Training Scientists to Tackle Grand Challenge Societal Problems through Convergent Action in Transdisciplinary Teams

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Some problems facing humanity are so daunting that they seem nearly impossible to solve. These grand challenges include global climate change, food insecurity, widening socio-economic inequality, overcoming systemic racial inequities, and emerging infectious diseases. Scholars have come to label these "wicked problems" because they are highly complex and marked by fundamental disagreement among stakeholders regarding their cause and possible solution. Nevertheless, it is precisely these problems that society most needs to address. This NSF Innovations of Graduate Education (IGE) award to the Ohio State University will pilot, test, and validate an innovative project that trains graduate students to become "wicked" scientists—researchers who can work effectively in transdisciplinary teams to tackle the complexities, uncertainties, and conflictive nature of such problems. To do so effectively, graduate students need to be experts in their respective fields. However, they also need to develop transdisciplinary skills to collaborate successfully with fellow researchers and other stakeholders. This project uses a comprehensive and integrated conceptual framework of "wicked science" to pilot, test, and validate such training. The program of study will take the form of an interdisciplinary graduate minor that consists of three courses and an e-portfolio. This approach includes the development of a community of practice consisting of students, alumni, faculty, and other stakeholders that fosters long-term professional learning. Lessons from the training program will be organized and disseminated so that they can be readily adopted by other institutions of higher education in the United States and beyond.The researchers will use a mixed-methods approach that integrates validated psychometric assessments and ethnographic methods to examine whether and how the project succeeds in training "wicked scientists" and creating an institutional culture of convergence. The program assessment consists of four parts. First is the assessment of courses and course components and their effectiveness in training different core competencies. Second is an overall assessment of students’ core competencies after completion of the graduate interdisciplinary specialization. Third is a controlled comparison of core competencies of students enrolled in the program and those who are not. The final part is a study of the larger institutional context and how it affects student training and the program more broadly. The overarching hypothesis is that students who complete all the program components and participate in the community of practice will show improved competency development and higher scores across all program measures. These measures will include the four validated psychometric instruments compared to students who partially complete the training program or do not participate at all.The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is focused on research in graduate education. The goals of IGE are to pilot, test and validate innovative approaches to graduate education and to generate the knowledge required to move these approaches into the broader community.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.