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

跨学科方法将是解决社会挑战的关键。尽管大学教职员工经常跨学科协作，但大多数博士生仍然是在单个院系接受培训，几乎没有机会在跨学科团队中工作。此外，为本科生开设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为研究生创造了在跨学科环境中任教的机会，尽管学习一个主题的最好方法之一就是教授它。在加州大学圣巴巴拉分校的研究生教育创新(IGE)轨道上，这个国家科学基金会研究培训(NRT)奖将通过开发、增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职员工和研究生参与一项为期一年的研究项目，并将其转移到本科课堂。该项目将培训本科生和研究生在解决问题时应用多学科，对来自代表性不足社区的学生特别有吸引力，他们渴望获得跨学科研究等工具，以解决世界上的重大挑战。该项目将创建和传播一套有效的、可转移的和可扩展的专业发展活动，以解决跨学科教学和研究，这些活动已经在各种STEM领域进行了评估、改进和测试。该项目将以一套新的活动(对所有研究生开放)来补充现有的十字路口计划，这些活动将提供明确的跨学科奖学金培训，并向广大受众传播这种学术知识。例如，该项目将开发研讨会，帮助学生阐明和讨论在一个学科中进行研究意味着什么，在一个跨学科研究小组内进行富有成效的合作，并向不同的群体有效地交流科学。此外，十字路口的学生将完成一门研究生教育学课程，其中包括在跨学科课堂上进行教学和在课堂上进行真实研究的模块。将通过对五个十字路口小组项目(两个在可持续性领域，三个在所有科技、经济和经济领域)的深入分析，测试核心十字路口模式和新的改进措施。评估员将对学生和教职员工进行访谈、焦点小组和调查，以评估参与十字路口课程是否提高了学生应用来自多个学科的方法和工具来解决研究问题、在跨学科团队中工作以及与学科外的个人交流研究的能力。这些评估将用于在制定后续项目时改进方法。十字路口计划将被完整地记录下来，最有效、可扩展和可跨STEM领域转移的元素将在加州大学和全国教育网络中广泛传播。NSF研究培训(NRT)计划旨在鼓励为STEM研究生教育培训开发和实施大胆的、新的、潜在的变革性模式。研究生教育创新轨道专门致力于试验、测试和评估研究生教育的新颖、创新和潜在的变革性方法。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.