Transdisciplinary Research in Graduate Engineering Education

研究生工程教育的跨学科研究

• 批准号: 2225109
• 负责人: Hua Li
• 金额: $ 48.73万
• 依托单位: Texas A&M University-Kingsville
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-10-01 至 2025-09-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2225109&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Transdisciplinary; Research; Graduate; Engineering; Education

Society faces burgeoning challenges to sustain and enhance life on earth. Smart use and management of natural resources plus proactive responses to the corresponding rapid changes within and beyond the energy and environmental fields hold promise for society to act. But such action requires future professionals equipped with transdisciplinary research abilities coupled to a broad understanding of dynamic relationships across natural, social, and engineering systems. This NSF Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) award to Texas A&M University-Kingsville (TAMUK) will pilot and test transformative approaches to develop and improve engineering graduate students’ ability to conduct transdisciplinary research. This research is needed to reach sustainable solutions respecting the interdependence of natural, social, and engineering systems on local and trans-local scales that resonate globally. This project brings researchers and graduate students from different fields of study to share spaces, conversations, analyses, scholarship, research approaches, methods, questions, and solutions through workshops and service learning projects. This project, "Transdisciplinary Research in Graduate Engineering Education (TREE)," will create and offer workshop-based thematic modular units in three thrust competencies (intercultural competence, community-engaged practice, and qualitative and quantitative mixed research methods) and an operationalized service learning component. The TREE project will search for multi-scalar answers to two primary research questions: 1) Are the thrust competencies workshops and thematic modular units taught in the workshops able to effectively and efficiently develop and improve engineering graduate students’ ability to conduct transdisciplinary research? 2) Can the operationalization of these principles through collaborative service learning projects effectively and efficiently enhance engineering graduate students’ ability to conduct transdisciplinary research? The project will provide new educational opportunities to graduate students engaged with local communities, sketching and running simulations on initial, medial, and final stages of dominant and subordinate processes in search of sustainable solutions. Such collaborations will support transdisciplinary thinking and problem solving and the co-construction and soft assembly of complex solutions that value the inputs across disciplines and individuals who bring multicultural insight to the decision-making table. It will impact students, communities, and how they think about knowledge to achieve ecologically and humanly sustainable solutions. Moreover, it will lead to the design of scalable and transformative approaches based on thematic modular units and service learning, which will be shared via a well-structured dissemination plan to be adopted and used to guide other STEM graduate programs at TAMUK and across the nation.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.

社会面临着维持和改善地球上生命的挑战。明智地使用和管理自然资源，加上积极主动地应对能源和环境领域内外的相应快速变化，使社会有希望采取行动。但这样的行动需要未来的专业人士配备跨学科的研究能力，再加上对自然，社会和工程系统之间动态关系的广泛理解。这个NSF研究生教育创新奖（IGE）授予德克萨斯A M大学金斯维尔分校（TAMUK）将试点和测试变革性方法，以发展和提高工程研究生进行跨学科研究的能力。这项研究是必要的，以达到可持续的解决方案，尊重自然，社会和工程系统的相互依存关系，在当地和跨地方的规模，在全球范围内产生共鸣。该项目使来自不同研究领域的研究人员和研究生通过研讨会和服务学习项目分享空间，对话，分析，奖学金，研究方法，方法，问题和解决方案。这个项目，“跨学科研究生工程教育（树），”将创建和提供基于研讨会的主题模块单元在三个推力能力（跨文化能力，社区参与的做法，定性和定量混合研究方法）和操作服务学习组件。TREE项目将寻找两个主要研究问题的多标量答案：1）在研讨会上教授的推力能力研讨会和主题模块单元是否能够有效地发展和提高工程研究生进行跨学科研究的能力？2)这些原则的可操作性，通过合作服务学习项目有效和高效地提高工程研究生进行跨学科研究的能力？该项目将为研究生提供新的教育机会，与当地社区合作，绘制并模拟主导和从属过程的初始，中间和最后阶段，以寻求可持续的解决方案。这种合作将支持跨学科思维和问题解决，以及复杂解决方案的共同建设和软组装，这些解决方案重视跨学科和个人的投入，这些投入将多元文化的洞察力带到决策桌上。它将影响学生，社区以及他们如何看待知识，以实现生态和人类可持续的解决方案。此外，它将导致基于主题模块单元和服务学习的可扩展和变革性方法的设计，这些方法将通过结构良好的传播计划进行共享，并用于指导TAMUK和全国各地的其他STEM研究生课程。研究生教育创新（IGE）计划专注于研究生教育研究。IGE的目标是试验、测试和验证研究生教育的创新方法，并产生将这些方法推广到更广泛的社区所需的知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。