NRT-IGE: Integrating Team Science into the STEM Graduate Training Experience

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Large interdisciplinary teams are frequently at the core of research on today's complex science and engineering problems. Working in teams is challenging for many scientists and engineers because the culture of universities, where they studied, recognizes and rewards individual achievement. For example, a Ph.D. student's final project report, the dissertation, must represent the student's own original contribution. Likewise, universities promote individual faculty members, not groups, through the ranks. Despite the importance of team-based research, universities have historically provided little systematic preparation for science and engineering graduate students to help them succeed in careers involving greater collaboration. This National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) award in the Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) Track to the Georgia Institute of Technology will address these challenges by developing materials to train graduate students to work in teams and by measuring the effectiveness of these materials. The project will take a novel approach to curriculum development by drawing on best practices in team training from a wide range of sources such as the healthcare industry, aviation, and the military. Adaptation of these materials to meet the needs of graduate students will ensure that the students become effective team members and leaders who can advance science and engineering throughout their careers. This project seeks to determine how graduate students learn to be effective team members and team leaders. The project will investigate which instructional materials and approaches are most effective for students to develop teamwork competencies and which settings are most suitable for learning and retaining specific transportable skills. This project has three goals: (1) develop instructional materials and collaborative processes for team training; (2) implement these instructional materials; and (3) evaluate the effectiveness of instructional materials as well as the processes for developing and implementing team training at the graduate level. Achieving these goals will add to the knowledge base about effective graduate education. The project focuses on three key considerations: competencies, audiences, and settings. The competencies studied by this project are transportable, meaning they are useful in many different areas of research. Examples include knowledge about the nature and value of teamwork, skills in communication and conflict management, and attitudes about diversity and inclusiveness. The audience for the project includes M.S. and Ph.D. students across a wide range of STEM programs. To maximize flexibility, the team will develop curricular materials in small units that faculty can deliver in different settings. Settings where materials will be developed and introduced include existing academic courses, short (60-90 minute) or longer (half day, full day) workshops, and semester-long academic courses. 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.