Transdisciplinary Research in Graduate Engineering Education

社会在维持和改善地球上的生命方面面临着迅速增长的挑战。对自然资源的巧妙利用和管理，加上对能源和环境领域内外相应快速变化的积极反应，使社会有希望采取行动。但这样的行动需要未来的专业人员具备跨学科的研究能力，并对自然、社会和工程系统中的动态关系有广泛的理解。这项授予德克萨斯农工大学金斯维尔分校(TAMUK)的NSF研究生教育创新(IGE)奖将试验和测试变革的方法，以发展和提高工程学研究生进行跨学科研究的能力。这项研究需要达成可持续的解决方案，尊重当地和跨地区规模上自然、社会和工程系统的相互依赖，并在全球范围内引起共鸣。该项目通过研讨会和服务性学习项目，让来自不同研究领域的研究人员和研究生分享空间、对话、分析、学术、研究途径、方法、问题和解决方案。该项目名为“工程学研究生教育中的跨学科研究(TREE)”，将创建并提供以讲习班为基础的三种主要能力(跨文化能力、社区参与实践以及定性和定量混合研究方法)的专题单元，以及一个可操作的服务学习部分。TREE项目将寻求两个主要研究问题的多标量答案：1)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和高效地发展和提高工程研究生进行跨学科研究的能力？2)通过协作服务学习项目将这些原则付诸实施能否有效和高效地提高工程学研究生进行跨学科研究的能力？该项目将为参与当地社区的研究生提供新的教育机会，绘制和运行关于主导和从属过程的初始、中间和最后阶段的模拟，以寻求可持续的解决方案。这种协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构建和软组装，这些解决方案重视跨学科和将多文化洞察力带到决策桌上的个人的投入。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共享，并用于指导TAMUK和全国的其他STEM研究生项目。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社区所需的知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.