Lecture 4: Considering an interdisciplinary and innovative career

Presentation

• Assumptions:
  • ESR PhD students are likely to have careers that will draw from multiple disciplines in order to solve problems.
  • The problem of "interdiscplinarity" is actually a bigger problem in academia that it is in the other sectors.
  • Innovation may face some of the same challenges in other sectors (as interdisciplinarity does in academia).
  • Who and how knowledge is created is a legitimate concern for environmental science.

Why we need interdisciplinary studies and solutions

NSF report on Transitions and Tipping Points

• from 2006/2011 strategic plan
• integrative research that serves as a strong foundation for policy
• need to understand transition and tipping points will require multiscale approaches
• increasing stress + little time + need for new science that provides solutions
• high priority for NSF is the IGERT program
• networked research
• other good examples: MEA and decision theater

Discuss:

• "integrative" vs. multiple valid perspectives
• network - how do they really work
  • people have to have an authentic stake in the outcome
  • depend on trust
  • digital & vitrual tools - do they work?

 

Challenges to interdisciplinary academic career

• hiring and review at universities
  • Pfirman 2005, only 16% had policies in place for hiring and promotion
  • may hire between disciplines but the review for tenure depends on disciplinary criteria
  • tenure committee - does it include an outside reviewer
  • criteria for how the reviews take place are critical (joint committee, etc.)
  • SoE by-laws say that faculty are only considered for tenure in one department, i.e. their home department
  • CEDD report
    • structural
    • institutional acceptance
    • a different search process, more people involved
    • early career development - such as networking
    • 3rd year and tenure review criteria
    • senior faculty development rewards above department level
• research
• networking costs - need to establish collaborations and have them come to fruition in < 6 years
• teaching
• co-teaching a course actually requires more total work than if one person teaches it. Does the university really want inter-disc courses?
• may require different pedagogy
• service
• small programs have high overhead that falls to new faculty (my study on small department issues)
• interdisc facuty are valuable on university committees (as are women and minorities) - can lead to "extra" committee work
  • more women and minorities attracted to interdisc areas

Career paths

• Individual choices
• interdisciplinary is "less efficient" in terms of publication than disciplinary
  • refer to discussion on paradigmatic science
• Porter et al. Specialization vs. Integration
  • quote "Research spirals inward; science cascades outward."
  • Specialization to Integration
    • hi - lo = disciplinarian
    • hi - hi = single interdisciplinary specialists (essentially empty)
    • lo - hi = renaissance integrator
    • lo - lo = grazer

• paths to get there over your career
  • across and up - building up collaborations
  • straight across - specialize and integrate?

Innovation

• multi-cultural, have lived in another country
• cognitive flexibility in the face of ill-structured problems
• speaks English - Richard Florida, creative people have access to a wealth of un-regulated information sources and wider range of business outlets
• I shaped vs. T shaped
  • I shape career is deep and narrow
  • T shape is solid and broad exposure but also have an area of expertise

Diverse teams

• Maybe you don't need to be interdisciplinary but you need to learn to work as part of a team?
• Page 2007 notes
  • research data showing functional groups beating single geniuses
  • "Diversity Trumps Ability" hypothesis
  • works because of the superadditivity of tools, combinations of new approaches
  • when to copy when to innovate
  • diverse groups can avoid local optima
  • a person's ability to contribute increases if they can see the problem in multiple ways and can apply diverse heuristics
  • functional diversity - different tools
  • values diversity - see the problem differently
• practical application - can hire and manage a diverse workgroup easier than you can hire and attend to a single star

Activities

1. summarize opinions on what makes a good interdisciplinary or integrative scientist and career

2. discuss proposed list of speakers

2. craft the questions that they might be expected to answer (framework)

Follow-up notes

from the discussion