研究问题，这些活动已经在多个STEM领域进行了评估、完善和测试。该项目将通过一系列新活动（对所有研究生开放）补充现有的十字路口项目，这些活动将提供跨学科奖学金的明确培训，并将奖学金传播给广泛的受众。例如，该项目将举办讲习班，帮助学生阐明和讨论“在一门学科中”进行研究的意义、在一个跨学科研究小组内进行富有成效的合作的意义、以及向不同群体有效地传播科学的意义。此外，十字路口的学生将完成一门研究生教育学课程，其中包括跨学科课堂教学和课堂上的真实研究。十字路口的核心模型和新的增强功能将通过五个十字路口集团项目的深入分析进行测试（两个在可持续发展领域，三个在所有STEM领域）。评估人员将对学生和教师进行访谈、焦点小组和调查，以评估参与十字路口项目是否提高了学生应用多学科方法和工具解决研究问题的能力、在跨学科团队中工作的能力，以及与学科外的个人交流研究的能力。随着后续项目的发展，这些评估将用于改进方法。十字路口项目将被彻底记录，在STEM领域最有效、可扩展和可转移的要素将在加州大学和全国教育网络中广泛传播。美国国家科学基金会研究实习生（NRT）计划旨在鼓励开发和实施大胆的、新的、具有潜在变革性的STEM研究生教育培训模式。研究生教育创新轨道专门用于试点，测试和评估新颖，创新和潜在的变革性研究生教育方法。这项工作在一定程度上得到了本科教育司的支持。

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.